CNN’s Van Jones described Wednesday evening how the Democratic Party was “coming apart” as he noted President Joe Biden being “stopped” by COVID-19, while former President Donald Trump couldn’t be stopped by a “bullet.”
IMHO, Vance is looking like the major weak-link in the ticket—once the DEMs have recovered…
Let’s see if the bony-eared assfish are biting again today—CAST -> -> ->
It’s rare to see intent to troll just declared up front like that.
“It’s rare to see intent to troll just declared up front like that.”
Yea, I have to say that the honesty of openly declaring ignoble intent is refreshing in an ironic sort of way.
I watched J D Vance’s last night speech this morning and he is impressive, excellent delivery and what a nice young 39 year old man at a time when we need young leaders. I watched the movie ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ three days ago, then I downloaded the book on my kindle and read it and I really like this guy. I also appreciate the GOP appeal to working class Hill Billies and other Red Necks, this is turning out to be much more interesting than it seemed to me a few weeks ago.
Neo, I assume you took that photo on your phone while you were walking.
Nice.
It’s almost annoying. I have a digital SLR camera that I paid several hundred dollars for that mostly sits at home unused because my freaking phone takes better pictures under most circumstances. The only time the camera is better any more is for distant shots with a long lens.
Stopping to smell the flowers on this glorious day following an inglorious day… keeps the doctor away.
Roses. Roses give me the beauty I need to move on into another day! Here is a
great source of Rose information: https://heirloomroses.com
“I watched J D Vance’s last night speech this morning and he is impressive, excellent delivery and what a nice young 39 year old man at a time when we need young leaders.”
Hear hear.
His life story is pretty much the epitome of the American dream:
Grew up poor in a dysfunctional family, made good decisions, took advantage of the opportunities he was presented with and became very successful as a result.
He’s very well spoken but speaks plainly and clearly and doesn’t dissemble. Comes across to me as confident, but not egotistical. I think his youth is an asset when compared to the geriatric brigade at the head of both political parties right now.
One big plus for his youth: I don’t expect to see old liberal women coming out of the woodwork accusing him of raping them 30 years ago like they do for every other prominent Republican. He’d have been 9.
Of course the establishment media and the left (redundancy alert) will depict him as literally Hitler because he actually holds some conservative ideals, but they’d do that no matter who the pick was and any credibility they’ve ever had has been long ago squandered by their hysterical rantings.
Heck, just the fact that Mitt Romney can’t stand him is enough of an endorsement for me.
I think he was a solid pick for VP.
“IMHO, Vance is looking like the major weak-link in the ticket…”– Karmi
Do you mean because he’s not a neocon?
He made it pretty obvious the MAGA is moving toward the working class and away from Wall St. I’m pretty sure there’s more of the working class than the globalists. Vance’s story and message will resonate with the rust belt. Can he deliver PA, WI, MI? Trump/Vance only needs one.
Rose– nothing delivers the amount of color throughout the seasons than roses.
They do need maintenance– but I leave that to my wife. In exchange I mow the lawn.
Trump has been through covid and trials and assasination, I really get tired of Van Jones jive, I know hes a marxist who went to Yale, but really that card got played a long time ago,
The former president had no time to fake his behavior. It simply brought out the fighter—some might even say the leader—in him.
He no longer belongs just to the Republicans. The former president is now a folk hero for the entire nation. Even those who will never vote for him have been able to empathize with or even admire him.
“Heroism cannot be faked. It is a condition of its own, a stroke of public sincerity.”
Gold-Star families from the Democrats’ disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan speak at the RNC last night. See the powerful videos at this link. I have read, but cannot verify, that most networks, including Fox, did not carry it.
Karmi, I am curious to know why you think Vance is the weak link.
Now would be the time to gently alert your moderate friends to Gavin Newson having sent male convicts into women’s prisons and now banning parental notification laws concerning the states success at gender identity brainwashing children in public schools.
It’s a cult !
The 81-year-old president, now self-isolating with COVID, remains publicly dug in.
But privately he’s resigned to mounting pressure, bad polls, and untenable scrutiny making it impossible to continue his campaign, the Democrats tell us.
I don’t think Kamala will be any better as a candidate except maybe racial one issue voters.
Sailorcurt:
Yes, my phone camera is fine and I never use a regular camera and haven’t for years. The zoom could use improvement, though.
jon baker, you’re assuming Newsom would jump in at this point. I doubt it.
So who replaces Biden as democrat candidate? Will he resign as president? Fwiw I think he will not resign as president, but will drop out of the race. I think the replacement will not be Kamala, she is an idiot. Not Newsom. He is male, white, hetero, and it will be easy to run against California. Shapiro and Whitmer are most likely. They come from swing states. Unknown nationwide so it’ll be easy for the Democrat media to build them up. As an aside it’s too bad the rhetoric at the convention is all anti-Biden. It will be interesting to see if President Trump takes shots at the two governors during his speech tonight or at least couches his comparisons to the Democrats and not specifically to Biden
Obama has “reportedly” been grousing that Joe Biden should “seriously reconsider the viability of his campaign”.
Kate — we’re talking again? 😉 Anyway, I’m trying to stay outta conversations here now—just commenting on posts and/or linking to an article. Seems that I speak a different version of English than most here…
The article I linked to – “COVID Has ‘Stopped’ Biden, While A ‘Bullet Couldn’t Stop Trump’” had anti-Trump Van Jones speaking highly of Trump ‘n lowly of Biden.
Have already mentioned one issue about Vance, that others are going to notice about the “Party of Whites,” i.e., an all White Male ticket now. People notice that stuff and it is not just me or my opinion of it. I’m fine with a Party of Whites, but am not gonna join and it’s not a winning message, IMHO.
IMHO, Vance is looking like the major weak-link in the ticket—once the DEMs have recovered…
Trump is now a “Folk Hero,” and it is going to be more difficult for DEMs to attack him with any meaning. That leaves Vance as a weaker link for DEMs to attack, IMHO, ‘once the DEMs have recovered’ from their current Biden issue. Does that make sense?
I like Vance — liked Donalds, Scott, Haley, and probably Tulsi Gabbard more. Vance’s stance on Ukraine is also a deal breaker for me. Can’t stand pro-Russians (yes, that is what one is if they are anti-Ukraine 🙂 )
My guess is they’ll have to go with Kamala at this late a date. It’d be just too much of a logistical and a PR nightmare for them to do some kind of open primary in order to get Newsom in over Kamala. But who knows? We’re in uncharted territory here. Nothing like this has ever happened before, where 3 months out from a US presidential election a major party’s assumed candidate is forced to drop out.
Will he resign as president? Fwiw I think he will not resign as president, but will drop out of the race.
For that the argument they’d have to make is that while he no longer has the capacity to conduct a presidential campaign, he somehow can still run the country? Now, of course around here, we all know that he likley hasn’t been running much of anything for some time, but rather a surgate group headed by Doctor Jill has. But most of the Democrat voter base and many swing voters likely believed the fiction that Joe was totally fine up until now. They might not be so sanguine about either a dementia patient running things, or having Doctor Jill run things in his stead.
Thanks for the reply, Karmi. So, you think Vance will be vulnerable because Dems are racists and will emphasize Vance’s whiteness. They may, but I don’t think it will work too well. His hillbilly identity and blue-collar sentiments may overwhelm the racist angle.
You don’t speak a different version of English. You’re just not on the same wavelength as many commenters here. Plus, satire and irony don’t necessarily carry through in written posts.
I just saw Kamala Harris on local TV, speaking in Fayetteville, NC. She’s going with the “Republicans are racists” line. That’s about all they’ve got at this point.
“I’m trying to stay outta conversations here now”
That’s funny as the lead-in to a, what, 200 word comment?
“Seems that I speak a different version of English than most here”
I’d guess so, because that’s not what I’d define as “stay[ing] outta conversations”
Regarding your “point”: That consideration may have had an impact 4 years ago, but DEI is old news and most people to the right of Stalin are pretty much over emphasizing skin color and sex over competence and qualifications.
If nothing else, Cackles Kamala has been an excellent spokesperson for tossing DEI into the dustbin of history.
As far as Vance being the “weak link”…they’re going to somehow come up with an attack more vitriolic than the “existential threat, wannabe dictator, literally Hitler” they’ve been throwing at Trump for the past 8 years?
I suppose they could start saying that Vance is the devil himself, tortures puppies to death and doesn’t return his shopping cart to the corral at the supermarket, but the hysterics of the left over the past couple of election cycles have pretty much numbed people to that in my experience. The people who would never vote Trump anyway might buy it, but everyone else is pretty skeptical of hysterical claims by this point.
Besides, I don’t get the impression that Vance is shy about throwing the BS right back at them when they toss it his way. He is a Marine after all. Should be entertaining if nothing else.
Kate, not just his whiteness, i.e. he has said a lot of other stuff that DEMs will attack much more than the “white” aspect, e.g. he may have put his foot in mouth in ref to the abortion pill. He has ran his mouth a lot in the past (even against Trump), and the DEMs are going to use it all…
Hes for federalism on the abortion question he was skeptical over trump not surprising but he learned
All Vance has to do, which he has already done, is to say he was initially against Trump until he saw what an outstanding president he was, and changed his mind.
Shapiro’s not going to throw away his shot for 2028. Whitmer might. I don’t think she has any other chance of getting either spot on the ticket.
If Biden goes, Harris will most likely be the nominee. Dropping one candidate is hard. Dropping two would be darn near impossible.
“Karmi, I am curious to know why you think Vance is the weak link.”
Deflected TDS, too embarrassing since the assassination attempt.
“He has ran his mouth a lot in the past (even against Trump), and the DEMs are going to use it all…”
Oooo, they might even say he wants to bring back slavery like Romney.
Looks like, on Saturday (before the assassination attempt) there was an “intervention” when elected Democrats talked to Biden. It didn’t work, judging from the fact that details of the intervention are now being leaked to the media to further pressure Biden. The leaks say Biden was combative and defensive. Now he’s back in the Biden cocoon, with Jill and Hunter advising him.
Tobin has always been stalwart on issues pertaining to Jews and Israel but this goes far beyond that. Not just about Vance even but it is one of the best expositions of the forces that led to the rise of Trump and MAGA I have ever read. Should be required reading for those with TDS, including some of the commenters here …
Karmi:
Any Republican Trump might have chosen for the VP spot had vulnerabilities the left would exploit.
Drones are everywhere these days but, according to new reports, the SS had no drones in the air over the venue when President Trump was to speak at Butler, PA.
So, again, only the pretense of security, not actual security, and another indicator for the idea that this was a setup, leaving enough holes in Trump’s supposed protection to make it easier for some assassin to be successful.
,
I think they are stuck with Kamala. When SlowJoe bails she is the only one who can access the war chest accumulated for the “Biden-Harris” campaign. If she is not there that money goes into some kind of limbo. Millions of dollars at stake. And what happens if they try to insert another presidential candidate, leaving her as VP? would she go for that?
This is a problem that the Dems created for themselves. They knew Joe was well past his use-by date but ran him in 2020 because they had no one else. All the initial candidates were essentially rejected by the voters, and there was no bench; there still is no Dem bench. He has only gone downhill since.
So the problem with trying to build a winning ticket at this late date is theirs alone. The best option for sane people would be to take the loss and start building for 2028. I guess I answered this, didn’t I?
A large prop-driven suicide attack drone has flown into a high-rise apartment building a couple blocks up the street from the American Embassy auxilary building in Tel-Aviv. This was roughly 40 mins ago now, so approx 3:10 am Tel-Aviv time. From the audio recordings nearby which captured the explosion I would guess a payload of around 50 kilos or so, give or take. There were severe injuries reported but no reports of deaths that I’ve seen.
It gets curiouser and curiouser. First, there were the highest volume of shorts on DJT stocks (ie, betting on a lower price to re-buy stock) in the days or weeks before J13. (DJT soared instead after Trump’s survival of the shooting.)
The only thing to add is that Crooks was likely higher IQ. Apparently, he gained acceptance to the University of Pittsburg’s engineering program where SAT scores average 1400 — equating to 95th percentile.
What was Crooks doing with these accounts abroad%?
NEO:
Just to call attention to it — July 20 is the 55th anniversary of the A11 moon landing, with the walk on July 21. Might want to cue a video for that. 😉
}}} Establishment GOP leaders and pundits supported economic policies and international trade agreements that essentially impoverished many Americans by hollowing out the country’s manufacturing base and outsourcing jobs abroad. They also ardently opposed worker-friendly policies that might soften the blow
Tobin is flat out wrong on this — the real issue here is that the GOP has utterly failed to make the public grasp that manufacturing is not where actual money comes from any more. Hasn’t been for 50 years, which is why the USA has gotten somewhat out of the manufacturing business — at least, the physical end of it.
It’s notable that, last I checked (probably 5y ago) the USA was the #3 manufacturing economy (in terms of money made from manufactured goods) in the world, behind China and Japan, and having edged out Germany for their former share at #3 (this is more Germany’s idiocy but that’s a different discussion).
The difference is, the USA did not make all that money by manufacturing things, they made it by owning the IP used to manufacture almost everything.
The future wealth of the world is not going to come from making stuff, it’s going to come from creating IP and offering services. We are the first nation to enter the world as an “IP & Services” economy.
The first economy was an AG economy — wealth derived from owning land and producing food with it.
The second economy was the Industrial Economy — wealth derived from owning factories and producing manufactured goods with them.
By the 1960s, everyone was saying the USA was a “PostIndustrial” economy… “Post” is what you use when you don’t know what it is, in this kind of situation.
As the 80s ended, it had become clear what followed, which was the IP&S Economy.
The thousands and thousands of high-paying jobs common to the economy in the 1950s and early 60s, they are gone, and they ain’t coming back.
And it’s damned well got nothing to do with them “going overseas”. Rebuilding a worker-based manufacturing economy in the USA will be a step backwards, and it will make the nation poorer, not richer.
In 1880, 70% of the US labor force worked on farms. Nowadays, we produce much more food (for more than 3x the population!) on LESS land, and we do it with only 3% to 5% of the working age population.
WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE LOST FARM JOBS!?!?!? Oh, Noes, we need a crash program to restore all those lost labor opportunities!!!!
Yeah, that would be stupid. We’ve moved on.
What happened? Mechanization happened. It raised the productivity of the worker by several orders of magnitude. And lowered the cost of food steadily during the entirety of the 20th Century. Seriously. Up until the #$%#$^$# “Ethanol Mandate”, the amount of time the average worker had to work to put food on their table dropped by more than 80% — even as the population doubled (meaning they had to make 2x as much, or buy it from other places), and even as the percentage of the population needed to produce the food dropped by a factor of 20. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/08/over-100-years-food-prices-have-fallen.html
(Note that the Ethanol Mandate, along with Bidinflation, have reversed that 100 year trend)
THE SAME THING HAS BEEN HAPPENING SLOWLY SINCE THE 1970s IN THE US MANUFACTURING SECTOR
First with increasing general efficiency, then the introduction of robotics, in the same sense as mechanization revolutionized ag.
Any future factories built in the USA will have 1/20th the labor force of a 1950 factory, and one metric fuckton of robots.
HERE is a fictionalized but almost certainly accurate example of a 2050 automobile factory (“Oh, that’s just fiction!”. True. But it is a very realistic example of how a modern factory should be, or close to it) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7omoVzuynmE
The only thing it’s missing is an overseer with a “Shutdown” button — but that’s “poetic license” to maintain the action.
Before long, not more than 3% to 5% of US workers should be in factories, and it should never climb back up again. Even as more and more manufacturing shifts back to the USA (and it will, and slowly has been, since about 2003 or so… look up “Reshoring”), it will happen in increasingly robotic factories with fewer and fewer workers, usually specialists in repairing broken robots.
FACT: Manufacturing itself — the actual, physical act — does not make substantial new wealth. Period. This is not an arguable or debatable statement, it’s a demonstrable FACT. OTHER nations can only do it because they are bootstrapping their own economies.
TJ at 12:40 above, links to a posting on X by Florida Republican Congressman Michael Waltz, who writes that assassin Crook had “three encrypted overseas accounts”–and if this is true–that casts this assassination attempt in a whole new light.
Some of the reporting I’ve read characterizes the assassin as very secretive, and hiding his ideas and activities from his parents. Perhaps he had a whole separate life and set of contacts that they never knew about.
Thus, perhaps not just a lone individual, a high IQ loner who was bullied, under appreciated, and under accomplished but, rather, someone who might have been identified, encouraged, and steered towards becoming an assassin by forces outside of himself and, thus, part of a “conspiracy.”
Gee, who might have had the resources to do all that.
(The speculations about Lee Harvey Oswald come to mind.)
“All Vance has to do, which he has already done, is to say he was initially against Trump until he saw what an outstanding president he was, and changed his mind.”
Exactly. Maybe I’m biased and other Trump supporters won’t see it that way…but I’m biased because that’s exactly how I was.
I didn’t vote for Trump in the primary in 2016 and was disheartened when he won the nomination. I thought he was a “conservative of convenience” who would revert to his more liberal self once elected. I thought he was a narcissistic, egotistical blowhard (ok…I still think that) who was doing it just for the attention and would suck as a President.
I was wrong. I freely admit it and I think Trump did as good a job as he possibly could have as President considering that the entire DC Machine, including the majority of his own party, was against him.
I didn’t agree with everything he did, but I’m amazed at how well he did under the circumstances. Exactly the opposite of the unmitigated failure I expected.
Because I felt and feel that way, I can understand completely where Vance is coming from. I think we all can to some degree or another.
Vance changing his opinion when faced with clear evidence that he was wrong is not a liability in my mind. It’s an asset and further evidence that he was a good pick.
“A large prop-driven suicide attack drone has flown into a high-rise apartment building a couple blocks up the street from the American Embassy auxilary(sic) building in Tel-Aviv.”
Why is everyone so focused on the Embassy? The drone hit right next to Original Thai Massages than the Embassy (according to Google Maps).
Maybe Hezbollah doesn’t like happy endings.
@OBloodyHell:Manufacturing itself — the actual, physical act — does not make substantial new wealth.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think you are falling into one error while criticizing another. I think you must be confusing “wealth” with “money”.
If goods aren’t a form of wealth, what IS wealth? You can’t eat money. It makes poor clothes and shoes. You can’t drive it. Money must have something to buy or in what sense is it “wealth”? In fact when supply of money increases faster than goods and services you have “inflation” which we know for a fact doesn’t make us rich.
If we’re “wealthy”, doesn’t that mean our money can command goods and services? Someone must be making those goods, right, or our wealth is just paper.
The US manufactures a lot, actually–16% of world output. Its manufacturing output is second only to China (31%). But we do it with a tiny fraction of the number of workers China uses. Our wealth indeed does come in large part from manufacturing, and without the products of manufacturing and agriculture “wealth” is poverty. China’s manufacturing raised them out of dire poverty (does any mom say “starving kids in China” anymore), so yes it was a substantial source of wealth to them, and a lot of those goods came here for us, making us more wealthy.
Americans enjoy abundance of inexpensive manufactured goods, which is one reason we are wealthier than the rest of the world, even the First World. We would feel and be much poorer without those things.
I agree that people are wrong to focus on lost manufacturing jobs while ignoring increased productivity, but it’s at least equally wrong to say that manufacturing does not make substantial new wealth.
“I think you are falling into one error while criticizing another. I think you must be confusing “wealth” with “money”.”
Absolutely. Many people make that mistake. Money is just a form of communication. It is a token that represents wealth. Inflation comes from the number of tokens increasing without an attendant increase in the actual wealth being represented. Each token represents a smaller amount of the existing wealth.
“I agree that people are wrong to focus on lost manufacturing jobs while ignoring increased productivity”
Also correct, the emphasis in keeping manufacturing in (or returning it to) the US should not be in maintaining jobs per se, although that will be a side effect. The emphasis should be on security.
When we are dependent upon international trade for products that we depend upon because we don’t make them here any more, we are vulnerable to the good will of other nations for our survival. This is especially true in industries that provide base materials (mining, steel production, glass production etc) and vital defense industries (including the microprocessors that all of our high tech weaponry depends upon), but is even true of strictly consumer products. Dependency equals vulnerability.
“Dependency equals vulnerability.”
As we see today Israel has learned to its chagrin when relative simple technologies such as tank gun rounds, artillery rounds, big dumb bombs, etc. (to say nothing of complex systems like advanced air fighters) are denied by a hostile-once-former-ally. Building factories to make such simple tech takes time and capital, either of which may be in short supply in the midst of an ongoing war.
so now Crowdstrike which was the artifice of at least one set of charges against Roger Stone, and the Mueller indictment, of Concord Catering is a party to the world wide IT hack, should have used Kaspersky,
I concur with OBH in the general thrust of his comments on Ag to industrial to IP&S economies, but also agree with the comments from Niketas Choniates and Sailorcurt and sdferr.
“If goods aren’t a form of wealth, what IS wealth?”
“Money is just a form of communication.”
The core element all through this advance in productivity and prosperity over the centuries, with greatest benefit in the last 200+ years, is the IP itself. In that view, OBH is correct, but the IP is not enough by itself. Industrializing agriculture means enhancing the IP of agriculture [plant types, fertilizer use, irrigation, harvesting methods, soil chemistry, etc.]
But manufacturing is also essentially the use of information to manipulate and transform materials, so the process IP is just as important as the product design IP. When we let too much of the more sophisticated manufacturing go off shore, we also start to lose that processing IP and cannot easily get it back quickly.
We are clearly also into the IP&S stage, too, and it is early days as to just how that shapes out or looks a decade or six from now. But “wealth” is also the abstract and subjective valuation we place on the goods and services we make, receive, and use. This valuation is therefore not constant, but also changing all of the time [buggy whips, 8 track stereos, iPhone 6’s, all become overcome with later and “more valuable” alternatives.]
A topic with a lot of subtle aspects that is probably hard to discuss fully in blog posts, but thanks, OBH, for bringing up the topic in the first place.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Let’s see if the bony-eared assfish are biting again today—CAST -> -> ->
COVID Has ‘Stopped’ Biden, While A ‘Bullet Couldn’t Stop Trump’ 🙂
IMHO, Vance is looking like the major weak-link in the ticket—once the DEMs have recovered…
Let’s see if the bony-eared assfish are biting again today—CAST -> -> ->
It’s rare to see intent to troll just declared up front like that.
“It’s rare to see intent to troll just declared up front like that.”
Yea, I have to say that the honesty of openly declaring ignoble intent is refreshing in an ironic sort of way.
I watched J D Vance’s last night speech this morning and he is impressive, excellent delivery and what a nice young 39 year old man at a time when we need young leaders. I watched the movie ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ three days ago, then I downloaded the book on my kindle and read it and I really like this guy. I also appreciate the GOP appeal to working class Hill Billies and other Red Necks, this is turning out to be much more interesting than it seemed to me a few weeks ago.
Neo, I assume you took that photo on your phone while you were walking.
Nice.
It’s almost annoying. I have a digital SLR camera that I paid several hundred dollars for that mostly sits at home unused because my freaking phone takes better pictures under most circumstances. The only time the camera is better any more is for distant shots with a long lens.
Stopping to smell the flowers on this glorious day following an inglorious day… keeps the doctor away.
Roses. Roses give me the beauty I need to move on into another day! Here is a
great source of Rose information: https://heirloomroses.com
“I watched J D Vance’s last night speech this morning and he is impressive, excellent delivery and what a nice young 39 year old man at a time when we need young leaders.”
Hear hear.
His life story is pretty much the epitome of the American dream:
Grew up poor in a dysfunctional family, made good decisions, took advantage of the opportunities he was presented with and became very successful as a result.
He’s very well spoken but speaks plainly and clearly and doesn’t dissemble. Comes across to me as confident, but not egotistical. I think his youth is an asset when compared to the geriatric brigade at the head of both political parties right now.
One big plus for his youth: I don’t expect to see old liberal women coming out of the woodwork accusing him of raping them 30 years ago like they do for every other prominent Republican. He’d have been 9.
Of course the establishment media and the left (redundancy alert) will depict him as literally Hitler because he actually holds some conservative ideals, but they’d do that no matter who the pick was and any credibility they’ve ever had has been long ago squandered by their hysterical rantings.
Heck, just the fact that Mitt Romney can’t stand him is enough of an endorsement for me.
I think he was a solid pick for VP.
“IMHO, Vance is looking like the major weak-link in the ticket…”– Karmi
Do you mean because he’s not a neocon?
He made it pretty obvious the MAGA is moving toward the working class and away from Wall St. I’m pretty sure there’s more of the working class than the globalists. Vance’s story and message will resonate with the rust belt. Can he deliver PA, WI, MI? Trump/Vance only needs one.
Rose– nothing delivers the amount of color throughout the seasons than roses.
They do need maintenance– but I leave that to my wife. In exchange I mow the lawn.
Trump has been through covid and trials and assasination, I really get tired of Van Jones jive, I know hes a marxist who went to Yale, but really that card got played a long time ago,
The Birth of a Folk Hero
Gold-Star families from the Democrats’ disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan speak at the RNC last night. See the powerful videos at this link. I have read, but cannot verify, that most networks, including Fox, did not carry it.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/07/gold-star-families-speak.php
Karmi, I am curious to know why you think Vance is the weak link.
Now would be the time to gently alert your moderate friends to Gavin Newson having sent male convicts into women’s prisons and now banning parental notification laws concerning the states success at gender identity brainwashing children in public schools.
It’s a cult !
Several outlets are reporting that “top Dems” are now saying that president Biden is going to drop out of the race by this weekend. Obama has “reportedly” been grousing that Joe Biden should “seriously reconsider the viability of his campaign”. What’s more Axios is claiming that:
Gavin Newson and women’s prisons.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-docu-series-exposes-cruel-unusual-punishment-housing-trans-prisoners-female-inmates
I don’t think Kamala will be any better as a candidate except maybe racial one issue voters.
Sailorcurt:
Yes, my phone camera is fine and I never use a regular camera and haven’t for years. The zoom could use improvement, though.
jon baker, you’re assuming Newsom would jump in at this point. I doubt it.
So who replaces Biden as democrat candidate? Will he resign as president? Fwiw I think he will not resign as president, but will drop out of the race. I think the replacement will not be Kamala, she is an idiot. Not Newsom. He is male, white, hetero, and it will be easy to run against California. Shapiro and Whitmer are most likely. They come from swing states. Unknown nationwide so it’ll be easy for the Democrat media to build them up. As an aside it’s too bad the rhetoric at the convention is all anti-Biden. It will be interesting to see if President Trump takes shots at the two governors during his speech tonight or at least couches his comparisons to the Democrats and not specifically to Biden
Obama has “reportedly” been grousing that Joe Biden should “seriously reconsider the viability of his campaign”.
Obama’s “burden”. Abort Joe…. uh, abort, Joe. Planned Presidenthood? Biden Lies Matter (BLM)
Kate — we’re talking again? 😉 Anyway, I’m trying to stay outta conversations here now—just commenting on posts and/or linking to an article. Seems that I speak a different version of English than most here…
The article I linked to – “COVID Has ‘Stopped’ Biden, While A ‘Bullet Couldn’t Stop Trump’” had anti-Trump Van Jones speaking highly of Trump ‘n lowly of Biden.
Have already mentioned one issue about Vance, that others are going to notice about the “Party of Whites,” i.e., an all White Male ticket now. People notice that stuff and it is not just me or my opinion of it. I’m fine with a Party of Whites, but am not gonna join and it’s not a winning message, IMHO.
Trump is now a “Folk Hero,” and it is going to be more difficult for DEMs to attack him with any meaning. That leaves Vance as a weaker link for DEMs to attack, IMHO, ‘once the DEMs have recovered’ from their current Biden issue. Does that make sense?
I like Vance — liked Donalds, Scott, Haley, and probably Tulsi Gabbard more. Vance’s stance on Ukraine is also a deal breaker for me. Can’t stand pro-Russians (yes, that is what one is if they are anti-Ukraine 🙂 )
My guess is they’ll have to go with Kamala at this late a date. It’d be just too much of a logistical and a PR nightmare for them to do some kind of open primary in order to get Newsom in over Kamala. But who knows? We’re in uncharted territory here. Nothing like this has ever happened before, where 3 months out from a US presidential election a major party’s assumed candidate is forced to drop out.
For that the argument they’d have to make is that while he no longer has the capacity to conduct a presidential campaign, he somehow can still run the country? Now, of course around here, we all know that he likley hasn’t been running much of anything for some time, but rather a surgate group headed by Doctor Jill has. But most of the Democrat voter base and many swing voters likely believed the fiction that Joe was totally fine up until now. They might not be so sanguine about either a dementia patient running things, or having Doctor Jill run things in his stead.
Hes not that self aware
Kamala Harris about now.
Thanks for the reply, Karmi. So, you think Vance will be vulnerable because Dems are racists and will emphasize Vance’s whiteness. They may, but I don’t think it will work too well. His hillbilly identity and blue-collar sentiments may overwhelm the racist angle.
You don’t speak a different version of English. You’re just not on the same wavelength as many commenters here. Plus, satire and irony don’t necessarily carry through in written posts.
I just saw Kamala Harris on local TV, speaking in Fayetteville, NC. She’s going with the “Republicans are racists” line. That’s about all they’ve got at this point.
“I’m trying to stay outta conversations here now”
That’s funny as the lead-in to a, what, 200 word comment?
“Seems that I speak a different version of English than most here”
I’d guess so, because that’s not what I’d define as “stay[ing] outta conversations”
Regarding your “point”: That consideration may have had an impact 4 years ago, but DEI is old news and most people to the right of Stalin are pretty much over emphasizing skin color and sex over competence and qualifications.
If nothing else, Cackles Kamala has been an excellent spokesperson for tossing DEI into the dustbin of history.
As far as Vance being the “weak link”…they’re going to somehow come up with an attack more vitriolic than the “existential threat, wannabe dictator, literally Hitler” they’ve been throwing at Trump for the past 8 years?
I suppose they could start saying that Vance is the devil himself, tortures puppies to death and doesn’t return his shopping cart to the corral at the supermarket, but the hysterics of the left over the past couple of election cycles have pretty much numbed people to that in my experience. The people who would never vote Trump anyway might buy it, but everyone else is pretty skeptical of hysterical claims by this point.
Besides, I don’t get the impression that Vance is shy about throwing the BS right back at them when they toss it his way. He is a Marine after all. Should be entertaining if nothing else.
Kate, not just his whiteness, i.e. he has said a lot of other stuff that DEMs will attack much more than the “white” aspect, e.g. he may have put his foot in mouth in ref to the abortion pill. He has ran his mouth a lot in the past (even against Trump), and the DEMs are going to use it all…
Hes for federalism on the abortion question he was skeptical over trump not surprising but he learned
All Vance has to do, which he has already done, is to say he was initially against Trump until he saw what an outstanding president he was, and changed his mind.
Shapiro’s not going to throw away his shot for 2028. Whitmer might. I don’t think she has any other chance of getting either spot on the ticket.
If Biden goes, Harris will most likely be the nominee. Dropping one candidate is hard. Dropping two would be darn near impossible.
“Karmi, I am curious to know why you think Vance is the weak link.”
Deflected TDS, too embarrassing since the assassination attempt.
“He has ran his mouth a lot in the past (even against Trump), and the DEMs are going to use it all…”
Oooo, they might even say he wants to bring back slavery like Romney.
Looks like, on Saturday (before the assassination attempt) there was an “intervention” when elected Democrats talked to Biden. It didn’t work, judging from the fact that details of the intervention are now being leaked to the media to further pressure Biden. The leaks say Biden was combative and defensive. Now he’s back in the Biden cocoon, with Jill and Hunter advising him.
New cloud video from Jul 1. The streaks in the towards the end are fish heading up river.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEhlSVgDpbM
Here’s a terrific article from JNS (Jewish News Service):
https://www.jns.org/understanding-the-importance-of-j-d-vance/
Tobin has always been stalwart on issues pertaining to Jews and Israel but this goes far beyond that. Not just about Vance even but it is one of the best expositions of the forces that led to the rise of Trump and MAGA I have ever read. Should be required reading for those with TDS, including some of the commenters here …
Karmi:
Any Republican Trump might have chosen for the VP spot had vulnerabilities the left would exploit.
FOAF, that is indeed a good article. Thanks.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/18/entertainment/bob-newhart-dead-comedy-icon-dies-at-94/?utm_campaign=nypost&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
==
World got a little worse today.
^^^^^ What Art Deco said above. ^^^^^
RIP, Bob Newhart. A splendid soul.
RIP, Bob Newhart.
his last appearance was on ncis some years ago,
Conservative commentator Lou Dobbs dead at age 78.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3089769/lou-dobbs-dead-trump-announces-conservative-commentators-death-78/
Comes now a news report saying the assassin Crooks hid his rifle (well?) in advance of the Trump rally, in order to not be seen arriving with weapon in hand:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/thomas-matthew-crooks-hid-rifle-advance-trump-rally-sniper-attack-secret-service-source-says
The story doesn’t flesh out any detail however, hence “grain of salt” is warranted here.
Lou Dobbs also has passed away
A bit of good, interesting news.
https://m.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-810942
Drones are everywhere these days but, according to new reports, the SS had no drones in the air over the venue when President Trump was to speak at Butler, PA.
So, again, only the pretense of security, not actual security, and another indicator for the idea that this was a setup, leaving enough holes in Trump’s supposed protection to make it easier for some assassin to be successful.
,
I think they are stuck with Kamala. When SlowJoe bails she is the only one who can access the war chest accumulated for the “Biden-Harris” campaign. If she is not there that money goes into some kind of limbo. Millions of dollars at stake. And what happens if they try to insert another presidential candidate, leaving her as VP? would she go for that?
This is a problem that the Dems created for themselves. They knew Joe was well past his use-by date but ran him in 2020 because they had no one else. All the initial candidates were essentially rejected by the voters, and there was no bench; there still is no Dem bench. He has only gone downhill since.
So the problem with trying to build a winning ticket at this late date is theirs alone. The best option for sane people would be to take the loss and start building for 2028. I guess I answered this, didn’t I?
A large prop-driven suicide attack drone has flown into a high-rise apartment building a couple blocks up the street from the American Embassy auxilary building in Tel-Aviv. This was roughly 40 mins ago now, so approx 3:10 am Tel-Aviv time. From the audio recordings nearby which captured the explosion I would guess a payload of around 50 kilos or so, give or take. There were severe injuries reported but no reports of deaths that I’ve seen.
Find below a photo of the blast cloud above the city: https://x.com/RichardGrenell/status/1814103261944623452?t=H8GTfTBmZAW5nEZJNzW3_Q&s=19
And here a doorbell camera with sound of the propeller and blast:
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1814107244121764236?t=AwOYjv5MiSbA7LIisXjTjw&s=19
It gets curiouser and curiouser. First, there were the highest volume of shorts on DJT stocks (ie, betting on a lower price to re-buy stock) in the days or weeks before J13. (DJT soared instead after Trump’s survival of the shooting.)
NOW this from X:
Trump shooter Thomas Crooks had “3 encrypted overseas accounts” — Rep. Michael Waltz (R–FL) https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1814097332238946776
The only thing to add is that Crooks was likely higher IQ. Apparently, he gained acceptance to the University of Pittsburg’s engineering program where SAT scores average 1400 — equating to 95th percentile.
What was Crooks doing with these accounts abroad%?
NEO:
Just to call attention to it — July 20 is the 55th anniversary of the A11 moon landing, with the walk on July 21. Might want to cue a video for that. 😉
}}} Establishment GOP leaders and pundits supported economic policies and international trade agreements that essentially impoverished many Americans by hollowing out the country’s manufacturing base and outsourcing jobs abroad. They also ardently opposed worker-friendly policies that might soften the blow
Tobin is flat out wrong on this — the real issue here is that the GOP has utterly failed to make the public grasp that manufacturing is not where actual money comes from any more. Hasn’t been for 50 years, which is why the USA has gotten somewhat out of the manufacturing business — at least, the physical end of it.
It’s notable that, last I checked (probably 5y ago) the USA was the #3 manufacturing economy (in terms of money made from manufactured goods) in the world, behind China and Japan, and having edged out Germany for their former share at #3 (this is more Germany’s idiocy but that’s a different discussion).
The difference is, the USA did not make all that money by manufacturing things, they made it by owning the IP used to manufacture almost everything.
The future wealth of the world is not going to come from making stuff, it’s going to come from creating IP and offering services. We are the first nation to enter the world as an “IP & Services” economy.
The first economy was an AG economy — wealth derived from owning land and producing food with it.
The second economy was the Industrial Economy — wealth derived from owning factories and producing manufactured goods with them.
By the 1960s, everyone was saying the USA was a “PostIndustrial” economy… “Post” is what you use when you don’t know what it is, in this kind of situation.
As the 80s ended, it had become clear what followed, which was the IP&S Economy.
The thousands and thousands of high-paying jobs common to the economy in the 1950s and early 60s, they are gone, and they ain’t coming back.
And it’s damned well got nothing to do with them “going overseas”. Rebuilding a worker-based manufacturing economy in the USA will be a step backwards, and it will make the nation poorer, not richer.
In 1880, 70% of the US labor force worked on farms. Nowadays, we produce much more food (for more than 3x the population!) on LESS land, and we do it with only 3% to 5% of the working age population.
WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE LOST FARM JOBS!?!?!?
Oh, Noes, we need a crash program to restore all those lost labor opportunities!!!!
Yeah, that would be stupid. We’ve moved on.
What happened? Mechanization happened. It raised the productivity of the worker by several orders of magnitude. And lowered the cost of food steadily during the entirety of the 20th Century. Seriously. Up until the #$%#$^$# “Ethanol Mandate”, the amount of time the average worker had to work to put food on their table dropped by more than 80% — even as the population doubled (meaning they had to make 2x as much, or buy it from other places), and even as the percentage of the population needed to produce the food dropped by a factor of 20.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/08/over-100-years-food-prices-have-fallen.html
(Note that the Ethanol Mandate, along with Bidinflation, have reversed that 100 year trend)
THE SAME THING HAS BEEN HAPPENING SLOWLY SINCE THE 1970s IN THE US MANUFACTURING SECTOR
First with increasing general efficiency, then the introduction of robotics, in the same sense as mechanization revolutionized ag.
Any future factories built in the USA will have 1/20th the labor force of a 1950 factory, and one metric fuckton of robots.
HERE is a fictionalized but almost certainly accurate example of a 2050 automobile factory (“Oh, that’s just fiction!”. True. But it is a very realistic example of how a modern factory should be, or close to it) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7omoVzuynmE
The only thing it’s missing is an overseer with a “Shutdown” button — but that’s “poetic license” to maintain the action.
Before long, not more than 3% to 5% of US workers should be in factories, and it should never climb back up again. Even as more and more manufacturing shifts back to the USA (and it will, and slowly has been, since about 2003 or so… look up “Reshoring”), it will happen in increasingly robotic factories with fewer and fewer workers, usually specialists in repairing broken robots.
FACT: Manufacturing itself — the actual, physical act — does not make substantial new wealth. Period. This is not an arguable or debatable statement, it’s a demonstrable FACT. OTHER nations can only do it because they are bootstrapping their own economies.
TJ at 12:40 above, links to a posting on X by Florida Republican Congressman Michael Waltz, who writes that assassin Crook had “three encrypted overseas accounts”–and if this is true–that casts this assassination attempt in a whole new light.
Some of the reporting I’ve read characterizes the assassin as very secretive, and hiding his ideas and activities from his parents. Perhaps he had a whole separate life and set of contacts that they never knew about.
Thus, perhaps not just a lone individual, a high IQ loner who was bullied, under appreciated, and under accomplished but, rather, someone who might have been identified, encouraged, and steered towards becoming an assassin by forces outside of himself and, thus, part of a “conspiracy.”
Gee, who might have had the resources to do all that.
(The speculations about Lee Harvey Oswald come to mind.)
“All Vance has to do, which he has already done, is to say he was initially against Trump until he saw what an outstanding president he was, and changed his mind.”
Exactly. Maybe I’m biased and other Trump supporters won’t see it that way…but I’m biased because that’s exactly how I was.
I didn’t vote for Trump in the primary in 2016 and was disheartened when he won the nomination. I thought he was a “conservative of convenience” who would revert to his more liberal self once elected. I thought he was a narcissistic, egotistical blowhard (ok…I still think that) who was doing it just for the attention and would suck as a President.
I was wrong. I freely admit it and I think Trump did as good a job as he possibly could have as President considering that the entire DC Machine, including the majority of his own party, was against him.
I didn’t agree with everything he did, but I’m amazed at how well he did under the circumstances. Exactly the opposite of the unmitigated failure I expected.
Because I felt and feel that way, I can understand completely where Vance is coming from. I think we all can to some degree or another.
Vance changing his opinion when faced with clear evidence that he was wrong is not a liability in my mind. It’s an asset and further evidence that he was a good pick.
“A large prop-driven suicide attack drone has flown into a high-rise apartment building a couple blocks up the street from the American Embassy auxilary(sic) building in Tel-Aviv.”
Why is everyone so focused on the Embassy? The drone hit right next to Original Thai Massages than the Embassy (according to Google Maps).
Maybe Hezbollah doesn’t like happy endings.
@OBloodyHell:Manufacturing itself — the actual, physical act — does not make substantial new wealth.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think you are falling into one error while criticizing another. I think you must be confusing “wealth” with “money”.
If goods aren’t a form of wealth, what IS wealth? You can’t eat money. It makes poor clothes and shoes. You can’t drive it. Money must have something to buy or in what sense is it “wealth”? In fact when supply of money increases faster than goods and services you have “inflation” which we know for a fact doesn’t make us rich.
If we’re “wealthy”, doesn’t that mean our money can command goods and services? Someone must be making those goods, right, or our wealth is just paper.
The US manufactures a lot, actually–16% of world output. Its manufacturing output is second only to China (31%). But we do it with a tiny fraction of the number of workers China uses. Our wealth indeed does come in large part from manufacturing, and without the products of manufacturing and agriculture “wealth” is poverty. China’s manufacturing raised them out of dire poverty (does any mom say “starving kids in China” anymore), so yes it was a substantial source of wealth to them, and a lot of those goods came here for us, making us more wealthy.
Americans enjoy abundance of inexpensive manufactured goods, which is one reason we are wealthier than the rest of the world, even the First World. We would feel and be much poorer without those things.
I agree that people are wrong to focus on lost manufacturing jobs while ignoring increased productivity, but it’s at least equally wrong to say that manufacturing does not make substantial new wealth.
“I think you are falling into one error while criticizing another. I think you must be confusing “wealth” with “money”.”
Absolutely. Many people make that mistake. Money is just a form of communication. It is a token that represents wealth. Inflation comes from the number of tokens increasing without an attendant increase in the actual wealth being represented. Each token represents a smaller amount of the existing wealth.
“I agree that people are wrong to focus on lost manufacturing jobs while ignoring increased productivity”
Also correct, the emphasis in keeping manufacturing in (or returning it to) the US should not be in maintaining jobs per se, although that will be a side effect. The emphasis should be on security.
When we are dependent upon international trade for products that we depend upon because we don’t make them here any more, we are vulnerable to the good will of other nations for our survival. This is especially true in industries that provide base materials (mining, steel production, glass production etc) and vital defense industries (including the microprocessors that all of our high tech weaponry depends upon), but is even true of strictly consumer products. Dependency equals vulnerability.
“Dependency equals vulnerability.”
As we see today Israel has learned to its chagrin when relative simple technologies such as tank gun rounds, artillery rounds, big dumb bombs, etc. (to say nothing of complex systems like advanced air fighters) are denied by a hostile-once-former-ally. Building factories to make such simple tech takes time and capital, either of which may be in short supply in the midst of an ongoing war.
so now Crowdstrike which was the artifice of at least one set of charges against Roger Stone, and the Mueller indictment, of Concord Catering is a party to the world wide IT hack, should have used Kaspersky,
I concur with OBH in the general thrust of his comments on Ag to industrial to IP&S economies, but also agree with the comments from Niketas Choniates and Sailorcurt and sdferr.
“If goods aren’t a form of wealth, what IS wealth?”
“Money is just a form of communication.”
The core element all through this advance in productivity and prosperity over the centuries, with greatest benefit in the last 200+ years, is the IP itself. In that view, OBH is correct, but the IP is not enough by itself. Industrializing agriculture means enhancing the IP of agriculture [plant types, fertilizer use, irrigation, harvesting methods, soil chemistry, etc.]
But manufacturing is also essentially the use of information to manipulate and transform materials, so the process IP is just as important as the product design IP. When we let too much of the more sophisticated manufacturing go off shore, we also start to lose that processing IP and cannot easily get it back quickly.
We are clearly also into the IP&S stage, too, and it is early days as to just how that shapes out or looks a decade or six from now. But “wealth” is also the abstract and subjective valuation we place on the goods and services we make, receive, and use. This valuation is therefore not constant, but also changing all of the time [buggy whips, 8 track stereos, iPhone 6’s, all become overcome with later and “more valuable” alternatives.]
A topic with a lot of subtle aspects that is probably hard to discuss fully in blog posts, but thanks, OBH, for bringing up the topic in the first place.