HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.
I wish they were that efficient. That the scandal came out seems to have taken Walz etc. by surprise, so I don't think there was that much forward planning around "when I am elected, as of course I shall be, then we fix your little problem Tim, now hold my handbag for me while I speechify at this bunch of white liberal women".
I still haven't managed to finish reading her "107 Days" book, but searching through it on Kindle here's pretty much why she picked Walz:
He said he had no ambition to be president, that his aim as vice president would be doing meaningful work to improve people’s lives. It’s no bad thing for a vice president to want to be president, unless that ambition plays a corrosive role in the relationship and causes disloyalty. That wouldn’t be an issue with Tim. He had no fixed ideas about what the role of vice president should be, saying he would do whatever I found was most useful for him to do.
...To get a young person’s opinion, I called my godson, Alexander Hudlin, seventeen years old and very much a creature of the zeitgeist. He was for Walz. “Auntie, I like him.” [As an aside, I am very doubtful about any 17 year old who is interested in some old white guy governor of some state in flyover country. This little anecdote is a bit too pat for me to believe.]
My senior staff, to a person, strongly favored Tim.
...Maya and Tony were staying with us. They both liked Walz. Maya especially liked the fact that he was not trying to be anything but the best VP for her sister: “He’s loyal, he’ll have your back on the trail, and it’s clear that you like him,” she said.
...Our first encounter [Kamala meeting Walz' wife] was in the locker room of the Temple University gym, appropriate enough for Coach Walz. It was my idea for the campaign to lean into Tim’s brand as coach, a role that conveys both strength and caring. Tim was a relative unknown nationally, but there was so much about him that would be familiar to people’s everyday relationships and experiences. Not many people have met an astronaut, and they might not love politicians, but most people can relate to a high school coach. And with early voting starting in forty-five days, that immediate connection was important. Knowing that, I’d asked the team to print up COACH signs that people could hold up at rallies.
...My first job that night was to introduce Tim Walz to the country. This was not hard: the man has a biography that could provide scripts for several Hallmark movies. I led with how he’d coached a perennially losing high school football team—they hadn’t scored a single touchdown in the first six weeks of the season before he became coach—to winning the state championship.
I went on to tell the story of how a student who wanted to start the first gay-straight alliance at the school had gone to this storied football coach to ask for his support. Walz immediately agreed to become the group’s faculty adviser. Tim said he thought it would send a message of inclusion if the adviser was a football coach, a soldier, straight, and married.
...A local farmer introduced Tim as “a lifelong Midwesterner” who “understands rural America.” Tim proved it as he spoke, connecting to the enthusiastic crowd and finding a Midwestern cadence in which to talk about reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and how Trump’s Republicans infringed on basic freedoms.
And once again, why the flip did they not listen to Bill? The guy has bucketloads of charisma, also navigated successfully the image of being a hick from the sticks, and knows how to win elections:
Bill Clinton, speaking for the twelfth time at a Democratic convention, delivered firm words. Like the cop who arrives at the door of a rowdy party, he wanted the music turned down a little. We were getting euphoric too soon, he warned. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen,” he said, clearly referring to Hillary’s 2016 loss to Trump. Don’t get “distracted by phony issues,” he admonished. “Never underestimate your adversary.”
Bill Clinton knows how to weave a tale. He’s one of the best storytellers in modern politics. And why was I surprised that this night, instead of his allotted twelve minutes, he would speak for twenty-nine? He wasn’t the only speaker who went long. Once again, the keynote speaker, Tim Walz, was pushed partially out of prime time in the East.
Which was too bad, because Tim gave a great speech, introducing himself to the country, making the case for me, attacking Trump on abortion and on Project 2025, presenting the values of our campaign by calling on specific examples from his own life.
Also she is really salty about J.D. Vance being the rival redneck and campaigning successfully by - get this for wicked underhand tricks - being moderate in the debate with Walz! Oh, the effrontery! How could poor, decent, honest, aw-shucks Tim ever compete with some slick Yale graduate pal of Silicon Valley billionaires?
It was not a comfortable role for him. He had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater. I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium. He’d prepared with Pete Buttigieg, a consummate debater, and I thought his big heart and his good humor would counter J. D. Vance’s malice and pessimism.
But J. D. Vance is a shape-shifter. And a shifty guy. He understood that his default meanness wouldn’t play against Tim Walz’s sunny disposition and patent decency. Throughout the debate, he toned the anger and the insults way down. As Van Jones later remarked, he sane-washed the crazy. There were no cat ladies, no pet-eating Haitians, no personal insults. Just a mild-mannered, aw-shucks Appalachian pretending he had a lot of common ground with that nice Midwestern coach.
When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, “What is happening?”
I told the television screen: “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.”
She doesn't like J.D. because he correctly forecast the election result 🤣
I got into my motorcade, but we weren’t pulling out. I asked Max why we weren’t leaving. That was when I learned we were being held up by J. D. Vance. He was out of his car and walking toward Air Force Two, in violation of every rule of security and protocol.
I later learned that he told reporters he was there because “I just wanted to check out my future plane.”
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I'm going to bet on Canada, just because it would be so funny.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Kamala Harris just had no luck, or maybe no political instincts. She picked ol' Tim there mainly (what I've gathered from reading various reports) because he was willing to play second fiddle to her, while the likes of Shapiro were judged too ambitious (read: too much of a threat to her by comparison).
They wanted "redneck lite" and they got it, and now here he is: the much-touted successful smart governor with impeccable liberal instincts now shown to be presiding over multi-million dollar scamming where either he didn't know about it (doesn't look good) or it was known about but there was pressure to keep it covered up (looks even worse).
Doesn't look good for her if she's really going to run for governor of California. Then you have Gavin Newsom's social media putting out the likes of this which honestly makes my brain hurt trying to work out what the heck is going on (he was at some NYT bunfight? and there was criticism of how he crossed his legs? so this is meant to be a joke referencing that?)
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
She detailed how she set up investments and savings accounts
Someone with that level of planning is probably even rarer in sex work than "hot, young, willing to do it all". The wealthy young sports stars and entertainers often follow the same trajectory: young, talented, making more money than they ever imagined or that their (working class/lower middle class) family would see in their entire lifetime, and along with that is the usual entourage of hangers-on and ways to spend all that money (including the tales we've all heard of managers and agents ripping them off). They generally are too young, too little educated, and not smart enough to plan ahead to the end of the career (which comes faster than they imagine) and when all the money will dry up. The smart ones get sponsorships and gigs as spokespersons for products and licensing of their image, savings and investments, plans for what they'll pivot to when the popularity wanes and the money dries up. But even there, starting up your own business can fail. The less smart ones? They're the ones end up "I used to be famous" and the subjects of "where are they now?" questions.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
But if a woman can engage in prostitution with no legal risk, no personal risks, she benefits from it, she makes lots of money, well, that is going to be a high status job and it will make prostitution high status over time.
I don't think that has been demonstrated historically. You can have hetairai, geisha, and Les Grandes Horizontales, but while they achieve fame, a degree of wealth, and social influence, they never become high-status enough to overcome falling back into poverty; extravagance was expected of such women, but eventually the source of wealthy lovers dries up.
The Second Empire was undoubtedly the golden age of French courtesans, who became idols of their time. Legendary women, whose wealth and power were astounding, whose beauty and seductive charm overcame the reason of men... Virginia Rounding doesn't simply recount their lives; she also strives to describe the mythical aura that surrounded them. Take Marie Duplessis, for example, who became the prototype of the virtuous courtesan; Apollonie Sabatier, who knew like no other how to put everyone at ease in her salon, where the most bawdy conversation was the norm; La Païva, a Russian émigré who seemed to enjoy the fresh flesh of wealthy young men; and Cora Pearl, a flamboyant English beauty, who had the gift of "making bored men laugh." The Great Courtesans offer us a vibrant portrait of nineteenth-century Paris and its most brilliant personalities. A venal woman was judged not only by the price she commanded for her favors, but also by her degree of freedom in choosing her clients. The humblest prostitute, at the very bottom of the ladder, had no choice but the common man; the elite of the demimonde, the renowned courtesan, had an almost infinite selection at her feet. Generally, the size of the fortune outweighed the personal qualities of the potential lover—but still, she had a choice. At least, that was the optimistic view of her situation; in reality, the more luxuriously the courtesan was kept, the more she spent, and the greater her need for money became. Her role consisted of spending, rather than saving, the money with which her wealthy patron showered her, for the conventions of the time demanded that a man of the world's mistress be a highly visible ornament, proof of his social standing, and not a liaison hidden away in a discreet apartment.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The one porn actress I ever heard of going on to a mainstream career was Marilyn Chambers, and she seems to have ended up going back to porn eventually (but also some independent movies).
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I highly doubt she won't be able to find a normal job, in fact it may be a plus!
Eh, Stormy Daniels had to go peddle her tale of Trump around the chat show circuit to make more money after spending whatever payoff she got. That's not someone who has gracefully transitioned into a new, lucrative career after aging out of acting in porn.
Maybe the new society will embrace the likes of Bonnie Blue, but I think she's probably just at the wrong time: already known, already labelled, not the fresh new e-star who will be the one to become the AI face of 'we're the new start-up so daring we hired an e-thot to be the face of our marketing' company.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Since then, I refuse to discount the possibility of wanton fraud as a factor nationally anymore.
I mean, seeing what happened in Minnesota, holding your hand over your heart and swearing that no political operatives or voting bloc were ever involved ever at all in anything remotely dodgy is going to leave you with egg on your face.
I expect a certain level of mild corruption in any election in any country. Right now we've got both Texas and California competing as to who can be "most partisan gerrymandering in the history of the state". So all we can really expect is that most elections will be mostly honest, with any manipulating within small and manageable levels.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
You're being reasonable, cjet79. What I want is to laugh at the people online who were staunchly swearing up, down and sideways that the 2020 election was the bestest, most secure, safest, most honest election ever and that there wasn't even the teeniest-weeniest possibility of fraud, hacking, or error and who then swung to the opposite side about 2024 with evidence that the same voting machines which were impregnable in 2020 were leaking like colanders in 2024.
I went to the trouble of looking up the Maricopa county results in 2020 which seemed, on the face of it, to be suspicious. No need for fraud, just a tiny swing in votes was enough to flip from red to blue.
So there could be several such instances, as well as common error and yes, even perhaps some scattered fraud here and there. But nobody wants to hear that. When Our Guy won, it was the best election ever. When Their Guy won, it was fraud and foreign influence.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Is the Mad Men remaster just New Coke all over again?
I was around for New Coke, and I don't remember it feeling like a publicity stunt. They really were pushing it as the new, improved formulation. That people hated it wasn't the problem, it was that enough people hated it so much that they stopped buying Coke. Hitting them in the wallet forced the re-introduction of 'Classic' Coke, and even there, that rebranding ("This is the original version, the classic one") was necessary because people didn't want to buy the new version by mistake.
So maybe HBO did this clever stunt. Or maybe they actually were that stupid. Maybe they went all-in on AI, outsourced the remastering to "overseas chop shop promising to deliver the moon with AI" and this is what happens: you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Never underestimate the greed of any company trying to wring yet more pennies out of a property, but they don't want to spend more on producing the new director's cut extended edition remastered now in 4K Han shot second sign over your first-born to us version.
It's fascinating to learn that he probably has a genuine interest in the sport, and may well even have known who some of the star players brought out for those mini-interviews were!
I think having three host nations for this is going to be a logistical nightmare, but there is some assuagement in the thought that we may find out who his favourite team (apart from Team USA) is! Will he be cheering for Croatia (given that Melania is Slovenian, and this is a neighbouring country)? Since apparently Barron is an Arsenal fan, will he support England? Given that both England and Croatia are in Group L, that may lead to domestic disharmony if he picks one side over another. Or is there some completely different team he secretly cherishes? 😊
EDIT: Depending on the result of the playoffs as to who gets the final slot in Group D, it could be Slovakia, which would then be Slovakia against USA. A tricky situation requiring diplomacy!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
'This subject and you are simply not in conversation, and no good will come of us continuing this relationship,'
This phrase now makes me wish some professor would set an essay about how slavery was good, actually and when they get 200 outraged essays simply screaming NO YOU ARE A BIGOT RACIST, then they can serenely mark them all zero with "this subject and you are simply not in conversation".
Clearly my lack of university education shows because I never heard the notion of being "in conversation" with an abstract concept before.
I haven't read the essay in question but it sounds dumb, and the student was probably looking for some degree of martyrdom (it's hard for people this young to disentangle the zeal of wishing to stand up for their beliefs from the psychological drive to be persecuted so they can feel justified and morally superior and convinced of their own virtue) so yes, the essay should be harshly marked if it doesn't engage with the topic at all.
On the other hand, the teacher being trans does lead to the suspicion, however unjustified, that they took this personally and are simply being vengeful, since they are as incapable as the student of being objective on this and putting their own beliefs aside to be dispassionate. A mess all round, and Ms. Student seems to have won the point she really wanted to win: I too am like the Christians of the First Century, persecuted by the world.
Well, she still has time to grow up.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Daddy's deep pockets as possible future donor sealed the deal, then?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
the teen in question had supposedly extremely high grades, had been to the White House dinner and was recognised by Barack Obama, and is clearly a social media star of some sort
The high grades are relevant, the rest of it is padding that should have been ignored (Obama let that kid with the clock/bomb visit the White House, getting to visit Obama in the White House was not a mark of distinction).
He wrote something stupid for an essay (did not fill in the part about "why does this matter to you?") and so should have been failed. If he was academically able to follow the instructions and produce a readable essay, as the high grades would argue, this is rubbish that is unacceptable as any kind of class work much less an application for a place to a selective university.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I was self-righteous when I was sixteen, but the Internet wasn't yet a thing or if it was, I had no access to it. I have decades of missed time to make up for, decades, I tell you!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I don't know, his speeches would have been amazing. Alphabet soup and a guessing game in one.
"People say I'm an r-word. Sometimes even the f-word. Well, I'm a proud other r-word w-word small m-word from big M-word so take it or leave it!"
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Thanks, I think I'll stick with the change (I am lazy and disorganised). I really need to sort all the bits of paper I have lying on the desk. Too much information outside the old brain.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Draw for the World Cup was held in Washington DC a couple of hours ago. Hilarious in a second-hand embarrassment way. FIFA are shameless, Trump was Trump, and since it's going to be split between three host nations (Mexico, USA and Canada) the possibilities for massive screw-ups are endless. 2026 will be fun!
(New account name since I moved everything to a new PC and managed to lose all my passwords. Yes, I'm an illiterate idiot).
I know! I'm only a few chapters in, but every time she seethes about Vance it's patently obvious that the Democrats had no answer to him. Tim was very definitely not the answer.
The amount of self-congratulation she engages in is also phenomenal, it's equally clear that this book was intended to be "Why It Wasn't My Fault". She's so desperate to demonstrate that she was omnicompetent, the best possible candidate because she had the greatest appeal to every single person in the country, she had all these relatable life experiences she could have shared if only they had enough time to run a proper campaign, that she occasionally veers into the territory of "Uh, you didn't really need to include that detail, Kamala":
Or, one might say, that telling a bunch of 17 year olds how you gave up band back in high school because it was too spitty isn't going to win many votes 🤣 (And of course, SuperKamala couldn't just play one instrument, it had to be a gamut of them).
I've really got to finish this book, there are so many plums to pull out, it's just I have to stop every now and then to take a breath from the relentless "I'm wonderful, I'm special, I'm marvellous, I'm smart, everyone loves me, everyone agrees I'm simply the best, better than all the rest (it's not my fault we lost! it's not, it's not!!)".
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