- Whatever VP candidate Harris would have picked, Republicans would have attacked him — and her motives for her choice;
- Most conspiracy theorists who claimed at one point that Biden had died and was replaced by a body double… have either dug in, or abandoned the topic;
- Trump has gone off his rocker, and his fans don’t care;
- How Louisiana defenders of the Ten Commandments are dim, or dishonest;
- How the US is an outlier nation for its climate change deniers;
- And a personal story: about the weird presumptions of estate sellers, in Texas.
Now people on the right are accusing Kamala Harris of being anti-Semitic because she *didn’t* pick Josh Shapiro.
New Republic, 7 Aug 2024: J.D. Vance Crashes and Burns Trying to Defend His Kamala Conspiracy, subtitled “When asked to explain how Kamala Harris is antisemitic, Vance couldn’t.”
On Wednesday, today, Vance denied having said it.
But just two days earlier, Vance had said precisely the opposite.
“I think that they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of antisemitism in their own caucus and in their own party,” Vance told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, hours before Harris’s campaign had even announced her pick of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
For every one thing a person does, there are many others they do not do, and by this kind of reasoning, they’re *guilty* of something, surely.
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Again, they would have made similar charges about any other VP pick.
Media Matters, John Knefel, 6 Aug 2024: MAGA media figures launch desperate — and weird — attacks on Harris vice presidential pick Tim Walz, subtitled “Conservative pundits responded to the news with anti-Muslim, anti-trans, and anti-Black bigotry, alongside attacks on Walz’s folksy appearance”
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There is no accountability with these people.
NY Times, 7 Aug 2024: What Do Conspiracy Theorists Do When Proved Wrong? Double Down or Move On., subtitled “An outlandish idea that President Biden was dead or nearly dead was quickly refuted. Few of the accounts that had spread it online recanted.”
What’s notable about this piece is that it names names. And quotes them, before and after. Among those who’ve dug in are usual suspects Laura, Matt, Charlie, Alex, Todd, among others. Four others acknowledged the truth, more or less. And five others simply dropped the subject.
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It’s obvious to everyone but his fans when an authoritarian has gone off his rocker.
Raw Story, Tom Boggioni, 7 Aug 2024: ‘Losing his freaking mind’: Conservative stunned by Trump having ‘breakdown in real time’
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning to address the selection of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as the Democratic party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee, conservative Charlie Sykes expressed fear that Donald Trump’s latest rant on Truth Social was a cry for help.
(I’m omitting the Trump quote, except to observe, again, that to Trump, he is the BEST ever in the entire world, and everyone against him are the WORST in the entire world. Black and white.)
That led Sykes to write on Tuesday, “Can we just say it? the guy is fuqqing nuts.”
Appearing on “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning he elaborated, “I’m so glad you brought up this post by Donald Trump, this gibbering nonsense.”
“Can we just say it? This man is not well,” he continued. “So while we are talking about, you know, the policies of the Democratic ticket, you know, take a deep breath and recognize that the former president of the United States is having this cognitive mental breakdown in real-time in plain view.”
It won’t matter to his fans.
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Defenders of the Ten Commandments are not the sharpest pencils in the box. Or are simply dishonest.
Rolling Stone, 5 Aug 2024: Louisiana Unveils ‘Ten Commandments’ Classroom Posters Featuring RBG, ‘Hamilton’, subtitled “Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill showcased samples of religious classroom posters seemingly designed to bait liberals”
Various posters try to justify the display of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana classrooms (all of them) by appealing to historical precedents. But their appeal to a statement by the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg quote was “from a paper she wrote in 1946 when she was in eighth grade.”
Not that Ginsberg was necessarily wrong; it just indicates how the Louisiana folks are reaching. It’s also telling the folks in Louisiana aren’t inclined to post the Magna Carta, or the 1689 English Bill of Rights, on classroom walls. Only rules from their favorite holy book.
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Hemant Mehta explores the issue in much greater detail:
Friendly Atheist, 6 Aug 2024: Louisiana found the worst ways to defend its Ten Commandments in classrooms law, subtitled “These posters are an embarrassment”
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Another piece about the topic discussed yesterday.
Salon, Marin Scotten, 7 Aug 2024: JD Vance blurbed a book by a conspiracy theorist that argues people on the left aren’t even human, subtitled “Trump’s running mate praised the far-right author, Jack Posobiec, for showing people how to ‘fight back'”
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What is it about America that makes it such a large portion of its population irrational — compared to the rest of the world?
The Guardian, Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor, 5 Aug 2024: Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress, subtitled “Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally”
The bottom line in a case like this is twofold. Conservatives tend to protect their special interests, which include the fossil fuel industries that contribute heavily to their campaigns. And they simply reject the idea that things change, or if they do, they depend on their God to take care of them.
Alas, the article doesn’t pin down its claim about how the US is an outlier. Compared to what? Be specific. They’re not. I’d respond by comment or email if I could find a way to do so.
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And finally, I have a personal story that applies to the theme of this post.
Beware estate sellers. These are people you hire to come in and hold an estate sale — one of those sales open to the public that are advertised on road signs and in newspapers — to dispose of the contents of a house, e.g., one you’ve inherited. We did this a few weeks ago with the estate I inherited from my old friend Larry Kramer. Four of us, I and three family members, flew to Austin the first weekend of June, to sort through the house, decide what to dispose of, what to keep, what to leave to sell. I’d contacted a couple estate sellers, and the first one to respond sent a representative on Friday afternoon. This representative, who I will pseudonomize as Nerak, came in to the house and immediately started shooting photos. Obviously she was there to assess the property to see if it would be worth her company sponsoring a sale, for which they needed to clear at least $5000. (After that, proceeds from the sale would be split 55% my way, 45% their way, a bit more generous than some other sellers.) She mentioned that anything we’d decided to keep, she would not photograph, and we did point out a couple things.
Long story short. Over the course of the weekend, we put all the stuff we wanted to keep either into our baggage to fly home, or into Larry’s car, still sitting in the garage. The shipping agency to the car the entire weekend, so the car sat there for several weeks more, through the time the estate seller’s people showed up to stage the house. (Eventually I found a new shipper to bring the car to California.)
The estate sale went well, they said, and they sent me a statement — total sales, $25K! But at the bottom of the statement they deducted $1000 for the items “removed” to the car. As if we’d stolen something we’d promised them they could have sold at their sale.
In effect, they charged me for keeping my own property. Their presumption, so deeply ingrained, apparently, that they felt they did not need to explain it clearly, was that everything in the house, upon their first consultancy visit, was theirs to sell. And, as they now claim they told us, anything they photographed that we decided to keep had to be identified to them in detail. Even though, as Nerak should have understood, the reason the four of us were there for the weekend is because we hadn’t already decided what to keep and what to sell.
Thinking it over, questions arise. Why did they go through the car? Why did they not realize that most of the items in the car were items we had removed before the first visit, or had explicitly told Nerak about?
I’ve appealed once, and they say we misunderstood. All four of us at the house that weekend, misunderstood.
I feel I’ve been swindled. Or perhaps, this is just another weird way people think. A presumption about who’s entitled to what.
And, this happened in Texas.
