Tuesday: Hili dialogue

83 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. Everyone has suddenly stopped talking about whether Biden is too old. And since (in the nature of things) it’s usually hard to re-start an old conversation, does that mean his candidacy is now a done deal?

   PS Did you see the reply to JKR’s “snarky” Tweet, which claimed that the Tweet showed that JKR hated trans kids so much that she wanted to drown them all?

   1. The presidential conversation got derailed by the Trump shooting.

      It’s not back on the rails, at least not yet.

   2. Re the JKR tweet: a “Sophie Molly” tweeted, “JK Rowling has just threatened to drown trans people and their allies.

      Some hilarious tweets were tweeted in response, started by one Innocent Bystander
      (@supertolerant):

      “It’s a lot worse than this. Apparently @jk_rowling has also killed two birds with one stone and put all her eggs in one basket. And I heard she keeps a pig in a poke.

      Most shocking of all, she has also talked about throwing a baby out with the bathwater.

      #thecrimesofjkrowling

      https://twitter.com/supertolerant/status/1812766183575228534

2. “Since this is a federal case, Trump wouldn’t have been able to pardon himself, even in principle, if he were elected in November.”

   You have this backwards. It’s state charges that a presidential pardon can’t touch.

   (I believe that presidential self-pardons would eventually be deemed illegitimate by SCOTUS, but that’s not the question here.)

   1. Yes, you’re right, thank you. I’ll correct the text.

3. Or the spider is a narcissist.

   1. I suspect that the spider saw another spider in the mirror, not itself.

   2. Many Social Influencers practice their moves in front of mirrors.

4. Oh hey I just saw:

   “Those 3 men climbed into that tiny capsule atop that huge rocket and left Earth for the Moon.
   Neil, Mike and @TheRealBuzz, I salute your courage and unending impact.
   55 years ago today.”
   -Chris Hadfield @Cmdr_Hadfield

   x.com/cmdr_hadfield/status/1813170002482098554?s=46

   1. Yes, indeed. If we have any descendants in some distant future, most of what we consider important today will be forgotten. But I think humanity’s first steps on Earth’s nearest island will be remembered — despite the many science-fiction stories involving myths of the forgotten home planet.

      I co-organized a major bash in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the 11th anniversary of Apollo 11. I wasn’t a professional artist, but I also designed the event poster — and paid $600 for its printing — which I and my friends put up around the Bay Area. (Decades later I was tickled to find the poster in the permanent collection of the Oakland Museum of California.)

      Need I say that I support humanity’s expansion beyond Earth?
      https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1241428314528468995

      1. Cool!

         1. A friend of mine once got together with Chris Hadfield and strummed a few chords together. (Hadfield, you may know, covered David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station.)

            From a Guardian interview (June 19, 2023):
            The song that changed my life
            “When I was on board the space station, there was a clamouring on the internet for me to cover Space Oddity by David Bowie. My son said: ‘Just do it, Dad, or you’ll regret it for ever.’ I had to get Bowie’s permission and he said it was the most poignant version ever. Millions of people have seen my version and it put laughter and joy in the face of David Bowie in the last couple years of his life. So that changed my life.”

            1. 😁

      2. Nice poster!

         I do occasionally come across people who think the moon landings were fake. There’s no arguing with them.

         1. Thanks! I remain proud of my modest graphic effort from that time.

            It’s hard for me to fathom why there are still people who deny the reality of the — six! — times that astronauts landed on the Moon.

            Some people are deluded and misinformed. But many, I think, just mine the meme for clicks.

            And some may be dedicated misinformation propagandists in service to America’s enemies — or who actually oppose humanity’s expansion beyond Earth.

         2. I’ve never met one. However, after a friend of mine finished his talk on astronomy, a member of the audience walked up to him and told him that the moon landings did not happen.

            When my mother taught her class of small kids about the early space missions, a kid from the class told her that the moon landings were faked. For this and a few other things like young-earth ideas, my mother blames the parents.

            On the 9th of September, 2002, Edwin Aldrin punched a moon-landing conspiracy theorist who had harassed him. I’m not excusing Aldrin’s violent response; but it is a historical event of note nearly as important as the first moon landing.

            1. I think Aldrin’s physical response was somewhat unfortunate, though I can totally understand it. It’s definitely worth a footnote. But it’s hardly up there with the significance of the actual Moon landing.

               Aldrin remains a cantankerous character, which I experienced first-hand. I once jumped some empty rows to sit next to him before he was going to give a talk in San Francisco. I asked if it was an appropriate time to ask for an autograph. He simply said “No,” and I went back to my original seat.

            2. I’ve only encountered them online (that I know of). They congregate on sites that promote a variety of conspiracy theories.

            3. Thanks for the link.

            4. But it’s hardly up there with the significance of the actual Moon landing.

               No? I was only joking 🙂

         3. If they used conventional reasoning, they would be unlikely to hold the opinions they do.

      3. Excellent. Reminds me of John & Yoko Live Peace in Toronto album cover.
         D.A.
         NYC

         1. Interesting comment about my poster, David. I’m flattered!

            Here’s a link to a graphic (logo) I created for related reasons, mostly in response to president Reagan’s SDI “Star Wars” program during that time:
            https://x.com/jon_alexandr/status/1221197849494294528

            1. I like that one more: the visuals of the “Op Art” field. See Bridgette Reilly (UK, 1960s). With better computers that kind of stuff is common now but in the 80s it was waaay cool.
               D.A.
               NYC

            2. I’m flattered once again, David. As a teenager in the 1960s I did play a lot with “op art” motifs, often drawing “pixels” with pen & ink!

5. Trump’s luck really seems to never run out. Dismissing the case against him feels like a huge twist. And picking Vance as his VP? Never saw that coming. Also, the whole situation with Hamas and Gaza is just depressing.

6. “This man has incredible luck (or good lawyers). . . .” Or the cases were bad, as people have been saying right along. I read stories last year arguing that the Special Counsel’s appointment was illegal.

   I wouldn’t just J.D. Vance too harshly, yet (and certainly not based upon what the MSM says). My understanding is that he changed his mind about Trump when he learned that the Russian Collusion was, in fact, all lies. That happened to me, as well.

   There is a video

   1. Dr B, if I could add:

      Vance denounced Trump in 2016. He publicly stated in 2021 that he was wrong in his earlier assessments. This is hardly a quick change of mind. Over those years, it had become clear to all other than the most partisan that the “Russian agent” hysteria was nonsense, that the “Neo-Nazis are fine people” story was a canard endlessly repeated for political gain, and that numerous other “end is near” stories were political press fabrications. Moreover, Trump had served his term and the nation had survived—and in some ways thrived.

      We can criticize Vance for his stance on the stolen election. We can criticize him if we truly believe January 6th was an insurrection (it wasn’t, but Trump’s inaction that day, more so than his action, was despicable). We can criticize him for a change of heart that seemingly coincided with him launching his own political career. But I don’t think it is fair to criticize a man for changing his mind and acknowledging that he now believed himself to have been wrong. Is he sincere? Anyone else’s guess is as good as mine.

      1. +1

      2. Okay, okay, if you believe he changed his mind out of principle rather than ambition (you clearly believe exactly what he says). Here are some of his other positions (from Wikipedia), and most of these are reprehensible:

         Vance supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, disagrees with same-sex marriage, and favors banning pornography.[92][93] He is considered a maverick from Republican orthodoxy on economics, supporting increases for certain taxes and for the minimum wage, unionization, tariffs, antitrust policy, and has opposed continued American military aid to Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion.

         He’s a paleoconservative. While you might think that Trump lies, it seems that some people think that Vance is telling the precise truth.

         1. I have no strong position whatsoever on whether Vance was sincere. (I take Dr B’s conversion at his word, and I allow that even a striving politician might have had a similar change of mind.) If forced to guess, my bet would be on political ambition–in him and in anyone else of either party who sought higher office. In that, I think, I would simply be playing the odds, having little else upon which to judge the man’s integrity. Also, the fact that Vance deleted several of his more critical social media posts rather than letting the historical record stand could argue in favor of political expediency.

            Opposition to a man’s politics is an entirely different matter from questions about his sincerity. I think neither party has a lock on either saints or liars. I haven’t yet the slightest idea where Vance falls on that scale.

         2. Re “Oy! Vance was a Never-Trumper, and then quickly changed his mind when he saw the breadth of Trump’s coattails. This is one example of what hypocrites politicians can be.”

            From what I have read, Vance’s initial views were shaped by mainstream media, which generally only puts forward the DNC message on Trump. It is my understanding that when those opinions were expressed, he had never met nor spoken privately with Trump.

            Most people who gather their information primarily from DNC sources, will naturally believe he is pure evil, and an imminent threat to everything we cherish. Changing ones mind about someone or something after learning more about them does not seem like hypocrisy to me. Especially when the person in question has explained in detail why he formed his initial opinions, and what changed his mind.

            Like you, I disagree with many of Vance’s stances on issues. But calling him a hypocrite seems sort of harsh.

   2. +1

   3. Would you judge Vance more harshly if you knew some of his positions? Here’s from Wikipedia:

      Vance supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, disagrees with same-sex marriage, and favors banning pornography.[92][93] He is considered a maverick from Republican orthodoxy on economics, supporting increases for certain taxes and for the minimum wage, unionization, tariffs, antitrust policy, and has opposed continued American military aid to Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion.[16][17][18][19]

      1. Vance is a Trump clone, sez Trump.
         A narcissistic choice.
         Of course.

      2. Jerry, I argue that your lead-off objections to JD Vance’s views should not be decisive vice-presidentially. The Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled on abortion and same-sex marriage, putting them out of Presidential purview for the rest of our lives. Modern pornography probably does harm young men, making it for the first time in history more than a narrow feminist or religious issue, and puts him on the right side of it. But it also seems durably protected by the First Amendment (much more so than in almost every other country.). His views on these topics speak more to what his character (or his religious views if you like) than to what he would or could actually do if he became President.

         His other views are more technocratic and the domestic policy ones are highly dependent on Congress. On foreign policy the President has a freer hand but foreign policy rarely wins or loses elections unless soldiers are being killed Over There. And naturally like all Israel’s friends around the world I’m glad he’s in Israel’s corner.

         Observing my non-partisan rule for foreigners I won’t say if I would vote for Mr. Vance, or any other candidate, for any U.S. office. But I will say that even if I was 100% pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and pro-porn as a 1A issue, — and I have been at various times in my life — I wouldn’t rationally vote against him on those grounds.

         Opportunism is not a sin in politics. It’s a survival skill.

         1. +1

            Agree.

            Those issues are “settled” issues, even the abortion issue will settle (more or less) on a moderate plane (via states), given that most Americans favor some form of abortion rights/choice within the first trimester. And increasingly less so in the 2nd and 3rd. This is reasonable, exceptions should be rape, incest, the life of the mother and child.

            Vance is a catholic. He opposes abortion on principle, but appears to understand and encourage compromise. Here is his first interview after being selected as Trump’s VP:

            It’s a softball interview, but provides some insight.

            Re: porn, contemporary porn (most of it) is deeply injurious to women and correspondingly to young men. The sexual revolution may not have been that great for women after all (despite its obvious benefits) . There has to be greater awareness on this issue, much greater awareness.

            1. Not to mention that even Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed that Roe short-circuited the democratic process and that it should have been left to the state legislatures.

               As to banning pornography, you have the First Amendment issue, but we have not wrestled sufficiently with a world in which young boys and girls can be immersed in a stew of videos that normalizes sexual violence and suggests to them that it is normal to have sex with a stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother or sister, teacher, or the entire gang of boys at school.

            2. I’m sure that any candidate whom Trump picked would have the same views as Vance on abortion, gay marriage and porn. In fact, even if the nominee were someone other than Trump, that person and his or her VP candidate would have those views. The fact that Vance has those views does not make him worse than any other potential Republican candidate.

            3. Yes it does–he’s more of a hard-liner than any other POTENTIAL Republican candidates.

            4. Doug +1 on Roe and RBG.

            5. @ Doug

               RBG did not believe that abortion should be left to States. As one journalist put it two years ago:

               “Ginsburg’s criticisms of Roe generally had to do with pragmatic and political concerns, rather than saying it was outright wrong. And far from wanting to leave this decision to the states, as Friday’s decision does, she repeatedly sided with the idea that abortion was a constitutional right. She had preferred that right to be phased in more gradually and that it rely more on a different part of the Constitution — the right to equal protection rather than the right to privacy, the basis of Roe.”

               https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/27/what-ruth-bader-ginsburg-really-said-about-roe-v-wade/

               I knew RBG here in D.C. for years, and never heard her even hint that abortion should be left up to individual States.

            6. Barbara Piper:
               I’m glad you mentioned this fact about Ginsburg and Roe. There are so many apologists here for Trump and his associated Supremely Deficient Court Appointees that I wouldn’t want to get mired myself. So thanks.

            7. Doug, Given Barbara Piper’s response to your comment, would you give us the reason why you said RGB thought that ‘Roe short-circuited the democratic process and that it should have been left to the state legislatures’?

               Were you referring to a speech? Something she wrote? Or was this something that she said to you personally? (I don’t know if you knew her and can’t rule out the possibility.)

         2. “Modern pornography probably does harm young men”

            And young women. Think about the images they’re seeing.

            No wonder some of them want to escape womanhood by “identifying as” men.

            1. +1 Lady M.

               Also, thanks to Barbara for the correction re: RBG.

               Lady M.
               A 2020/2021 Study on porn:
               “Results
               =====
               https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7835260/

               Our results indicate that 56.6% of those surveyed reported lifetime pornography use, with a significantly higher proportion of males than females reporting such use. The majority of students reported accessing pornography through internet-related technologies. Additionally, 17.0, 20.4, and 13.5% of students reported severe or extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress, respectively, with compulsive pornography use significantly affecting all three mental health parameters in both sexes. Exploratory Factor Analysis identified three factors suggesting emotional coping, dependence and preoccupation for the mCIUS items and three factors reflecting interoceptive, impotent, and extrinsic characteristics for the EmSS items. Regression analysis indicated that various demographics, items pertaining to reduced control and social impairment, and other variables pertaining to pornography use predicted mental health outcomes. Faith, morals and personal motivation were the primary variables reported to help reduce pornography use….

               Conclusion
               =======
               Our analyses indicate a significant relationship between mental health and pornography use, including behaviors reflecting behavioral addictions, highlighting the necessity for a better understanding and consideration of the potential contribution of internet pornography to negative mental health among university students.”

               There are several such studies.

            2. I thought that was self-evident. My point was that some people inclined to oppose bans on pornography on 1A grounds — our host did include Mr. Vance’s support for bans in a trifecta of hardline views he was concerned about — are not swayed by 60 years of feminist claims that it harms women enough to justify infringement. Only the new pornography so convincingly harms young men in their formative years in ways that, to me, makes it different in kind from previous moral panics over comic books, violent TV shows and, as manipulated for plot-advancing effect in The Music Man, pool. If we’re going to put people in jail for selling fentanyl and methamphetamine, not that we are it seems, we should do the same for porn as made today. (I know….defining it.)

               You make an additional point, which I hadn’t, that the role of ubiquitous degrading pornography on the phones of 11-year-old girls may well be contributing to the epidemic of gender confusion or rejection. Who would want to have that done to them as the price of puberty? This also is new. It’s a dimension that may be apparent only to people working in the field, or who are parents of 11-year-old girls. This is not the curiosity porn any of us old people grew up with. So thanks for calling out my omission.

   4. Russia did attempt to subvert the election, in various ways. Several officials in Trump’s campaign did meet with Russian nationals, and then they did lie to the FBI about it.
      Stop me when I get to the hysterical lies part.

      1. I think the pee tape discourse had hysterical elements (kompromat, Obama, prostitutes). I admit I wished for it to be true but not hysterically so.

         https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/christopher-steele-donald-trump-russia-dossier-golden-shower

      2. Yes, Barbara. Thank you for setting the record straight wrt Roe v Wade and RBG’s reservations about the manner in which it was passed. People just keep repeating the same untruths over and over…

   5. Vance is quoted in the UK media today as having said that, after Labour’s landslide election win, the UK could become the first Islamic country with nuclear weapons. Beat that for a combination of ignorance and boorishness. The man is contemptible.

      1. Pakistan, Islamic, already has and has for some time, nuclear weapons, so UK not the first. Sen Vance should know this.

         1. That’s your objection?

            How about the UK not being an Islamist state?

            1. There are a lot of people in the UK very worried that it already is.

               There’s a teacher who hasn’t been able to return to Batley for several years, a Government that’s promised to pass a law against Islamophobia, estimates of up to a million girls raped by Muslims (over 125 men found guilty across a dozen trials in just 7 cities alone), the streets of the capital unsafe for Jewish people and MPs being returned to parliament on a pro-Palestine agenda.

               Oh, and violence between Muslims and Hindus in Leicester. The next five years is going to be difficult.

         2. Not quite my point! It is both ignorant and deeply insulting to suggest that the election of a Labour Government will result in the UK becoming Islamist. Muslims make up about 6% of the UK population; in numerical terms, there are more Muslims in the US than in the UK. There are a few UK constituencies where the number of Muslim – not necessarily Islamist – voters can make a difference, but not very many.

         3. A few comments:

            “Islamist” is not the same as “Islamic.”

            The jibe hurts because there is some truth to it.

            There is history here:

            “UK’s new foreign secretary once called Trump ‘a neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath”

            https://thehill.com/policy/international/4756556-uk-election-labour-foreign-secretary-david-lammy-trump-nazi/

            “Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, David Lammy – all of these people in the new government that have made disparaging remarks about President Trump and now that they’re in government have had to row back,” Ms Krakue told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

            https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/uk-labour-government-members-past-comments-could-mar-ukus-relations/video/e8e9b0fe27c6eb413c050a6f5e169135

         4. I found his actual remarks, which were-
            “And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour just took over.”

            He was trying to be funny. Now that he is on the ticket, he should know that republicans are never allowed to joke about anything, as their remarks will be dissected and presented as intended to be taken literally.

            1. Nice, Max. Thanks for digging out the full quotation.
               Mr. Vance’s legitimate point, as a foreign ally of the UK, is to what extent the important, trusted ally’s foreign policy is at risk of being manipulated by internal Islamist elements that the government is afraid of or beholden to. This would be felt most acutely in a nuclear showdown with a Muslim state like Iran.

               Naturally the British were insulted. So would Canada be if an American politician mused about the first Islamist country in the Americas and then, looking north, quipped, “Too late. It’s already happened.” But taking offence doesn’t prove it untrue. Our foreign policy toward Israel has been distorted by Islamist elements that Canada’s Leftist minority government is scared to death of because it dares not oppose them. Even domestic policy seeks to criminalize “Islamophobia”, which would probably cover repeating jokes like Mr. Vance’s.

      2. I’m ashamed, but I think that’s a funny remark. In a sad way.

         1. Oh really? You must let us into the joke. I don’t find it funny at all.

      3. First the comment was clearly a joke, a barbed joke but a joke; and the point of the joke is (presumably) Labour party support for mass immigration, much of it from Muslim countries. Also relevant to the joke is the election of five Hamas-supporting Islamist MPs in the recent election.

         (A video of him making the remarks is here.)

         1. Suella Braverman:

            The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission.

            https://www.suellabraverman.co.uk/news/islamists-are-bullying-britain-submission

7. The Secret Service certainly has egg on its face. Here is a split-screen, time-synchronized video of Trump’s speech and an attendee’s video showing people seeing the assassin and trying to alert police: Video.

   1. Thanks.

8. If I were Trump or a Trump supporter I would believe the whole blue world was weaponized against me. A special prosecutor appointed by the Biden administration brings about forty separate charges for playing hide the paper from a group of federales carrying weapons to retrieve copies of documents that an ex-president was entitled to have one day but not the next? The New York City legal system using its partisan legal labyrinth to try to beggar and possibly imprison him on charges based on inventive twists of statutes in ways unique to him or his business? A partisan Georgia prosecutor charging him with statutes directed at the mob while sleeping with a colleague she appointed to help with her anticipated show trial? Where does honor, decency, or integrity live in any of those scenarios? Trump is a charlatan, over-the-hill juvenile delinquent and perhaps a mountebank but the systems the blue world has mounted to break him are rife with corruption.

   1. +1

   2. +1

      You said it well.

      I’m not voting for Trump, but yes, the blue world is an insane world. No thanks to either.

   3. +1 to all that. Regarding the classified document case, they also found that Biden did the same thing but decline to bring charges against him because he’s old and senile. What kind of logic is that?

      1. The cases are very, very different Darryl.
         D.A.
         NYC

      2. Hold on. From what I recall reading a few months back, Biden did take classified documents but, when confronted about them, returned them fairly quickly. Trump denied that it was unlawful for him to have the classified documents he took, and actively tried to move and hide them from investigators. He was brazen in his “I can do no wrong” attitude compared to Biden who complied with the law. Does that clarify what you see as logic, Darryl?

      3. Darryl: A couple of other comments have pointed out your confusion, but I wanted to add a bit, if I may.

         First, Biden found that he had inadvertently retained documents that should have been turned over to the Archives or other agencies, and he contacted the appropriate authorities to arrange to return them. Trump intentionally took documents from the White House to Florida, denied that he had them, and tried to block efforts to retrieve those documents. You see the difference?

         Second, Hur’s primary justification for recommending against prosecuting Biden was not that Biden is “old and senile.” It was that the statute requires mens rea – criminal intent – that was clearly absent in Biden’s case, while it was obviously present in Trump’s case. Hur’s comment about Biden being elderly and forgetful – not “senile” – was a kind of additional point, but was not the core of Hur’s recommendation.

         Third, there is a significant difference between the documents in Trump’s case and documents in Biden’s case. The sheer number of documents in each case is wildly different, of course, but Trump’s documents include many in “Classified” jackets, while Biden’s “classified” material consisted mainly of his personal notebooks in which he wrote information that was, technically, classified. Hur also noted that this was a significant difference.

         Finally, no one has suggested that Mike Pence be charged with a crime for also retaining documents – as many federal employees do, inadvertently – for the same reasons that Biden has not been charged. Trump’s actions were extraordinary, intentional, and criminal.

         1. Biden shared classified info with a ghostwriter.

            Mark Zwonitzer worked with Biden on two memoirs, 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and “Promise Me, Dad,” which was published 10 years later. According to a report released Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur, Biden was sloppy in his handling of classified material found at his home and former office, and shared classified information contained in some of them with Zwonitzer while the two were working on the Biden’s second book.

            Hur’s report says no criminal charges are warranted against Biden. It says his office considered charging Zwonitzer with obstruction of justice because the ghostwriter destroyed recordings of interviews he conducted with Biden while they worked on his second memoir together once he learned of the documents investigation. But Hur also said Zwonitzer offered “plausible, innocent reasons” for having done so and cooperated with investigators subsequently, meaning the evidence against him was likely “insufficient to obtain a conviction.”

            https://apnews.com/article/biden-ghostwriter-mark-zwonitzer-classified-documents-case-8ad6e560c2eb54e25db149a2d01ad545

9. Wonderful shot of Hili. A cat in a sunny meadow, dwarfed by wild flowers, under the canopy of a blue blue sky. 🐱🐱🐱

   Re: Vance
   ======
   Quote from blog:
   “Oy! Vance was a Never-Trumper, and then quickly changed his mind when he saw the breadth of Trump’s coattails. This is one example of what hypocrites politicians can be. Now he’s an Always Trumper!”

   It’s not that simple with Vance, despite elements of truth inherent in the quote.

   From the Free Press:
   Quote:
   “For some, Vance’s journey is simple enough to explain: it’s the story of a smart and ambitious “sellout” and an “angry jerk,” as one of his (ex-) friends from law school put it on X yesterday. To this crowd, Vance is only the most extreme example of a familiar story of Republicans kowtowing to the man who took over their party.

   But Vance is a much more complicated—and interesting—figure than that.

   Agree with him or not, he has undergone a sincere ideological conversion since 2016. That much was obvious to me when I followed him on the campaign trail in 2022. And it’s obvious from any speech or interview he gives. He is not someone who just parrots his party’s talking points. (He has also undergone an actual conversion: I recommend Rod Dreher’s interview with him on the day he was baptized and received into the Catholic Church in 2019.)

   In the Senate, he hasn’t just voted with the GOP herd but teamed up with Democrats on a range of bills that stake out new ideological territory for Republicans. He makes some of Trump’s donors uncomfortable.

   By picking Vance, Trump has made clear his project is about more than personality. The Republican presidential ticket now has a distinct ideological flavor. It has teeth. National Review’s Philip Klein called the pick “another nail in the coffin of Reagan Republicanism.” (This is not a compliment at that magazine.) Vance is a prominent critic of U.S. involvement in Ukraine (for more on his foreign policy views, I recommend this piece by my colleague Isaac Grafstein).

   He’s also economically unorthodox—and more relaxed about government involvement in the economy than many of his colleagues. He has backed a higher minimum wage and praised Lina Khan, Joe Biden’s FTC chair and a proponent of more robust antitrust policies.

   Did these ideological considerations clinch it for Vance? I suspect a bigger factor was that in Vance, Trump saw someone who was welcomed into the elite—as Trump never has been—but who turned his back on it.”
   ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

   Vance is also a legacy pick. He’s young and heterodox. Incidentally, he’s also hawkish on Israel and lukewarm on Ukraine.

   “Trump’s VP pick J. D. Vance: ‘I’ll be as strong an advocate for US-Israel relationship as anyone'”
   “A commitment to Israel
   ======================
   Vance has repeatedly emphasized the cultural and strategic importance of Israel to the United States. In a 2022 interview with The Jerusalem Post, he expressed his dedication to being a strong advocate for the US-Israel relationship, stating, “I will be as strong an advocate for the US-Israel relationship as anyone.” He highlighted the deep cultural ties and shared values between the two nations, describing the relationship as “an expression of deeper things, of cultural affinity and shared heritage and values.”
   https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-810454

   ASIDE: I expect (predict?) some degree of conflict with Trump. Trump is not an intellectual, Vance is.

10. I sincerely hope that Israel and Hamas don’t end up back to where they were on October 6. Israel cannot allow this to happen. After all, October 6 became October 7 and Hamas has stated that they will do the same over and over until Israel in no more.

11. For an excellent background on Israel/Pal, I recommend the following:

    “There is No Genocide, No Apartheid, No Occupation” – Natasha Hausdorff
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wrhzDBvhEc&t=3849s
    1:16 min.

    Natasha is a top notch British lawyer and (I think) has been mentioned here and was co-debater with Douglas Murray at the recent Monk debate against ugly slug and Islamic fundamentalist Mendi Hassan. (do check Hassan’s past, I wish the MSM did before employing him).
    Anyway, the above on Triggernometry is succinct, well argued and provides a wealth of context.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. Thanks david. Just watched Natasha as a result of jerry highlighting it in a later article today as a result of a h/t by a reader. So you are that reader! Thanks again.

12. About the duck… My partner came home one evening with exactly the same news. He liked duck eggs and had stopped at a duck farm to get some. He then asked if they also sold whole duck. They said yes, he paid the bill and then was rather surprised when they brought out a cardboard box, with nice ventilation holes and handed it to him. By the time he’d driven her home, she was named ‘Quack’ (of course) and he’d been chatting with her for forty minutes. He actually wanted to discuss the possibility of putting in extensive predator protection fencing, a small pond, overnight indoor accommodations, etc. in our tiny suburban yard. I said no I didn’t want to take on that much responsibility because he’d been too sheepish to tell the farmer he had meant a dead, plucked duck, not a live one (he does have the necessary skills to kill and pluck a duck, these were regular chores for him as a kid with chickens, but he wasn’t going to do that to ‘Quack’). I did agree to let him use me as the excuse for why we couldn’t either keep or kill the duck and we drove her the 40 min. back to her flock on the farm.
    Just trying to lighten up the conversations here.

    1. And lighten you did, Patricia. That is a terrific story!
       Thank you so much.

13. I thought that JD Vance would be picked as VP (since Ivanka likely wouldn’t do it – too dangerous). Trump was never going to pick a black man or any of the women. Vance is younger and better looking than the other guys and is not incorruptible.

14. Chetiya (and Barbara). Thank you for asking me to expand my short Roe comment. I tried to reply last night, but the WordPress spam filters apparently intervened. This violates the Roolz length, but I hope Jerry lets it go through, as it’s important to quote Ginsburg at length. I post it here because there is no reply button after your post.

    While Ginsburg would have preferred that Roe have constitutional foundations other than that to privacy, she also suggests, if I understand her correctly, that she would have severely curtailed the scope of the ruling.

    Consider this 1984 lecture at UNC, at which she said that “the Court’s initial 1973 abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, on the other hand, became and remains a storm center. Roe v. Wade sparked public opposition and academic criticism, in part, I believe, because the Court ventured too far in the change it ordered and presented an incomplete justification for its action. . . . Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. The political process was moving in the early 1970s, not swiftly enough for advocates of quick, complete change, but majoritarian institutions were listening and acting. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”

    In the printed version of the above lecture, a footnote to the above cites favorably the “superiority of the legislative solution,” as regards the 1970 changes to New York’s laws, and, in support, quotes Second Circuit Judge Henry J. Friendly saying “How much better that the issue was settled by the legislature! I do not mean that everyone is happy; presumably those who opposed the reform have not changed their views.” In the same lecture, she also contrasts Roe with Brown, saying that “I do not suggest that the Court should never step ahead of the political branches in pursuit of a constitutional precept.” I gather from this that she believed Roe, in going beyond striking down the Texas law, stepped ahead of the political process, thus my assertion about short-circuiting the democratic process—and, by implication, the voters and state legislatures.

    https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=2961&context=nclr

    Her 1992 lecture at NYU covered similar grounds, specifically addressing her apparent preference that Roe should have been limited to addressing the Texas law. “The seven to two judgment in Roe v. Wade declared ‘violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment’ a Texas criminal abortion statute that intolerably shackled a woman’s autonomy; the Texas law ‘except[ed] from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the [pregnant woman].’ Suppose the Court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the Court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force. Would there have been the twenty-year controversy we have witnessed, reflected most recently in the Supreme Court’s splintered decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey? A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarize why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.”

    https://law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_059254.pdf

    Perhaps Ginsburg is playing with hypotheticals, lamenting the civil strife caused by the ruling yet clinging to a “Damn those people and their democratic processes, anyway” attitude. I don’t read it that way (but as a layman, I welcome corrections if I am wrong). I gather she was truly torn about the judicial usurpation of the democratic process, particularly as public opinion was then moving in her desired direction. Now, had Roe been restricted to declaring unconstitutional the Texas law, and had public opinion stagnated and state legislative action moved away from Ginsburg, would she then have wanted to see a later Court issue a more far-reaching ruling to expand Roe? I suspect so, but I don’t know; I leave that to people more knowledgeable.

    1. For some reason these comments are being held up AND not showing up as “held up” comments in the dashboard. I did get this one as an email and approved it. However, please read the Roolz and keep your comments shorter, as this exceeds my length requirement. We want comments, not essays. Thank you!

    2. “Now, had Roe been restricted to declaring unconstitutional the Texas law, and had public opinion stagnated and state legislative action moved away from Ginsburg, would she then have wanted to see a later Court issue a more far-reaching ruling to expand Roe?”

       Yes — what she envisioned was a process similar to Obergefell — as same-sex marriage was becoming more and more acceptable, and States were legalizing same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court was primed to issue its ruling with national scope. She assumed the same would be an effective process with abortion. However, at no time did she believe that abortion policy should be limited to State-by-State choices, as we see since Dobbs.

       1. Thank you, Barbara. An Obergefell-type situation would have, indeed, been preferable.

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