HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
7hr ago
I suppose it depends if he thinks he can win the next election as the Republican candidate, or if Vance has a better chance.
Worst of all worlds would be to go on his own, win the nomination, then get creamed in the election. Vance would be young enough still to try again in 2032 and run on "you tried Rubio and he fell on his face at the polls".
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
Back to the future? It was reasonably common to empty out jails, or to give convicted men at sentencing, the chance to go into the army instead of jail.
Quotes attributed to the Duke of Wellington:
It is quite impossible for me or any other man to command a British Army under the existing system. We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.
A French army is composed very differently from ours. The conscription calls out a share of every class — no matter whether your son or my son — all must march; but our friends — I may say it in this room — are the very scum of the earth. People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling — all stuff — no such thing. Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children — some for minor offences — many more for drink; but you can hardly conceive such a set brought together, and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are.
As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, ‘I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do'.
Attributed to him but alleged he never said it:
I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
But... but... but did you not listen to the "Call Her Daddy" podcast? Everyone listens to that instead of Joe Rogan! 🤣
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
With the reputation as Copmala, she over-corrected by swinging too hard to the progressive side, wasn't able to pull off the course correction subtly enough and so gave a lot of hostages to fortune, and to top it off was running in a primary that everyone pretty much knew would be Biden's version of "It's my turn now" after his previous failed attempts at a run, and the desperate hope that the aura of Obama would cling to him and bring success in the election.
It worked, in fact it worked too well as he was only supposed to be a one-term placeholder to keep Trump out while the Democrats worked on their real pick for the next election, but he (and his inner circle of the family) convinced himself that he could run for the second term. And by the time it became painfully obvious that this was the wrong decision, there wasn't any real alternative but to run Kamala instead. And because of all those hostages to fortune from 2020 plus the indebtedness to Biden, her campaign swung wildly all over the place on the basis of "I'm not Trump!" plus "Time for the First Female Ever!" and not much else. Policy positions? Oh no no no, look I'm a black woman, vote for me or you're a racist sexist!
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
Even she admits that:
Biden had won the nomination because Congressman Jim Clyburn, leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, had thrown his support behind him. The Black vote in the South Carolina primary—especially Black women’s vote—had thrust him to victory. The pressure was on him to pick a Black woman running mate.
The press knew I was on the short list, so they had our DC apartment building staked out. When Doug and I stepped out to go somewhere, they’d follow. Occasionally I’d save them the trouble. I’d wander over to their van and say, “Doug and I are just going for coffee, can I bring you something?”
Honestly, I didn't expect much from this memoir when I bought it, but it's solid gold for an inside look at why it all crashed.
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
Yeah, but I think his problem is the same as Kamala's (and indeed, Pete Buttigieg's problem): great, you did fantastic in your home state, now what?
He was governor of California, what does that mean for the rest of the country? Is he going to try and turn the entire USA into California? Some might love that idea, some might not. I can see why he's trying to rewrite his personal history ("I had to take a job as a paper delivery boy because my single mom had to work multiple jobs! I'm dyslexic!") in order to get away from the billionaire connections, but that's not really going to work. The French Laundry incident, the Getty wedding where he and a rake of other Californian pols were all too happy to bow and scrape for their very good close friends - it's not everybody can have City Hall closed down to preside over their single wedding. That's not helping with "I can relate to you, ordinary people, because I too had a hard life" presentation:
It seems we finally know what California Gov. Gavin Newsom was up to for at least part of his prolonged public absence for the last week and a half.
Vogue reports that the governor — who has not held a public event since Oct. 26 and abruptly canceled a trip to a climate change conference in Scotland — attended the wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty in San Francisco over the weekend. A photo from the event appears to show the masked governor watching Gordon Getty kiss his veiled granddaughter. The Getty family are longtime San Francisco residents.
...Newsom has always had close ties to the Getty family, though the wedding does not entirely explain why he canceled his trip to the climate conference. The Sacramento Bee's Hannah Wiley noted that Newsom was supposed to be in Scotland from Nov. 1-3, and seemingly could have made it back in time for the weekend wedding.
HereAndGone2
12hr ago
Speaking of, what the heck is going on with Jasmine Crockett? First she gets beat by the white guy which clearly has to be down to racist misogynoir, right? and now there's some possible scandal over a former security guy of hers turning out to be a criminal impostor who just got shot by the cops?
I see she's another one touched by the guiding hand of Kamala:
When I became VP, I had a secret project—I called it the Stars Project—that only my senior team knew about. We’d brainstorm about the younger talents in the party and then, on Friday afternoons, I’d invite one or another to visit my office in the West Wing or the residence. As I’d offer a seat on the couch across from me, more than one nervously confessed: “I feel like I’ve been called into the principal’s office.” I would laugh and say, “No, I think you’re very talented. What are you working on, and how can I help you?”
Many of those on my list spoke at the convention: Lauren Underwood, Robert Garcia, Angela Alsobrooks, Lateefah Simon, Maxwell Frost, Joe Neguse, Lina Hidalgo, Jasmine Crockett.
HereAndGone2
13hr ago
Have to admit, I do like Newsom's brass neck in rewriting his personal history to try and present himself as relatable (or maybe simply to get some distance given the Democratic party's current 'eat the rich' stance) to we ordinary little people, talking about how he was/is dyslexic and had a hardscrabble upbringing due to his divorced mom having to work two jobs.
Yeah, that's because your dad was a deadbeat, Gavin, and we don't all get to hang out with the Gettys because our dad - who is too mean to pay proper child support - instead introduces us to useful contacts among the mega-rich to make up for that.
I don't trust the guy, but the audacity there is nearly admirable. "I was pretty much broke growing up, I only got to visit the homes of billionaires and hang out with them instead of living in one such of our own".
HereAndGone2
13hr ago
Crazy talk here, I know, but what do you think of a possible deal where Vance runs for president and picks Rubio as his VP, positioning him for a run at the big job himself later?
HereAndGone2
13hr ago
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, seriously, what the hell is it?"
It's like they started out with a submarine then forgot what they were doing half-way through.
HereAndGone2
13hr ago
Imagine the level of depravity in his low, cunning, mind to debase himself so as to be polite and reasonable in a debate! Is there no iniquity too foul and black that the GOP will not sink to?
HereAndGone2
15hr ago
Not just the USA, I've been reading a couple of stories in the Irish media recently which left me going "how the fuck did this guy get bail? what was wrong with that judge?"
HereAndGone2
15hr ago
he is a tireless climber and a fairly smart, ruthless one at that
Which seems to be the problem if the Atlantic story is any way accurate. Lot of enemies inside the party who will be all too happy to knife him in the back should he formally run:
The worst-kept secret in Pennsylvania politics is that the governor is disliked—in certain cases, loathed—by some of his fellow Democrats. The causes vary: policy disputes, personality clashes, accusations of meddling and sabotaging and ceaseless self-promoting. When Shapiro was being vetted for vice president in the summer of 2024, Erin McClelland, whom Democrats had recently nominated for Pennsylvania treasurer, stunned the state party by suggesting on social media that Shapiro would “undermine” Harris—adding other insults for good measure.
...The private commentary from Democrats is worse. In 30 years spent climbing the party ladder, Shapiro has acquired a long list of enemies. If he wasn’t already aware, the governor found out the hard way in 2024, when a not-small and not-subtle chorus of Democrats made their misgivings about him known to Harris and her team. (A Pennsylvania lawmaker told me that, at one point, a member of Harris’s vetting operation called him to say that in their decades working in party politics, they had never witnessed so many Democrats turning on one of their own.) If Shapiro chooses to run for president in 2028, Democrats in the state told me, the backlash will be far more visible.
HereAndGone2
16hr ago
Newsom at the moment looks like the front-runner, but his problem (same as with Kamala) is that the skills that won things in California aren't going to scale up to the national stage. Nate Silver had a run-down of "these are possible Democratic candidates who are doing better than Newsom" but none of those jumped off the page for me.
It can't be Kamala a second time, because she imploded so badly first time round that if they put her in a free primary there's no way she'll win (see her run for 2020 which planted the seeds of a lot of things that tripped her up in 2024, e.g. the infamous trans surgeries bit) and if they try and force her as the nominee as they did for 2024 there are no reasons for it this time round as there were last time, and unless someone has even fewer functioning brain cells than Tim Walz no way they would agree to be her VP (see Shapiro's little hissy-fit over why she rejected him).
HereAndGone2
17hr ago
Yes, he beat that stupid oaf moron Walz, but so could almost anyone.
Possibly, but Kamala is so funny in her memoir because she is so salty over the lapdog she picked, because he would be a lapdog, not being able to win against that rascally scoundrel cad Vance:
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.”
There was not supposed to be any on-air fact-checking in this debate, as there had been in mine. But the moderators did correct Vance twice, on the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change and on the legal immigration status of Haitians in Springfield.
“The rules were you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance complained petulantly, in a flash of his more familiar persona.
Tim fell into a pattern of defending his record as a governor. Then he fumbled his answer when the moderator, predictably, questioned why he had claimed to be in Hong Kong during the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. Tim had been on his way to teach in China that summer but hadn’t yet left the United States on the date of the massacre. Instead of simply stating that he’d gotten his dates mixed up, but that being in China during a period of human rights oppression had profoundly influenced him, he talked about biking in Nebraska.
The following weekend, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which actors posed as Doug and me, sitting on our couch, watching the debate. While I did not in fact spit out wine, it was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.
Tim felt bad that he hadn’t done better. I reassured him that the election would not be won or lost on account of that debate, and in fact it had a negligible effect on our polling.
In choosing Tim, I thought that as a second-term governor and twelve-year congressman he would know what he was getting into. In hindsight, how could anyone?
HereAndGone2
17hr ago
a cartoon corrupt mayor character named Potato McDrunkie
Should I be offended at racial stereotyping there? 🤣
I agree, Bill has charisma by the shedload, and it's part of why Hillary failed in her endeavours, she comes across as even more robotic and schoolmarmish when it's Bill's effortless charm standing beside her. I never trusted him an inch, but it's no wonder he went into politics, he could indeed charm the birds out of the trees.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
This is WELS erasure 😁
I only became aware of the various denominational splits years back when observing the Anglican Wars as they played out in TEC. As a Roman Catholic European outsider, it was fascinating to get any kind of look at American mainline Protestantism and how it tended to split along various lines.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
Uh, does over-enthusiastic loading of the thurible with incense count?
HereAndGone2
1d ago
So we're hypothesizing a DHS white-supremacist who thinks Barack Obama is white
Damn it, I'll bite.
Is he not? He's the son of a black (absent) Nigerian father and a white mother. He was raised by her, his grandparents, and for a time an Indonesian stepfather. He has not, so far as I can make out, any experience at all of his father's culture or homeland. He was not raised 'typically' black as the majority of African-Americans were (Michelle was very important to him as being authentically African-American background and able to introduce him to that).
If you can be black with one white parent, why can't you be white with one black parent, if your upbringing was functionally white as a white child?
(The above is not seriously meant).
HereAndGone2
2d ago
Story I'm seeing now is that it was outdated intelligence; school was in same area as a naval base, so collateral damage oh dear how unfortunate:
The US used “outdated intelligence” to carry out a missile attack that struck an Iranian school, a report has found.
The Pentagon is investigating the strike, which killed about 170 children and 14 teachers, according to Iranian state media.
Evidence is mounting that the US was responsible for the attack on the school in Minab, southern Iran, on February 28, which has prompted international condemnation.
Fragments of an American Tomahawk missile were found at the site, which is next to an Iranian naval base.
The US Central Command created the target coordinates using old data from the Defence Intelligence Agency, sources briefed on the investigation told The New York Times.
They said questions remained over why the outdated information was not double-checked and stressed that the findings were preliminary.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has accused the US and Israel of acting “outside the scope of international law” with their attacks on Iran.
In her strongest criticism yet of the conflict, she also demanded that Washington find out who was responsible for the missile strike on the girls’ school as she labelled the attack a “massacre”.
Her comments may upset Donald Trump, who can be sensitive to criticism from world leaders he considers allies. He and Ms Meloni have long appeared to have a close friendship.
On Saturday, Mr Trump said he believed Iran was responsible for the attack “based on what I’ve seen”.
Two days later, he said it was “Iran or somebody else”, adding that the Tomahawk missile was “very generic” and “sold to other countries”.
He added: “I just don’t know enough about it.”
Iran is not thought to have any Tomahawks. Apart from the US, the weapon is used by Britain, Australia and the Netherlands.
John Kennedy, a Republican senator and close ally of Mr Trump, apologised on Monday for the strike, which he called a “terrible” mistake.
He said: “Other countries do that sort of thing intentionally, like Russia. We would never do that intentionally. I think the department is investigating it now, and I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry it happened.”
On Tuesday night, it emerged that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth had sacked staff responsible for preventing civilian war deaths before the strike.
Mr Hegseth had effectively gutted the Civilian Protection Centre of Excellence, which was set up under his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, to prevent, mitigate and investigate harm to civilians.
He cannot abolish the agency because it has been approved by an act of Congress, but he has cut around 90pc of its workforce, according to Politico.
The team that handles civilian casualties at the US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has been cut from 10 to one.
Mr Hegseth has taken a sledgehammer to policies and rules inside the Pentagon that he sees as “woke” or working against his warrior ethos, including banning fat generals and facial hair.
In a speech in September, he said: “We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralise, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.
“No more politically correct rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
How true that is, ye can argue over it in the comments.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
HereAndGone2
4d ago
Okay, that adds another layer to it. If she's managed to score a Japanese guy, she was probably willing to put up with more crap from him because of the Japanese attitude to foreigners. Though apparently Japanese have a good impression of Indonesians (if I believe online search results) while seemingly there's a more negative attitude to Koreans.
So it depends exactly where she was from and if the guy was Japanese or not. I mean, I still think she's an idiot, but there's more going on there than simply "yeah of course I'm gonna sleep with him, he's hot".
HereAndGone2
4d ago
That's the kind of behaviour that is frustrating and that her mother should have smacked out of her.
Plainly, she is that type of girl, she just was affronted by the guy being so explicit about it. He was hot enough that she agreed to go on a date, so she probably would have had sex anyway, he just needed to play the game. Demanding at the start that she put out (or, the presumed implication, he would call off the date) was insulting: if he would call off the date, then she wasn't hot enough for him.
Now, whether that was a bluff on his part or not, I don't know, but she didn't call him on it and so yeah. We're just arguing over the price now.
Servalan starts off genuinely intelligent (and Jacqueline Pearce's casting was wonderful because physically she's this big-eyed waif type whom you would not expect to be the ice-cold ruthless manipulator who survives everything), but of course over the course of the series she gets over-powered.
Mainly by the cast being idiots - though Avon has always been not as smart as he thinks he is - Tarrant, though, definitely was not thinking with his brain when he was stranded with her.
I love that the SFX are done on the cheap, because this is the Beeb, and the title sequence is done in cross-stitch(!) and one of the space ships is a hair dryer cut in half and glued back together.
The ending is fantastic. It's really, really a shock when you see it the first time because you're hoping that there will be the heroic ending of the plucky, scrappy underdogs winning over the villainous tyrannical regime (like every American movie and show does). It's as if Star Wars ended with the Emperor having killed off the entire Resistance, and he got Luke to do it.
I think the "killing off everyone" was maybe (I don't know this for sure) to knock on the head any calls for a renewal of the show (the BBC has tended to look down on SF shows that get popular, see Doctor Who, as being Not Serious Broadcasting or Worthy Artistic Productions), plus it's very much in the downbeat, cynical British tradition (the plucky, scrappy rebels have been reduced by attrition and by previous successful Federation campaigns to a disorganised, fragmented bunch on the run trying to rebuild and being driven from every base they find, and in the end the organisation of power and resources in the Federation, as well as internal treachery, in-fighting, and loss of direction*, is just too much for them. The Bad Guys win because this is how the world works, and this was before George R.R. Martin tried the same thing in A Song of Ice and Fire to turn all the traditional tropes on their head).
*We see this when Blake disappears. Avon is "to hell with principles, I wanna be rich" but even there, their attempts to be space pirates go hilariously wrong (the fourth season episode Gold is wonderful with double-cross over double-cross).
Wait till you get to the "charming" anecdote about how her staff threw her an impromptu birthday party but some misfortunate made the mistake of getting one of those balloons with the age on it.
Kamala does not like reminders of her age.
So she crushed the balloon saying "60" beneath her heel while looking at her staff. To me, that reads more like "this could be your head and will be if you fail me again":
And then she regales us all how she laid into her hubby dearest for not making special enough effort to celebrate her birthday. Oh yeah, "charming" is not the word I'd use. Imagine working for her. After reading this book, I now believe all the stories about how she was a terrible boss and the turnover in the VP staff was rapid and high:
Yeah, I bet he remembered to leave her a card telling her how much he loved her. God Almighty, that's dog training, not how you treat a spouse.
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