In the manner of Jim Steinman's lyrics for Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad. Donald J. Trump is a malignant narcissist, yes; pathological (only by definition #3) liar, yes; nuts, no.
He. Is. Absolutely. Nuts. Beyond delusional. A fantasy making 9/11 about himself. Malignant narcissist & pathological liar. https://t.co/FKvzbTdb8V
At a 9/28/26 event at the White House honoring first responders of 9/11/01, President Donald Trump, according to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, stated
For nine months, rescue and recovery crews worked day and
night on the site. I want to just thank my people; I took a lot of my me(n) — I
was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there
right after this happened,” he said. “And they were — they had no hesitation —
everybody went down with me. We went down, it was a big group of people. Wasn’t
too much we could do, I’ll be honest — it was, you know, it was raw, and
nobody’s seen anything like it, ever. We had other buildings; the United States
Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to
fall down; the truth is it creaked a lot, it creaked. It still creaks. But it
never came down, and I re(member) — I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought
it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen — big, strong guys — and I’m
not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arms, said,
‘Gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to
do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said,
‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing, but they thought it was
coming down; it didn’t come down.
On 9/11/01, Trump was in Manhattan but many blocks away from the World Trade Center. He did not send a crew of workers to the site. The One Liberty Plaza office building reopened in October of 2001 and is reportedly structurallly sound to this day. Nor was Donald pulled out of the wreckage.
Other than that, most of what Trump claims is accurate. However, it is something else he said, neither true nor false, that got my attention.
After President Trump had jousted for several months with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un, Trump remarked at a rally in West Virginia
"I was really being tough- and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love, okay? No, really- he wrote me beautiful letters, and they're great letters.
That was before, but apiece with, the playing of the Village People's 1978 hit, the gay anthem "YMCA". It became common to play the song at Trump rallies despite "the gay messaging in the song, the gay fantasy stripper-costumes, the gay dancing and faux macho posturing."
Just joking. It's not "despite," but "because," as he accompanies the song with his signature dance, the likes of which have never been popular with men in bars or clubs featuring heterosexuals. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Donald Trump, the "grab them by the p_ _ _ _" guy, who always has flaunted having his way with the ladies, has the perfect cover, especially as the leading man in the portion of the Epstein files held back from the public. This should be reiminiscent of the Village People, each adopting a macho identity as "hard hat, soldier, cowboy, Indian, motrocycle cop, and leather man".
Ooh, "two big strong guys," Donald says. Homo-erotic fantasies are not illegal and, generously, represent the diversity of the "gorgeous mosaic" of American culture. At the least, the "G" in "MAGA" more accurately stands for "gay" than for "great".
during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association
dinner with the presidential administration, a man breached a security
checkpoint and fired multiple shots before being apprehended.
In a “60 Minutes Overtime” interview the next day, Trump
walked senior CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell through his perspective of
the shooting.
“There were a number of people who were very, very scared,”
O’Donnell said in the extended cut of the interview. “How worried were you that
there were going to be injuries?”
“I wasn’t worried,” Trump said in response after a pause. “I
understand life. We live in a crazy world.”
He went on to say that he was watching the back door of the
ballroom because he wanted to know what was going on and if he could “be
helpful.”
There were hundreds of law enforcement personnel between the alleged would-be assassin and President Trump. And he hung around a little so he could "be helpful." No one believes that. Trump told O'Donnell additionally
I also saw a lot of very strong, physically strong, really
attractive law enforcement people come through those doors. And frankly, it made me feel very safe, very, very safe. There’s nobody going
to get by them. … They were very impressive, I think they were very impressive.
I think the whole operation was very impressive.
praised Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers for their “larger” and “harder” muscles that they’re
"supposed to have” after he deployed agents to more than a dozen airports,
where their presence doesn’t appear to have made a dent in hours-long security
lines across the country.
Searching for an explanation for the obvious homoeroticism, HuffPost found psychologists with their own peculiar explanations. One claimed
There are associations between physical attractiveness and
strength, most notably through what we call symmetry. Humans are sort of
programmed to develop symmetrically, and people who do develop more
symmetrically are expected to have better genes. More symmetrical individuals
tend to be rated as more physically attractive.
Another stated
In psychology, there is a tacit tenet among humans that what
is beautiful is good. Studies support that babies will respond with a smile and
trust to a face and appearance that is attractive and proportionate, vs. to [a]
disproportionate [one]. As we mature, we learn to move past this in varying
degrees, but still, there is an immediate ease to trust someone who presents
well.
Yet another believes the "halo effect" is at play, in which
Trump’s statement illustrates the common
biased assumption that physically attractive people are good at things that are
not in fact related to physical attractiveness,” Eastwick wrote. “If the law
enforcement agents appear ‘camera-ready,’ people like Trump might feel safer,
but there’s no evidence that attractiveness is related to any sort of
professional competence in the law enforcement domain (or any other domain for
that matter).
At some point in their acdemic studies, practice, or research, they should have heard of the Law of Parsimony- better known as Occam's Razor- which postulates"the easiest explanation is often the best one." And you all remember the song, the Village People's "YMCA," which long ago became a staple at Trump rallies. Written by the group's lead singer and its producer, the hit "has been embraced as an anthem of the LGBTQ community"
In the first year of Donald Trump's term, the lead singer wisely denied that YMCA was written as a gay anthem. However, when the group "started out, they garnered success
by appealing to one of disco’s most engaged audiences – the gay community. With
suggestive lyrics, floor-filling beats, and elaborate costumes they were a
shoo-in for the club-lined streets of Greenwich Village."
Denial aside, Donald Trump decided to embrace this rather unique (as a dance) dance to accompany the song
:
This is not a common dance move for a man. However, some men might not bat an eye; the sort of guy who would speak of "very strong, physically strong, really attractive" indiviudals, who admires men with "larger" and "harder" muscles (wherever those muscles may be).
A heterosexual man may admire an attractive man or be impressed by how strong he appears. However, rare is a straight man who puts the two together as attractive and strong, especially lauding attractive men with "harder" muscles.
Nobody, aside from me, would make this argument. Conservatives won't accuse (as they would see it) the President of being anything but a virile man's man because they adore him. Moderates and centrists would be squeamish about raising such an issue, especially because it might open a can of worms. Liberals and progressives, (justifiably) hostile to Trump, would hardly credit him with being something other than heterosexual.
This has nothing to do with Trump's current behavior, which in this regard probably doesn't deviate much from that of a typical 79-year-old man. But at some point, or points, in the past, Donald J. Trump very likely had- if we may use such an adjective for a conservative extremist- a diverse set of experiences.
The reticence even to consider this possiblity is not evidence of progress in society's perspective toward gender or sexual preference differences. It is a throwback- or continuation- of our inability or unwillingness to confront these matters directly. Donald Trump has consistently promoted himself as a hypermasculine individual or as in the words of another Village People song, a macho, macho man. His sexuality need not be ignored while it is widely assumed to be completely heterosexual.
Former President Joe Biden said in a new interview that the
timing of his pullout from the 2024 election wouldn’t have made a difference,
suggesting that Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump was inevitable. (Watch the
video below.)
“Should you have withdrawn earlier?” the BBC’s Nick Robinson
asked in the interview, shared Wednesday.
“I don’t think it would’ve mattered,” Biden replied. “We
left at a time when we had a good candidate. She was fully funded.”
Chris Cillizza disagrees with Biden's first claim, that it would have not mattered); presumably agrees with the second that "we had a good candidate", and ignores the third point, that "she was fully funded." He argues (at 4:39 of the video below)
There was no primary. Biden gets out Harris gets in, that's it. She gets zero actual votes from Democrats to be the Democratic nominee for President. It just got handed off to her. I think that rankled a lot of voters, including a lot of Democrats.
I think- let's imagine Biden gets out a year before. Let's imagine he gets out in June- July 21, 2023. We had a robust primary process at that point. Kamala Harris is in. There probably are other people who run. She might still wind up being the nominee. But it seems to me that that process would have yielded someone who could say "I won this. I campaigned for this and I won the nomination as opposed to it was handed to me by a guy who is not popular and I'm now going to have to own that guy and his record for the entire campaign."
So, all of those things plus the fact that again, an intangible, but it's really hard to set up a presidential campaign on July 21, July 22, whenever Kamala Harris started and try to win an election on November 5, right? It's just a massive undertaking and to do it that late, you are trying to do everything while sprinting and that's never easy. So to me, it's just Joe Biden in a state of denial.
Yet, in early morning on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent appeared to capture the zeitgeist, and did capture the vibe, of the campaign when he wrote
Harris, who just a few weeks ago appeared to have run out of
the momentum she’d quickly gathered after President Joe Biden ceded the
Democratic ticket to her this past July, is surging thanks to a series of
late-game missteps by Trump and his allies. Those missteps include the
disastrous decision to include a comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of
floating garbage” in the lineup at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally late
last month.
On Saturday, renowned pollster Ann Selzer released her
annual survey of Iowa voters which showed Harris with a three-point lead, 47
per cent to 44 per cent, in the Hawkeye State based on an incredibly strong
showing with female voters. Harris, who’d trailed Trump by a four-point margin
among Iowans in September, had also inherited a whopping 18-point deficit when
she took over the Democratic nomination from Biden.
Another national poll released by NPR and Marist College on
Monday showed Harris garnering support from 51 per cent of respondents,
compared with Trump’s 47 per cent — a lead greater than the survey’s 3.5-point
margin of error. And the final NBC News poll of the election cycle showed Trump
hemorrhaging support from Black and Latino voters, while Harris was shown to be
garnering support from 87 per cent of Black voters.
The Harris campaign appears to have met the moment and is
finishing strongly with what it describes as the largest coordinated
get-out-the-vote event in history on Monday.
The campaign is running simultaneous events across all seven
battleground states, including rallies featuring Harris and Minnesota governor
Tim Walz, plus programming tying the events in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan,
Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin together as part of a
national livestream program.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters on
a call on Monday afternoon that the coordinated event is intended to “capture
the grassroots enthusiasm that we are seeing everywhere, to focus on mobilizing
our voters heading into Election Day tomorrow”.
“Tomorrow, we’ll have elected officials and performers and
speakers that really reach such a wide network across all social media
platforms, helping to make sure that our message is breaking through in these
final hours to voters that maybe are harder to reach or less engaged. These
events will serve as a massive mobilization and volunteer engagement
opportunity,” she said.
Privately, Democratic sources who spoke to The Independent
are projecting confidence, with one swing-state party chair noting what they
described as “a serious crossover vote among Republicans” and “explosive”
turnout in early voting among key constituencies, including Latinos.
Trump’s response to a Biden gaffe in which the president
appeared to call the ex-president’s supporters “garbage” in return seemed to
have only prolonged the news cycle stemming from Hinchcliffe’s racist diatribe.
His decision to stage a photo op with a garbage truck looks to have failed to
shift the focus back to Biden and instead reminded Latino voters of what had
touched off the controversy to begin with.
And while the Trump campaign had hoped to make hay out of an
Associated Press report revealing that the White House communications team had
tried to doctor the official transcript of Biden’s remarks to make it look as
if he hadn’t said what he’d said, Trump stepped on his own campaign’s messaging
over the weekend with a series of bizarre and unhinged appearances. At one
rally, he even appeared to fellate a malfunctioning microphone.
One Democratic operative suggested that the stars had
aligned to bring about the ex-president’s collapse at the exact time Harris has
been surging.
“Aaron Sorkin couldn’t have written it better,” they said.
Meanwhile, Trump and running mate JD Vance closed out their
electioneering with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s the same place
where Trump closed out his victorious 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, and
it’s where Trump ended his re-election race against Biden four years later.
Not only is Michigan a key swing state — and Grand Rapids a
historically strong Republican area — but Trump is notoriously superstitious
and has insisted on closing out both of his post-2016 campaigns there for no
reason but vibes, even as he was forced to open his day in North Carolina, a
reliable GOP stronghold that he might well lose to Harris.
At Trump’s appearances this past weekend, the arenas he
visited looked noticeably emptier and the candidate himself looked lost at
times, vacillating between bewilderment and menace. He suggested that an
assassination attempt against him would need to shoot through a packed media
contingent to have a chance at hitting him, in one particularly concerning
moment.
Harris "quickly gathered" momentum "after Joe Biden ceded the Democratic ticket to her this past July. While Democrats were "projecting confidence," Trump "stepped on his own campaign's messaging.... with a series of bizarre and unhinged appearances." Harris was "surging" and combined with "the largest coordinated get-out-the-vote event in history," one Democratic operative boasted "Aaron Sorkin couldn't have written it better."
Democrats were well-funded, organized, disciplined, and confident while the Trump campaign was well-funded and not much else. Nonetheless, Cillizza would maintain
So, all of those things plus the fact that again, an intangible, but it's really hard to set up a presidential campaign on July 21, July 22, whenever Kamala Harris started and try to win an election on November 5. Right? It's just a massive undertaking and to do it that late, you are trying to do everything while sprinting and that's never easy.
It may have been hard but it was done, and impressively, as everyone recognized at the time.. Perhaps the Democratic Party may have won the presidential election if Joe Biden had dropped out a year earlier. However, that would have given the GOP time than it eventually had to batter whomever the presumptive Democratic nominee would have been.
It would have been a better situation for the party's nominee only if the process had yielded someone other than Kamala Harris. That is far from certain, though, and for reason(s) unrelated to the quality of the candidate. In September of 2023- over a year before the November, 2024 election- three NBC reporters noted
A quirk of the 2024 presidential cycle is the chasm that’s
emerged between the party establishment and rank-and-file voters. For
Democrats, more than half don't want to see Biden run again, an April NBC News
poll found.
But those rank-and-file voters counted for little compared to party insiders who were intimidated. The reporters added
Biden allies have not been shy about getting the word out
that it would be self-defeating for ambitious white male candidates like Newsom
to try to snatch the nomination away from Biden and Kamala Harris, who made
history as the first woman and person of color to become vice president….
“When you had people who were trying to test the waters” for
a presidential bid, “the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals —
who were mostly white men — that to disrespect the vice president would not be
well received by women and people of color within the party,” said Karen
Finney, a longtime Democratic strategist. “They got a little bit of a smack in
the face.”
So let's be clear in the manner which can be understood by Cillizza and the other pundits chiming in on the failure to capitalize on the unpopularity of Donald Trump. The Democrats did not lose the White House because Kamala Harris did not have enough time. She came out surging and ran an effective campaign until individuals realized they were being asked to vote for, well, Kamala Harris, an extremely qualified, unlikable person.
The party establishment wanted to anoint her in part in part because she was the sitting vice-president, hence the closest thing to a default candidate. However, the times did not call for nominating someone because it would be easy but for the individual most likely to win. Harris had flamed out in her initial run for the presidency, as a candidate for the nomination in the 2020 cycle, and there was great suspicion that she would not turn out to be a strong candidate.
That turned out to be the case but not for the reason Cillizza claims. Assuming Feinberg of The Independent was not making things up, Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign, one which most people admired at the time, and which was better than could have been expected.
Nonetheless, she lost the general election and the words of Karen Finney, an admirer of Harris, gives more than a clue of why. A challenge to the vice-president, were it to have come from a white male (from any white, more likely) would not have been "well received by women and people of color within the party." Finney wouldn't acknowledge it, but a challenge even from a white female would have been problematic.
This severely narrowed the range of possible alternatives to Biden, which would make Vice-President Kamala Harris the odds-on favorite were the President not to seek a second term. Top Democrats got their preferred candidate, even though nearly everyone suspected she was nowhere near the individual most likely to defeat Trump.
If it makes Cillizza and others feel better, they can continue to blame the November, 2024 loss on Joe Biden. If it impels them not to challenge the prevailing wisdom of the Democratic Party that an individual's value is to be determined in part by the inherited characteristics of race and gender, even better. Ignoring reality can be satisfying to oneself, though destructive to a political party.
You will not be surprised that President Donald Trump and the White House press secretary lie like a rug. However, there is something basic to policy hidden here.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, made a
similar claim on Tuesday during her debut news briefing. She stated that the
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that
went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”
That would be an awful lot of sex, though "awful" and "sex" probably shouldn't be in the same phrase.The following day, the President, a little more weirdly, himself boasted "we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?"
Though not most important to the story, the Trump-Leavitt claim was inaccurate, as explained by The Times of the United Kingdom. There is a province in Mozambique and
In this Gaza, and the adjoining Inhambane province, about a
quarter of the adult population is HIV positive, and since 2021 the Elizabeth
Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation has received more than $82 million from USAid,
in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to
operate reproductive health projects there. The support was expected to
continue until 2026.
A comprehensive report issued in September by USAid was
reviewed by The Times. Some $60.8 million in funding was allocated for condoms
and female contraceptives in 2023, but not a cent of that seems to have gone to
Gaza.
In fact, no condoms were sent to any part of the Middle East
and just one small shipment — $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives —
was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.
The most common form of contraceptive paid for with USAid
money was contraceptive implants for women ($23 million), followed by
injectable ones ($17 million). Only about $7 million was allocated for “male
condoms”.
Dan Evon, of the non-profit News Literacy Project, said:
“It’s also worth noting that this is not a Biden programme. Trump, too, spent
funds on sending contraceptives around the globe. In 2019, about $40 million
was spent on contraceptives by the Trump administration.
Sending money "to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas" would be ridiculous policy. Sending money to Gaza to buy condoms for whomever probably also would be unswise because the millions would more likely be used for weapons or tunnels than for contraceptives.
Nonetheless, sending condoms themselves to Gaza is not such a crazy idea. At worse, they'd go unused, disposed of by Hamas or unused by the populace. At best, however, it would be vey wise strategic policy.
As a vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance said "We owe something to our country. We owe something to our future. The best way to invest in it is to ensure the next generation actually exists. I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country."
Your mileage may differ. However, ridiculous hyperbole aside, the aggressively pro-natalist Vance arguably has a point, in that the USA- as nearly all of the West- has a fertility rate below replacement level. This affluent nation can afford to have a higher birth rate (or not).
The USA, with an estimated 12.2 births per 1,000 people, in 2024 ranked 145 out of 228 entities in fertility rate. However, the two entities most closely associated with having a "Palestinian" population, Gaza and the West Bank, do it differently. The Gaza Strip is #38 with 26.8 births per 1,000 while the West Bank comes in at #22 with 27.8 births per 1,000 people.
That's a lot of little children. That's not only a lot of mouths to feed, but also a tremendous number of children who grow up, potentially to become terrorists or, at least, voters.
This does not sit well with Jordan, whose population already is approximately half "Palestinian." (How one can be a Palestinan though never living in Palestine is an issue for another time.) President Trump stated that he pitched to Jordan's King Abdullah the idea of sending displaced Gazans to Jordan and
"I said to him, 'I'd love for you to
take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it's a
mess.'"
He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at
his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Mr. Trump said he would "like Egypt
to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people."
Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that
his country's opposition to what Trump floated was "firm and
unwavering"...
Egypt's foreign minister issued a statement saying that the
temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians "risks expanding the
conflict in the region
This can be roughly, yet accurately, translated as "There are too darn many of them." The more individuals of an ethnic group in a country, the more influence, and eventually power, they can potentially wield. As is not fully appreciated, Jordan doesn't want Palestinians. Egypt doesn't want Palestinians. The Arab/Persian world doesn't want Palestinians, and we already know that Israel doesn't want any more of them.
Short-term, sending Gazans to Egypt and/or Jordan would be a boon to the region because those individuals would at least be living in a region not beset by war or the destruction it wrought. It would be a convenient solution for the USA because its President would claim to have ended the wr and brought peace to the Middle East. And it woul assist the Israelis, who would face less threat of a terrorist attack and would not have to do as much as quickly to a place which has suffered tremendously from Israeli attack in retaliation to a brutal and evil attack from Hamas.
But it's not going to happen. There is not a small number of Gazans, whom the world considers Palestinian, and they do not possess the "anti-chid ideology" which the American vice-president claims exist in the USA. They present a short-term, medium-term, and long-term threat to various nations in the Middle East and especially to the countries in which they reside.
That's the dirty little secret of all of this. The Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, is deeply unpopular there and is not self-sufficient, relying on Israeli help. Gaza is controlled and dominated by the deeply unpopular, deeply terroristic Hamas. Amd the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank renders establishment of a Palestinian state there highly unlikely.
Exacerbating these realities is the growht rate among residents of both the West Bank and Gaza. "For years," USA Today notes, "the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars worth of condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries as a way to help prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV and to make sure that family planning is available in developing nations." If condoms actually could get past Hamas and into the hands (and elsewhere) of residents of Gaza, it would be a wise investment.
Well, of course Bill Maher's comment, uttered during the main segment of Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, doesn't make sense. Whites didn't want to sit next to blacks because of race or color and in some cases believed they were superior. Some liberals don't want to sit next to Trump voters because of a difference in values, a lesser number believing the vote a reflection of a deficit of character. Significant difference.
This week Bill Maher likened liberals not wanting to sit with the Trumpers in their family at Thanksgiving to "not letting certain people sit next to you on the bus" and showed a picture of Rosa Parks and the more I think about it, the whole comparison makes no sense.
Sometime during a meandering convesation which began at 2:14 of the Overtimesegment, Donna Brazile stated "it's time folks, We know how to lead. We can build a future for everybody."
Who is "we?" "We" was not a choice on the general election ballot. It was the nominee herself, and therein lay the problem. Andrew Sullivan, who does not like Kamala Harris, nevertheless endorsed her in what he called "an anguished but emphatic endorsement" (free subscription required). In the exchange which began at 4:05, Sullivan (mirroring James Carville, by the way) stated
Next time, you have an active primary where a candidate can prove her worth and not just be stuck in and nominated at the very last minute because you have a dotard running you wouldn't fess up to.
The choice of noun, as Maher recognized, was "unfair" but Sullivan at least was making better sense than Brazile who, trying to get a word in edgewise within the crosstalk, responded.
Well, first of all, first of all, first of all, we had a primary, Kamala and Joe. Joe and Kamala did win enough delegates. Fourteen million people participated in it. And we should not disenfranchise those Americans. So-
Officially, Joe and "Kamala" won the delegates. However, "Kamala" won none as the presidential candidate. Rather, Ms. Harris became the nominee only after, and only because, Mr. Biden dropped out. Relatively few people are persuaded to vote for the presidential candidate because of the running mate.
Nonetheless, Brazile- without cracking a smile at her reasonably good attempt at humor- actually maintained "she was a good, strong candidate" and "I can put my glasses on and I can still tell you, I can see a leader when I see a leader."
That would be her imagination. Though Kamala Harris may have been a good President, she struck too few people as a leader. Maher stated "well, I think people think that a woman leader has to overcompensate a little toward strength and people are drawn to strength. Look at Clowny- I mean Trump." "Secretary Clinton" does not project strength; neither did "Kamala."
Brazile suggested that "one hundred seven days" is insufficient time for a presidential nominee. Justifiably, Maher responded "one hundred seven days was more than enough time. That's a stupid excuse in my view, that it wasn't enough time... She was actually doing fine after the first few months."
Better than fine, even. Harris' campaign was inspiring and impressive. The candidate, though, left a lot to be desired and in the end, "Clowny" convinced enough voters that four years with Kamala would be even worse than four years with himself. As Maher and Sullivan understand, that should be sobering
A year ago, Donald Trump charged that immigrants (not illegal immigrants- immigrants) are "poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done..." In October, he said of immigrants "you know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."
That's pure, unadulterated, classic racism and only two examples of the identity politics Trump traffics in.
Nonetheless, identity politics, central to Donald Trump's message and appeal, is alive and well on the left and on cable television. I had to watch this twice because I couldn't believe the silliness and stupidity:
"I am NOT going to listen to transphobia at this table!"
CNN panelist loses their mind over "slur" used by Republican strategist during trans sports debate. pic.twitter.com/5PXnSJW4A0
If we wanted an example of the role of identity politics which Zakaria believes played a role in the defeat of the Democratic Party in this cycle, you can't do any better than this exchange.It's hard to hear everything while guests are interrupting other guests, as is common on CNN's Abby Phillip Tonight.
Conservative Republican Shermichael Singleton can be heard remarking "I think there a lot of families ut there who don't believe boys should play girls' sports." Openly gay Jay Michaelson, a writer, journalist, professor, and new-age rabbi angrily retorts "They're not boys. I'm not going to listen to transphobia at this table."
There is no such word as "transphobia," except insofar as it was made up for ideological purposes. It has been common to take something we believe in- in this case, trans- and add "phobia" to it to disparage critics or skeptics. Moreover, though "trans," which is cooler than "transsexual" or "transvestite," has become a thing, it is not a word but a prefix. As the absurdly politically correct Merriam-Webster puts it (italics theirs)
While the word trans has been used as a shortened version of both transgender and transsexual, the word transsexual is dated and sometimes offensive. The word transgender is preferred..
Preferred by whom? The answer, evidently, is those who for whatever reason are "offended" by "transsexual." Not that "transsexual" isn't accurate- it makes people feel bad. By contrast, as has been explained
"But crushing truths prish from being acknowledged," (Albert) Camus writes- and what a wise observation. There are so many applications of that statement! Acknowledging something negative about your condition (something you were avoiding) is the same as acknowledging a crushing truth- but only after you acknowledge it can you conquer it. Go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and they will tell you that getting past denial is the first and hardest step towards recovery.
Another truth is that transsexualism exists, notwithstanding Merriam-Webster's intent to disappear it. And so does the widespread sentiment that boys now are being invited to play against girls in girls' sports leagues. Whether Shermichael- with whom I typically disagree- believes that they should be allowed to do so, or even whether transgendered individuals are still male- is not his point.
As it is, it is not at all clear that boys attempting to transition to girls are now female, or that they are yet male, despite Michaelson's apparent certitude. But assuming the unassumable- that these individuals are not boys- the "I'm not going to listen to transphobia at this table" is very problematic.
Not only is it usually self-defeating not to listen to- or rather, to shout down- individuals with whom we disagree, it is particularly reprehensible to do so on Abby Phillips Tonight, which is meant to showcase differing opinions. Unfortunately, the host seemed not to understand the raison d'etre of her own show when she stated
Look, this is a really heated issue, alright? Shermichael, I know you. I know that you understand that people have different views on this. I think out of respect for Jay, let's try to talk about this in a way that is respectful.
Singleton then assured her "let me rephrase this since I'm being targeted here," (which was obviously the case) and the show went on. Contrary to Phillip's implication, Singleton was disrespectufl by neither manner nor words. And ironically, his point was in fact that people have different views on this, contrary to the heated Michaelson, who believed either that everyone is of the same view as is he or, more likely, that anyone who disagrees with him is a bigot or dunderhead.
Posing as open-minded, Abby Phillip runs a dishonest program. More importantly, though, the exchange exemplifies the identity politics Fareed Zakaria believes has come to define the Democratic Party in the mind of voters. This wasn't the only, and not even the most important, factor in the awful results from Election Day. And it's unclear how exactly sensible politicians separate themselves from the narrow-minded people who believe sexuality and race must define their own Party. But they must start with an open acknowledgement of the problem.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., blasted Kamala Harris in a
social media post Monday, calling her a “DEI vice president,” using the
initialism for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.
"The media propped up this president, lied to the
American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice
president," Burchett said on X.
He also referred to Harris as "a DEI hire" in a
brief interview Monday, telling CNN that during the 2020 campaign candidate Joe
Biden said “he was going to hire a Black female for vice president.”
“What about white females? What about any other group?”
Burchett added.
Biden said at a March 2020 Democratic debate that he’d
choose a female running mate but did not mention race or ethnicity. Other top
running mate contenders at the time included Sen. Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
On July 20, 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had revealed
he was considering four Black women to be his running mate, and has been receiving extensive vetting briefings about each potential candidate.
“I am not committed to naming any (of the potential candidates), but the people I’ve named, and among them there are four Black women,” Biden told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on “The ReidOut.”
He said he is getting a “two-hour vetting report” on each of his potential picks, and that he and his team have gone through “about four candidates” so far. “Then, when I get all the vetting done of all the candidates, then I’m going to narrow the list, and then we’ll see. And then I’m going to have personal discussions with each of the candidates who are left and make a decision,” Biden said.
Biden is considering a broad tier of candidates to be his running mate, after pledging earlier this year to pick a woman for the job. CNN previously reported that Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice and Rep. Karen Bass of California are among the Black women being considered.
Warren and Whitmer were on Biden's long list. However, everyone at the time understood that Biden's short list consisted of black women. Later in the day after Harris was selected, an NPR station explained
Four days after the election, then-House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said
that he had privately urged President-elect Joe Biden to pick a Black woman as his running mate before Biden chose Kamala Harris, America’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect.
“Joe and I talked about it several times when he was trying to make his decision,” Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who’s the highest-ranking African American member of Congress, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Saturday. “He had said it would be a woman. And I don’t mind saying now, I said to him in private that I thought that a lot of the results would turn on whether that woman (would) be a Black woman.”
As the Harris criticisms ticked up in the weeks before the pick, Biden's campaign tried to diffuse them. "Ambitious women make history, change the world, and win. Our campaign is full of ambitious women going all out for Joe Biden," Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, tweeted in late July.
Ahead of Harris' selection, a group called We Have Her Back — which includes former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and leaders from Planned Parenthood and the National Women's Law Center — sent a letter to various media outlets demanding fair coverage of the vice presidential candidate.
"Women have been subject to stereotypes and tropes about qualifications, leadership, looks, relationships and experience. Those stereotypes are often amplified and weaponized for Black and Brown women," the letter said, urging the media to resist popular coverage tropes such as "likeability" and "electability" for candidates who happen to be women — analysis they said is hardly ever applied to male candidates.
"Black and Brown women" were the individuals valued by We Had Her Back and
Biden's pick came amid intense pressure from Democrats not only to pick a woman, which he promised to do in March, but also to pick a woman of color. That drumbeat began well before George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police but intensified amid sustained protests across the country.
Harris will be the fourth woman on a major party's national ticket. All three women to run for president and vice president have lost: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008 and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
Evidently, Harris had the inside track over the other black women because she had been a friend of the late Beau Biden when both were state Attorneys Genera. The selection of the California senator was hailed by progressives, liberals, and centrists across the country because she was a certain kind of woman- a black woman or a woman of color, depending upon the label.
Now Kamala Harris has been selected by Democratic power brokers as the party's presidential nominee in part because she is the sitting Vice President- a very unpopular Vice President but still with the advantage of holding that office. Curiously- though not particular surprisingly- she has been challenged by no one, despite Democratic officials and liberal/progressive pundits insisting that the Party has a "strong bench."
And why should she? In today's Democratic Party, Kamala Harris has an advantage which Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, even Gretchen Whitmer- each of whom has been mentioned as part of that formidable bench- doesn't have.
But that's not the point. Harris has had the advantage of serving under the incumbent Democratic President, Joe Biden, who endorsed her for the presidency to avoid all the nasty questions and controversy which inevitably would have arisen had he not done so. Quickly making her the presumptive presidential nominee was the obvious default position.
Not so, though, her selection in August, 2020 as Joe Biden's running mate, which is the move to which Representative Burchett was referring, and for which he is being criticized. Democratic honchos and mainstream journalists are hailing the ascension of Kamala Harris specifically and explicitly because she is a black woman (or black and Asian-American woman). If that wasn't an example of hiring someone because of principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it' will be a surprise to everyone who celebrated the selection of Kamala Harris because she is black, female, and if victorious, would make "history."
If it is always wise to take what politicians say with a grain of salt, it is wise to take whatever Tulsi Gabbard says, especially on Fox News, with a pitcher of the stuff.
A public elementary school just announced it will stop using “boy” & “girl” and instead use "person who produces sperm" & "person who produces eggs.” This seems like a prank, but it’s real. By rejecting the existence of objective truth, they’re conditioning us to accept the truth… pic.twitter.com/5DleRhSZvI
On the heels of national backlash, some parents in the
Essex-Westford School District let their school board know how they feel about
the new sex education policy in one of their schools. And now the governor is
weighing in, too.
Tuesday night was the first board meeting since the district
announced it is changing how it teaches puberty and reproductive health at
Founders Memorial School.
Last month, parents of fifth graders received a letter
explaining that educators will now use the phrases “person who produces sperm”
or “person who produces eggs” in place of male or female.
The district insists the policy creates a safe and inclusive
environment for LGBTQ+ students.
More than a dozen parents spoke at Tuesday’s meeting. The
majority agreed with the new policy.
“I am so disappointed in the anger that has erupted in our
community over what amounts to space for gender nonconforming students to feel
safe and free and express their identity,” said Mary Brodsky, an Essex-Westford
parent.
“I am so grateful my boys that go to school here. They are
so much more wiser, knowledgeable than I was at their age. I am so grateful of
the education they’re getting to understand the breadth and depth of humanity,”
said Alexis Dubie, another parent.
Only two speakers raised concerns about the new policy. One
said this concept could be confusing for students so young, while another said
it discounts biological facts.
It’s not clear if students at other schools in the
district-- at A.D. Lawton and the Westford School-- will be using person-first
language in their sex ed classes.
Only be advised that the binder which will be available in the main office for review will not be, as Mitt Romney would have put it, "whole binders full of women" but instead "whole binders full of persons who produce eggs." And if a "person who can get pregnant" is asked what the sex of her person before infancy is, she can say "person who produces sperm" or "person who produces eggs." Alternatively, she can use clear language without making a political statement.
Actually, in this clip Mulvaney does not call for the arrest of anyone. She complains that identifying an individual by the wrong gender should be illegal. Sometimes an individual is believed to have committed an extremely minor infraction, in some states referred to as a petty misdemeanor, and is merely given a summons. This is nor a trivial distinction.
Nonetheless, it is ironic that Mulvaney says "using 'he' pronouns and calling me a man over and over again- I feel that should be illegal." According to Wikipedia- which refers to Dylan as "she"- "in December, 2922, Mulvaney confirmed on Instagram that she had undertaken facial feminization surgery. She posed an image of her face....."
Dylan now looks like a woman, as do many men I've seen in my decades on this earth. They, too, were men, however they looked. Dylan identifies as a woman, as Dylan is entitled to do. That does not make Dylan a man when the biological determinant is that of a man. The policy implications of that are up for debate; the reality of the gender should not be.
Not surprisingly, Republicans are at least as dishonest on the issue. As Politico explained last week
House Republicans approved their measure to restrict
transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams on a 219-203 vote
Thursday morning.
The legislation — H.R. 734 (118) — is a key part of the
GOP’s education agenda and mirrors more than 20 laws that have been adopted in
states across the country. It bars transgender women from playing on teams
consistent with their gender identity and amends Title IX, the federal
education law that bars sex-based discrimination, to define sex as based solely
on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
The sex of 99%+ of us is determined at birth. The sex of a man who has undergone gender transformation surgery is female. That's simply a fact, Jack. The Republican definition is biologically, scientifically inaccurate. (I know you're shocked.)
But if we may- uh, transition- to a far more significant matter, the characteristically brave and sincere Olivia Troye unfortunately misses the point:
Nikki Haley saying Biden will likely die within five years is vile. Will she apologize for saying this about a sitting U.S. President?
On Fox News on April 26, the former South Carolina governor
had stated
I think we can all be very clear and say with a matter of
fact that if you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President
Harris because the idea that he would make until 86 years old is not something
that I think is likely.
First off, stop with this apology stuff. It has been all the rage for several years now to call for an apology by someone who says something one doesn't agree with. An "apology" is very rarely offered, replaced by something like "I apologize if what I said may have offended you." Moreover, we're all big boys and big girls, and this is politics. Please get over your hurt feelings.
Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942. As of 2020, the life expectancy for an 80-year-old male is 7.8 years. The good news is that would put Biden beyond the (86-year-old) point at the end of a second term. Additionally, this is for an average male and given that Joe is affluent, white, has been generally healthy, and has access to excellent medical care, he is above average. The bad news is that this appears to be the mean, a figure pushed upward by men living to be 90 or older, and the median- which would be a more relevant statistic here- is obviously lower. The bottom line is that we simply don't know (also, SHARE!)
Nonetheless, it's telling that Haley would raise this issue and add "President Harris." She evidently believes this is salient with GOP primary voters, although there would have to be an earthquake in Republican party politics for her (or Mike Pence; especially, Mike Pence) to get the nomination.
And not only Republican voters. Biden is significantly less liked by members of his own party than is the norm, and Harris is even less popular among Democrats than he.
This is a major problem, one largely ignored by Democratic politicians and power brokers. It is analogous to Democratic senators ignoring the problem of Dianne Feinstein not immediately retiring, and is far more difficult to contend with. Colleagues could tell Feinstein to call it a day because her absence is clearly harming the Party in the Senate and she could be feted- justifiably- as having had a long and distinguished career in the chamber, following a short and distinguished career as an elected official in California.
Not so with Harris, whose career in the Senate was short and whose work as Attorney General in the same state was fairly miserable. Moreover, political reality would require her to be replaced by someone black, preferably female, which narrows the field. The best replacement already is on the United States Supreme Court, so that is a no-go. Another suitable substitute would be Florida's Val Demings or perhaps Ohio's Emilia Sykes, but dropping Harris for anyone would be controversial and would have to handled delicately.
Yet, the truth must be faced. It must be faced with Kamala Harris; with individuals being of the same gender as they are (or, rarely, have become) biologically; and with age, as with Dianne Feinstein, who does not show up for work and with Joe Biden, who does. Sooner or later public policy and party strategy will have to reckon with reality, and that starts with facts.
Fugelsang correctly decries the Florida governor for putting quote marks around the word "identifies." Such an individual- whom I'll call "Chris"- really does identify as a woman and is entitled to do so.
Nonetheless, immediately after the statement quoted by Fugelsang, DeSantis remarks "part of this is are we going to have a society that's rooted in truth?" Leaving aside the observation that DeSantis and "the truth" are generally not close acquaintances, the governor asks an excellent question.
And the truth is that while "Chris" can identify as a woman and one can call oneself a woman, a man, or a creature from the sea, that does not in and of itself make Chris (or a similarly situated individual) a woman, a man, or a creature from the sea. Note that we recently had a President who, looking skyward, stated "I am the Chosen One." He never was, and claiming that as his identity, no matter how many of his followers think of him in that way, did not make him the Chosen One.
"Chris" can transition surgically to a woman, which often comes with considerable costs, be they physical, emotional, economic or any combination of the three. "Chris" then would be a woman and deserving the rights and responsibilities of being female.
If government, acting upon the consent of the governed, chooses to extend sans surgery to "Chris" the privileges- not right- of a woman, it obviously can do so. But just as a free populace can do so, that same free populace owes itself the responsibility of acknowledging the truth. And the truth is that a man is as biology defines him and a woman is as biology defines her.
"When they go low, we go high," Michelle Obama
pompously declared at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. As diagnosis, it
still applies. As prescription, it is awful. This is how you do it:
"Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor,"
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren maintained on Sunday's State of the
Union on CNN. Three things:
1) Bad grammar- she meant "Kevin McCarthy is a liar and
traitor." ("Liar and a traitor" implies two individuals.);
2) The subject is not a traitor because treason is defined in the US Constitution as
"aid and comfort" to the nation's enemies to the enemy" and the USA is not officially at
war with anyone;
The first two points are irrelevant. Kevin McCarthy is a liar, and protesting that he's not
a traitor draws attention to the fact that he is a liar and to provoke
further discussion about whether or not he is a traitor.
It would not be a good look. The Republican Party knows that
and as of this moment, is mum about the accusations leveled by Warren.
This is a rare play run by Democrats, who are rarely on the
offensive and are content with their status as punching bags as long as they're
lauded for occasionally fighting back.
Syndicated columnist Jennifer Rubin, who no longer considers
herself a conservative and supports Joe Biden, lavishly praises Michigan
Democratic State Senator Mallory McMorrow and Missouri state Representative Ian
Mackey. The latter
went viral by denouncing the persecution of LGBTQ Americans. Addressing his Republican colleague Rep. Chuck Basye, who sponsored an amendment to a bill to prohibit transgender girls from participating in sports, Mackey noted that Basye’s gay brother had delayed coming out for fear of Basye’s reaction. Basye began his response with “If I were your brother, I would have been afraid to tell you, too."
When McMorrow was attacked in a fundraising email by a Republican colleague as one who would "groom and sexualize kindergartners," she responded with a statement which included
I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen. So I want to be very clear right now: Call me whatever you want. I hope you brought in a few dollars. I hope it made you sleep good last night. I know who I am.
My, "I hope it made you sleep good last night" is going to strike fear into the hearts of Republicans. This passive-aggressive response is more typical of Democrats, as we can glean by reaction to US Representative Madison Cawthorn, a right-wing Republican from North Carolina.
Upon standing in 2020 as a 25-year-old for election to the House, former classmates of the dropout from Patrick Henry College circulated a letter noting
Cawthorn’s time at PHC was marked by gross misconduct towards our female peers, public misrepresentation of his past, disorderly conduct that was against the school’s student honor code, and self-admitted academic failings. During his brief time at the college, Cawthorn established a reputation for predatory behavior. … We urge the voters of North Carolina to seriously reevaluate Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy in light of who he really is.
The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington, I mean—being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 and I look at all of these people, a lot of them I’ve looked up to through my life … then all of a sudden you get invited to, ‘Oh, hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come!’ And I’m like, ‘What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.
Or the fact that, you know, there’s some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine in front of you.
And now, this:
This, too:
Dude has been a sexual predator, apparently drives with a revoked license, allegedly runs an office with more liquor bottles than water bottles and illegally fires a female staffer, and now
New photos show Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn dressed in women's lingerie, chugging wine and surrounded by women - just weeks after he accused his GOP colleagues of inviting him to cocaine-fueled orgies.
The photos obtained by Politico how the 26-year-old Republican with a vacant look in his eyes, wearing women's hoop earrings and a woman's necklace along with a bra and lingerie set.
Screenshots of the photos were provided to the outlet by someone who used to be close to Cawthorn and his campaign. A second former confidante of Cawthorn verified the photos. It's unclear when they were taken, but he appears to be sitting in his wheelchair, indicating they were taken after the car accident that left him paralyzed in 2014.
If this were a Democrat, Republicans already would make sure Americans believed the Democratic Party were infested with liars, rapists, drug addicts, and perverts. The GOP wants Americans to think of Democrats as "groomers.". Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has responded to Democratic opposition to the state legislature's "Don't Say Gay" bill by charging "If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a
groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.
Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the
rules..."
But this is what leading Democrats have had to say about Madison Cawthorn:
Crickets. Their mouths are shut. Notwithstanding Senator Warren, relatively few Democrats have denounced Kevin McCarthy. Even fewer have even mentioned Madison Cawthorn.
In the latter's case, that may be in part because the LGBTQIA+-friendly Party probably is loathe to criticize a man who enjoys wearing sexy woman's clothing, But this isn't a case of sexual preference, generally determined at birth and beyond personal choice. It's personal choice, and one the vast majority of voters would find odd, were Democrats even to mention it. Additionally, it's Madison Cawthorn, and his behavior has been atrocious at every turn. He is- or should be- a poster boy for hideousness. News flash: he's a bad seed, or at least as much as is imaginable.
This is a case for political behaviorists or even social psychologists. Democrats rag on President Trump or his enablers, Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and the whole roster of rogues. But they are unable or unwilling even to question their colleagues in the House of Representatives or the Senate. It shouldn't be up to Elizabeth Warren to save the country from the likes of Kevin McCarthy and Michael Bloomberg. Her colleagues need to step up, go low, and save this nation's democratic institutions.
