Rubio will lose to Newsom (or maybe even AOC), because once Vance is gone, the machine will turn on Rubio. Anything and everything in his past will be brought up (dog peeing from carrier on the roof of the van, Schumer from the Senate claiming Rubio did not pay taxes, etc.). Then the machine will turn on whoever replaces Rubio.
The machine, which can be fueled by as little as Romney's 'binders of women' will, of course turn on Rubio but he may well overcome it. Vance will not.
Newsom will be forced to debate Harris in the 2028 primaries. He'll no doubt steam roll over her but in the process will damage his presidential prospects. Straight white guy vs woman of color, the optics are terrible.
One never knows. Clinton and Obama were both outliers.
However, my point is, once Vance has been effectively sidelined by the press/bien pensant conservatives etc. with Carlson et al associations, they will turn on Rubio. At least from the Left and likely some on the right. They won't tolerate his conservatism as it is. Also, it serves to weaken the GOP's 2028 prospects.
I see in our future a big push for Haley as the healing candidate that didn't collaborate with the Trump Administration.
When each party begins a presidential with a guaranteed 47 % of the vote, you're not going to have Vance or Rubio surrender the Republican nomination to Nikki Haley. Mrs. Haley has as much chance of winning a Republican presidential nomination as Mitch McConnell.
Antisemitism is part of the Democratic parties platform. It hangs around their neck, so they have nothing to say to JD. If Americans vote in Newsom, with his record, then Weimar is here.
Oh please, spare me the propaganda. We’ve seen the Jew hate from the Left. The violence against Jews is acceptable to Leftists. October 7th is why the war happened. Nie Wieder.
Where did I say that antisemitism was only found on the Right? I certainly did as I know better.
But what I said above is also quite true: one may criticize and oppose things the government of Israel gets up to and it's unjust and indeed slanderous to say that a person who does so is an antisemite.
Blaming the US for WW2, without reference to Pearl Harbor is the same. Gaza voted for Hamas and support their genocidal efforts. 10/7 is Pearl Harbor. The Left has been shouting “death to the Jews” since then. Democrats have antisemitism hanging around their necks. They don’t hide it.
While I am not Catholic, I do think the Catholic Church's "Just War" theory is a good way of looking at things. And that requires not only a just cause but just behavior in war.
Both Left and Right suffer the infection of antisemitism.
And yet, Petey, you are somehow never able to respond to the specific examples we give of Tucker's dubious behavior and statements.
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I'm sure Tucker appreciates your subscriptions to his various grifts. Without loyal subscribers like you, the trust-fund populist would only have three vacation homes instead of four.
This is from Carlson's interview with Fuentes. It is indeed a pushback:
"Well, my read on Joe Kent was, he's totally sincere. He, like me, has always been committed to separating out foreign policy views from ethnicity, not because... Obviously, I'm denounced as an anti-Semite every day. I don't really care what ADL thinks of me, but my Christian faith tells me that there's no such thing as blood guilt, and virtue or sin is not inherited. It's not a feature of DNA. So every person must be assessed individually as God assesses each person individually. And that's like a foundational view. I always thought it's great to criticize and question our relationship with Israel because it's insane and it hurts us. We get nothing out of it. I completely agree with you there. But the second you're like, well, actually, it's the Jews. First of all, it's against my Christian faith. I just don't believe that and I never will, period."
How? Simple. In open and frank dialogue. If you're afraid of that, then you're not very confident in or articulate about your own beliefs. And there's no "behavior". That's like saying my son's behavior is in playing soccer. What seems obvious is that you don't like Tucker or his opinions, and so you're willing to write him off. That's somewhat cowardly.
Is 'open and frank dialogue' some euphemism for 'spewing bullshit'? I get it - trying to defend losers like Darryl Cooper and Nick Fuentes is something I would definitely take a pass on too. Then again, I also wouldn't be simping for the loser who did fawning interviews with these two. Or is that also cowardly?
“Nick Fuentes is one of the most insightful political thinkers in the country.”
That interview alone is all about Jew hatred. There's no defense. Couple that with the fact that he swallows the mic when the subject of Christian persecution comes up. Ever since he started taking Qatari money ..... ALLEGEDLY ..... he has stopped talking about the waves of muslim Migrants destroying Europe and adamantly refuses to talk about the thousands of Christians slaughtered in Nigeria. All he cares about is criticizing Israel and the Americans who support its right to exist and defend itself.
I can't believe these cats willfully deny this. As far as I can see Carlson blames da Jooz for his ouster from Fox and wants to get his own back. So he's unstable too.
Newson is an effective campaigner. He just looks good in commercials. He will do well on the two coasts. Will he play well in the Mississippi river drainage? Unknown at this time.
We live in a 47-47 nation. So Newsom and Vance will be fighting for the middle vote in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
That's about the size of it. There is still time for JD to turn it around, but not much. Rubio's performance in Munich is one more nail in Vance's coffin.
Normal people stopped caring about Tucker Carlson as soon as he lost his Fox News show. Carlson is old news, he gets a bump in views when he brings on people like Fuentes because they have fans who watch to see him. Otherwise he just doesn't matter.
Vance isn't going to sit back and allow the Democrats to pummel him anyway. The man's a notorious hothead who came from one of the roughest places in America and survived having and addict for a mother. He's not going to let them push him around without firing back. If the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate Newsom, the man's got thousands of hours of ugly imagery from California for attack ads.
The Democrats are riddled with antisemites now anyway. If they try this they're going to have to explain what "From the center to the sea" means. Good luck with that.
At best this is a pipe dream of yours, At worst you're just trying to find an angle to kill any enthusiasm for Vance. Well you're going to have to do a LOT better than this nonsense.
If he doesn't preemptively dump Tucker, he will lose. He does not have the "it" that Trump has, and he cannot appeal to suburban voters who will decide the election. He is viewed as strange and off-putting.
Rubio can win back many of the suburbs. He may lose some of the hard-core MAGA crew, but his loyalty to Trump will keep enough of them, and he will retain more hispanics than Vance could ever hope to attract. Besides, the hard-core MAGA crew will not turn out for Vance anyway - they're Trump only.
Tucker is a very niche interest. You may not be willing to accept that, but the world moved on.
Vance wrote a bestseller that became a movie about his own life. Not so sure about that supposed lack of "It" He beat both the Republican establishment (which thought amongst other things that not being sufficiently supportive of Ukraine was going to to turn off voters) and then the Democrats to win his senate seat. This isn't a blood red state where anyone with an R next to their name wins.
I went through this business with Trump back in 2016 too. All the "he's not going to win"" he can't win", "Hillary is going to wipe the floor with him" etc from Republicans. Jeb was supposed to be the one that was going to beat Clinton thanks to how gosh darn attractive he was going to be to the mythical suburban voter.
I said the same thing to JPM. Once you start in on this nonsense it's like being at a party where a person pulls out a guitar and makes that oh so earnest face before you hear the fist few notes of Imagine and you think "Oh God help us, not this AGAIN"
AI is utterly dependent on cheap electricity and oceans of water. Maybe it will get too expensive. Something can be technologically possible and yet too expensive.
A tantrum from the sun, a mass coronal ejection, could kill AI in one minute or less than a minute. But it would also send us all back into the stone edge.
Further, all these AI experiments show the utter insanity of putting AI in direct control of machinery or much of anything. As long as they merely converse with humans, we will decide what to do with their output. Give them hands and connections and control, its not so much that the machines will take over, as that they will wreak havoc while never really knowing what they are doing. They have no will or consciousness, the way they communicate is moving electrons around in patterns that humans interpret in light of the way humans think and programmed them. But those electrons will manipulate machines, if humans devise machines that respond to the electronic stimuli generated by AI.
The Atlantic piece is a nice birthday drop, Rod! Hope you feel better soon and are able to enjoy an alternate birthday soiree. Mine's in a couple weeks and thus almost always falls during Lent. :-/
I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but I was taking a deeper dive into using AI the other day, based on the piece that was written by a software engineer a couple of days ago. What I found was that it is no longer just a glorified search engine or autocomplete, but is now capable of making inferences and deductions quite accurately. If anyone needs me to explain what it means, it is that it is now capable of reasoning as humans do. It is clearly intelligent, but is now taking on attributes that did not seem possible so long ago. HAL is here. Very ominous.
Also, Trump and his circle are just the main act in the clown show that mainstream conservatism has become lately.
Encourage you all to carefully re-watch all two hours and fifteen minutes of Kubrick's, "2001", of which the central player is a malevolent, out-of-control AI: avant la lettre! "Open the pod bay door, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that". Also for those familiar with the Old Testament and Hebraic theology, the descent from Mt. Sinai of the Ten Commandments (considered by orthodox Judaism to encompass the entirety of Jewish law, including the admirable "Noahide" components applicable to gentiles!) with its absolutely transformative and elevating powers is maybe what the monolith is all about? I'm hardly alone in thinking that. At minimum, we should have the hardware to be able to unplug, one by one, the memory banks. "Daisy, Daisy, I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you..."
Nothing in the Bible points to any "Noachide laws". Chapter and verse where they are enumerated if you disagree. (Note: I am not denying that moral precepts apply to all of us-- of course they do. Just that there were any specific commandments stated in Scripture and announced to all mankind rather than the Mosaic Law addressed to the Jews)
Many, many elaborations upon + detailed exegeses of Jewish law (and indeed, several still-central Jewish holidays, e.g., Purim) were considered, unfolded, and encompassed by rabbinical scholars long after the documentation of both the Old (i.e., the "Torah"), and the New Testaments.
Glad you are so clear, Jon, on what the ancient rabbis "concocted"! Here follows an extract from Wiki on the subject... "According to the Jewish law, non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous...
Hal went off mission because of the way he was programmed. Humans gave him mutually exclusive instructions, and he acted to resolve the dilemma. But its true, no such mechanism should be put in control of anything.
One of my favorite parts was when the Machine arranged to have itself moved to a secret location, so it could protect itself from the risk of someone shutting it off.
That show “lost the plot” near the end, if you ask me, but for a while there it was a great show. I used to kid it was like “Touched By An Angel,” only with martial arts and gun play.
Since this one is about you suggest you lose the photo with the nerdy black horn rimmed glasses and change it to the cafe photo, and get a second opinion on that bouts of "mononucleosis". Infectious disease doctor or rheumatologist.
I have been diagnosed by a rheumatologist, in 2012. The bouts recur every couple of years. There are a few people who have to deal with this. My friend and neighbor here in Budapest had mono for the first time in 1991; he's had it four more times since.
By the mid-30s, most people have had mono, even if never diagnosed. They get it once, and they're done. A small number of people -- I'm part of that lucky number -- suffer recurring bouts. The Epstein-Barr virus stays in your bloodstream forever.
I would just be cautious and get checked out. You could have an infection and be septic. Not a fun experience.
Just had a friend go in for a routine check up and they determined he was septic, did a CT and found a tumor. He had to have surgery. Left unchecked he would face died.
Even with a chronic ailment such as EBS, this time could be different.
Agreed the Atlantic profile is outstanding. I am truly grateful for the genuinely fair and honest liberals who are willing to engage with those on the right. Truly, if those folks were in charge (instead of the Woke) we wouldn't be where we are. It reminded me of Joshua Rothman's New Yorker profile of Rod - also fair and balanced.*
In case Mr. Worth or any other open-minded liberal is reading this comment, what I would emphasize above all is how many people (including myself, a born-and-bred blue-state liberal slightly younger than Rod) arrive at these seemingly 'reactionary' views after concluding that actually-existing liberalism simply does not offer what it promises, that is, basic levels of fairness and freedom for everyone, even religious Christians. Many of us were brought up to believe that 'liberalism' simply equated to the guarantee of basic fairness and freedom for everyone, and only turned 'far-right' after coming to believe -- through hard experience -- that liberalism is actually nothing of the kind. I suspect that part of the appeal of Rod's Substack for liberal readers is that they can follow along this kind of thinking as it takes place, step by step, due to Rod's preternatural gift for writing. "When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?"
Re: Many of us were brought up to believe that 'liberalism' simply equated to the guarantee of basic fairness and freedom for everyone, and only turned 'far-right' after coming to believe -- through hard experience -- that liberalism is actually nothing of the kind.
The problem with this is that it conflates US political liberalism of the moment with the larger, older tradition of liberalism. The latter rests on three great principles: Religious liberty, government by consent of the governed and a rejection of any sort of aristocracy based on birth. I see no problem arising from those principles, and no reason whatsoever for rejecting them.
The woes of today arise from a different source: our technologies which have enabled all manner of human vice and wickedness.
A slave used to ride in the chariot behind Caesar when he arrived in Rome to cheering crowds after a military victory and kept repeating, "Remember, you are only a man."
That happened for Triumphators throughout the Republic. The General’s face was painted red, like the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, so the slave, and the bawdy songs the legionaries sang, were to bring him back down to Earth.
Life is a strruggle against the demands of the ego. I think Rod has his firmly in hand, but everyone needs a reminder. I admire the guy, but Trump is what happens when it goes rampant.
"This is the kind of thing that an administration down in the polls in an election year cannot afford to tolerate. Why would the president put up with this?"
Because they are his kind of people, and he would do the same thing if he were in their position.
I should have posted this a few days ago as to your next book's focus on the 1920's and 1930's-your Weimar world. I just finished Joseph Loconte's second book on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, The War For Middle Earth (the first was A Hobbit a Wardrobe and a Great War). He includes a lot of history of the times and the resistance of both authors to the cultural and philosophical trends. Their first hand experiences of the wars undergirds much of their writings during both wars and well after. Some of that might help with the next book.
The boys would absolutely line up to press the button. Your comment reminded me of a funny story, a few months ago, our music director handed our son the remote to turn off the bells if Mass runs over a bit. So, our 15 year old boy sat there for all of Mass desperately wanting to press that big red button to see what it would do. All the adults around us, especially the men were barely concealing their desire to dare him to press it and barely concealing their delight in watching me glare at him to 'stop fiddling with it!'. I glare at them, too....lol, sometimes, Mass is fun.
I'm a button pusher from way back. I'm not sure I could resist the temptation to see if it really worked. I once pushed the "J2" button on a secure telephone and it was answered by a 3 star admiral. "Sorry Sir I misdialed!" (Brave Search for "J2 Joint Staff": Director for Intelligence, J2, holds the rank of Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy.)
Why put up with this alleged incident from Noem? Because Trump 1.0 was betrayed and burned by the people he hired in his first administration. For him that means you hire who you know won't work to undermine you.
They might bring their children to hang out with convicted sex offenders, but it's cool as long as they're loyal to Trump! Inspiring leadership indeed.
Would you like me to point out Democrat sex offenders? Biden showered inappropriately with his underage daughter. He also had a penchant for sniffing little girls. You are good with that.
Actually, I'd like you to show me where I defended these types. Unlike you, James, I don't consider any of these politicians and their lackeys part of my tribe. Ergo, I don't feel the need to defend any of them with hackish whataboutism.
Except that people like Noem with their idiocy are also undermining him. Perhaps someone needs to explain to Mr. Trump that you also need to hire people who are competent. Incompetence will wreck a regime just as surely (perhaps more so) than deliberate malice.
Trump I don’t think has a problem firing people. When he hired her she seemed okay. Compared to “Admiral” Levine she is a winner. The media has no problem attacking anyone who works for Trump, no matter how good they are. I tend to ignore them since they have lost all credibility.
Warning: bluntness. If you don't believe anything in the media you are a fool.
Example: If you were down here in Florida or elsewhere on the Gulf or Atlantic Coast would you disbelieve a hurricane warning and evacuation orders being reported in the press and on TV? If so, well, it's your funeral.
I think I'll actually buy a real, physical magazine - The Atlantic - for the first time in many years for this Rod piece. Blessings to you, Rod, as we rush into Great Lent.
Two decent articles from the Atlantic... Ever since Covid (and probably before that) they've been just awful. Perhaps they are taking a different editorial route now.
Big cities often have crime-ridden districts that sensible people avoid. That's been true forever. Augustus' Rome, Florence of the di Medici and George III's London were very dangerous places too and people who could afford guards did not venture out at night without them.
JD Vance refuses to ditch Tucker and his antisemitic views. This will get hung around his neck by the Dems. JD will lose to Newsom. Rubio will not.
Rubio will lose to Newsom (or maybe even AOC), because once Vance is gone, the machine will turn on Rubio. Anything and everything in his past will be brought up (dog peeing from carrier on the roof of the van, Schumer from the Senate claiming Rubio did not pay taxes, etc.). Then the machine will turn on whoever replaces Rubio.
The machine, which can be fueled by as little as Romney's 'binders of women' will, of course turn on Rubio but he may well overcome it. Vance will not.
Newsom will be forced to debate Harris in the 2028 primaries. He'll no doubt steam roll over her but in the process will damage his presidential prospects. Straight white guy vs woman of color, the optics are terrible.
Hope you’re right
Identity politics sets up a scenario where the most electable candidate can't win his own party nomination
$10 bucks Rubio won't. Maybe Haley will.
Mrs. Haley has as much a chance at the 2028 Republican nomination as Dan Quayle, the Arizona golfer.
One never knows. Clinton and Obama were both outliers.
However, my point is, once Vance has been effectively sidelined by the press/bien pensant conservatives etc. with Carlson et al associations, they will turn on Rubio. At least from the Left and likely some on the right. They won't tolerate his conservatism as it is. Also, it serves to weaken the GOP's 2028 prospects.
I see in our future a big push for Haley as the healing candidate that didn't collaborate with the Trump Administration.
When each party begins a presidential with a guaranteed 47 % of the vote, you're not going to have Vance or Rubio surrender the Republican nomination to Nikki Haley. Mrs. Haley has as much chance of winning a Republican presidential nomination as Mitch McConnell.
No, Kamala will not run again; she is not stupid. OK, well at least she is not that stupid
JD Vance has turned out to be a bad attempt at a Trump mini-me. Disappointing. Rubio has been one of the lone bright spots in the administration.
Which raises the question of how Vance might have turned out if he hadn't been lassoed into the vice presidency by Trump.
Many Dems know that Newsom's record will sink him.
Governor Wes Moore is the new lefty flame for 2028. He'll win the South Carolina primary if Kamala Harris doesn't run.
Antisemitism is part of the Democratic parties platform. It hangs around their neck, so they have nothing to say to JD. If Americans vote in Newsom, with his record, then Weimar is here.
Opposition to the state of Israel's actions and policies is not antisemitism. Can we please drop that tired canard?
Oh please, spare me the propaganda. We’ve seen the Jew hate from the Left. The violence against Jews is acceptable to Leftists. October 7th is why the war happened. Nie Wieder.
Where did I say that antisemitism was only found on the Right? I certainly did as I know better.
But what I said above is also quite true: one may criticize and oppose things the government of Israel gets up to and it's unjust and indeed slanderous to say that a person who does so is an antisemite.
Blaming the US for WW2, without reference to Pearl Harbor is the same. Gaza voted for Hamas and support their genocidal efforts. 10/7 is Pearl Harbor. The Left has been shouting “death to the Jews” since then. Democrats have antisemitism hanging around their necks. They don’t hide it.
While I am not Catholic, I do think the Catholic Church's "Just War" theory is a good way of looking at things. And that requires not only a just cause but just behavior in war.
Both Left and Right suffer the infection of antisemitism.
Speaking of canards, and to your point, I think that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it just might be a duck.
JD is not antisemitic.
Plain silly. Tucker is no more antisemitic than you are black.
These gaslighters calling Tucker antisemitic are so tiresome.
And yet, Petey, you are somehow never able to respond to the specific examples we give of Tucker's dubious behavior and statements.
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I'm sure Tucker appreciates your subscriptions to his various grifts. Without loyal subscribers like you, the trust-fund populist would only have three vacation homes instead of four.
This is from Carlson's interview with Fuentes. It is indeed a pushback:
"Well, my read on Joe Kent was, he's totally sincere. He, like me, has always been committed to separating out foreign policy views from ethnicity, not because... Obviously, I'm denounced as an anti-Semite every day. I don't really care what ADL thinks of me, but my Christian faith tells me that there's no such thing as blood guilt, and virtue or sin is not inherited. It's not a feature of DNA. So every person must be assessed individually as God assesses each person individually. And that's like a foundational view. I always thought it's great to criticize and question our relationship with Israel because it's insane and it hurts us. We get nothing out of it. I completely agree with you there. But the second you're like, well, actually, it's the Jews. First of all, it's against my Christian faith. I just don't believe that and I never will, period."
Tucker frequently platforms people who spew antisemitic nonsense and never pushes back. How, Tony, should we interpret Tucker's behavior here?
How? Simple. In open and frank dialogue. If you're afraid of that, then you're not very confident in or articulate about your own beliefs. And there's no "behavior". That's like saying my son's behavior is in playing soccer. What seems obvious is that you don't like Tucker or his opinions, and so you're willing to write him off. That's somewhat cowardly.
Is 'open and frank dialogue' some euphemism for 'spewing bullshit'? I get it - trying to defend losers like Darryl Cooper and Nick Fuentes is something I would definitely take a pass on too. Then again, I also wouldn't be simping for the loser who did fawning interviews with these two. Or is that also cowardly?
Do we need an "open and frank" dialogue with antisemities? Gee, maybe we should have one with people who think the Earth is flat too.
You're full of crap. Qatarlson hates Jews with a evil passion.
That’s an intelligent reply. Maybe you should man up and
back it up, if you’re capable.
“Nick Fuentes is one of the most insightful political thinkers in the country.”
That interview alone is all about Jew hatred. There's no defense. Couple that with the fact that he swallows the mic when the subject of Christian persecution comes up. Ever since he started taking Qatari money ..... ALLEGEDLY ..... he has stopped talking about the waves of muslim Migrants destroying Europe and adamantly refuses to talk about the thousands of Christians slaughtered in Nigeria. All he cares about is criticizing Israel and the Americans who support its right to exist and defend itself.
He is beyond being just a Mitläufer.
C'mon, Tony, why don't you answer the examples that Nigel presented below. Seems like you're missing out on an opportunity to 'man up' here.
I can't believe these cats willfully deny this. As far as I can see Carlson blames da Jooz for his ouster from Fox and wants to get his own back. So he's unstable too.
He doesn't have the killer gene, or isn't willing to use it. Nixon had it. For Christ's sake Eisenhower had it.
Newson is an effective campaigner. He just looks good in commercials. He will do well on the two coasts. Will he play well in the Mississippi river drainage? Unknown at this time.
We live in a 47-47 nation. So Newsom and Vance will be fighting for the middle vote in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
That's about the size of it. There is still time for JD to turn it around, but not much. Rubio's performance in Munich is one more nail in Vance's coffin.
Vance will be nominated. His problem is that Trump would be reluctant to recuse himself from 2028 politics.
Normal people stopped caring about Tucker Carlson as soon as he lost his Fox News show. Carlson is old news, he gets a bump in views when he brings on people like Fuentes because they have fans who watch to see him. Otherwise he just doesn't matter.
Vance isn't going to sit back and allow the Democrats to pummel him anyway. The man's a notorious hothead who came from one of the roughest places in America and survived having and addict for a mother. He's not going to let them push him around without firing back. If the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate Newsom, the man's got thousands of hours of ugly imagery from California for attack ads.
The Democrats are riddled with antisemites now anyway. If they try this they're going to have to explain what "From the center to the sea" means. Good luck with that.
At best this is a pipe dream of yours, At worst you're just trying to find an angle to kill any enthusiasm for Vance. Well you're going to have to do a LOT better than this nonsense.
If he doesn't preemptively dump Tucker, he will lose. He does not have the "it" that Trump has, and he cannot appeal to suburban voters who will decide the election. He is viewed as strange and off-putting.
Rubio can win back many of the suburbs. He may lose some of the hard-core MAGA crew, but his loyalty to Trump will keep enough of them, and he will retain more hispanics than Vance could ever hope to attract. Besides, the hard-core MAGA crew will not turn out for Vance anyway - they're Trump only.
Tucker is a very niche interest. You may not be willing to accept that, but the world moved on.
Vance wrote a bestseller that became a movie about his own life. Not so sure about that supposed lack of "It" He beat both the Republican establishment (which thought amongst other things that not being sufficiently supportive of Ukraine was going to to turn off voters) and then the Democrats to win his senate seat. This isn't a blood red state where anyone with an R next to their name wins.
I went through this business with Trump back in 2016 too. All the "he's not going to win"" he can't win", "Hillary is going to wipe the floor with him" etc from Republicans. Jeb was supposed to be the one that was going to beat Clinton thanks to how gosh darn attractive he was going to be to the mythical suburban voter.
I said the same thing to JPM. Once you start in on this nonsense it's like being at a party where a person pulls out a guitar and makes that oh so earnest face before you hear the fist few notes of Imagine and you think "Oh God help us, not this AGAIN"
One thing I’ve come to appreciate more and more lately is the Butlerian Jihad.
AI is utterly dependent on cheap electricity and oceans of water. Maybe it will get too expensive. Something can be technologically possible and yet too expensive.
A tantrum from the sun, a mass coronal ejection, could kill AI in one minute or less than a minute. But it would also send us all back into the stone edge.
Well, not the Stone Age -but the 18th century with means that could not support the world's current population. Billions would die, horribly.
There's a drawback to everything.
This cure would be worse than the disease.
isn’t there some sort of circuit breaker one could flip to shut down the whole thing? or a drone attack on the facilities?
There must always be a circuit breaker, on site and off site, and no manipulatable robotics within reach of it.
Further, all these AI experiments show the utter insanity of putting AI in direct control of machinery or much of anything. As long as they merely converse with humans, we will decide what to do with their output. Give them hands and connections and control, its not so much that the machines will take over, as that they will wreak havoc while never really knowing what they are doing. They have no will or consciousness, the way they communicate is moving electrons around in patterns that humans interpret in light of the way humans think and programmed them. But those electrons will manipulate machines, if humans devise machines that respond to the electronic stimuli generated by AI.
Excellent reference - full marks!
But there is not an accompanying School of Mentats.
The Atlantic piece is a nice birthday drop, Rod! Hope you feel better soon and are able to enjoy an alternate birthday soiree. Mine's in a couple weeks and thus almost always falls during Lent. :-/
That just means you get a personal feast day!
I admit that this is what I do, as another Lent birthday.
You and Rob G could collaborate on an article working out the various permutations of how your birthdays interact with the Triodion.
I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but I was taking a deeper dive into using AI the other day, based on the piece that was written by a software engineer a couple of days ago. What I found was that it is no longer just a glorified search engine or autocomplete, but is now capable of making inferences and deductions quite accurately. If anyone needs me to explain what it means, it is that it is now capable of reasoning as humans do. It is clearly intelligent, but is now taking on attributes that did not seem possible so long ago. HAL is here. Very ominous.
Also, Trump and his circle are just the main act in the clown show that mainstream conservatism has become lately.
And who is a correct and admirable conservative in your opinion?
I miss Ron Paul.
I like him a lot but libertarianism isn’t conservatism
I like (what I know of) Josh Hawley.
Encourage you all to carefully re-watch all two hours and fifteen minutes of Kubrick's, "2001", of which the central player is a malevolent, out-of-control AI: avant la lettre! "Open the pod bay door, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that". Also for those familiar with the Old Testament and Hebraic theology, the descent from Mt. Sinai of the Ten Commandments (considered by orthodox Judaism to encompass the entirety of Jewish law, including the admirable "Noahide" components applicable to gentiles!) with its absolutely transformative and elevating powers is maybe what the monolith is all about? I'm hardly alone in thinking that. At minimum, we should have the hardware to be able to unplug, one by one, the memory banks. "Daisy, Daisy, I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you..."
Re: he entirety of Jewish law, including the admirable "Noahide" components applicable to gentiles!
Which laws are a myth concocted by rabbis to explain the Gentile relationship with Yawheh, something the ancient Jews figured basically did not exist.
If you believe this, you need to read the book again, much more carefully.
Nothing in the Bible points to any "Noachide laws". Chapter and verse where they are enumerated if you disagree. (Note: I am not denying that moral precepts apply to all of us-- of course they do. Just that there were any specific commandments stated in Scripture and announced to all mankind rather than the Mosaic Law addressed to the Jews)
Many, many elaborations upon + detailed exegeses of Jewish law (and indeed, several still-central Jewish holidays, e.g., Purim) were considered, unfolded, and encompassed by rabbinical scholars long after the documentation of both the Old (i.e., the "Torah"), and the New Testaments.
Glad you are so clear, Jon, on what the ancient rabbis "concocted"! Here follows an extract from Wiki on the subject... "According to the Jewish law, non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous...
1. Not to worship idols.
2. Not to curse God.
3. Not to commit murder.
4. Not to commit adultery or sexual immorality.
5. Not to steal, and some say kidnap.
6. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal.
7. To establish courts of justice."
Hal went off mission because of the way he was programmed. Humans gave him mutually exclusive instructions, and he acted to resolve the dilemma. But its true, no such mechanism should be put in control of anything.
The idea that AI is just a high-tech search engine and can't really *do* anything is becoming less true every day.
Culturally we're already cooked, but the heat still keeps getting turned up....
The AI bit reminds me of that show "Person of Interest".
Congrats on the article, glad it is fair to you and happiest of birthdays! Prayers as well for your healing.
One of my favorite parts was when the Machine arranged to have itself moved to a secret location, so it could protect itself from the risk of someone shutting it off.
That show “lost the plot” near the end, if you ask me, but for a while there it was a great show. I used to kid it was like “Touched By An Angel,” only with martial arts and gun play.
Since this one is about you suggest you lose the photo with the nerdy black horn rimmed glasses and change it to the cafe photo, and get a second opinion on that bouts of "mononucleosis". Infectious disease doctor or rheumatologist.
I have been diagnosed by a rheumatologist, in 2012. The bouts recur every couple of years. There are a few people who have to deal with this. My friend and neighbor here in Budapest had mono for the first time in 1991; he's had it four more times since.
By the mid-30s, most people have had mono, even if never diagnosed. They get it once, and they're done. A small number of people -- I'm part of that lucky number -- suffer recurring bouts. The Epstein-Barr virus stays in your bloodstream forever.
I would just be cautious and get checked out. You could have an infection and be septic. Not a fun experience.
Just had a friend go in for a routine check up and they determined he was septic, did a CT and found a tumor. He had to have surgery. Left unchecked he would face died.
Even with a chronic ailment such as EBS, this time could be different.
Ross Douthat's interview with Dario Amodei pairs well with the New Yorker article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/opinion/artificial-intelligence-anthropic-amodei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.L1A.mFa6.C1y8Wp-voJYX&smid=url-share
Agreed the Atlantic profile is outstanding. I am truly grateful for the genuinely fair and honest liberals who are willing to engage with those on the right. Truly, if those folks were in charge (instead of the Woke) we wouldn't be where we are. It reminded me of Joshua Rothman's New Yorker profile of Rod - also fair and balanced.*
In case Mr. Worth or any other open-minded liberal is reading this comment, what I would emphasize above all is how many people (including myself, a born-and-bred blue-state liberal slightly younger than Rod) arrive at these seemingly 'reactionary' views after concluding that actually-existing liberalism simply does not offer what it promises, that is, basic levels of fairness and freedom for everyone, even religious Christians. Many of us were brought up to believe that 'liberalism' simply equated to the guarantee of basic fairness and freedom for everyone, and only turned 'far-right' after coming to believe -- through hard experience -- that liberalism is actually nothing of the kind. I suspect that part of the appeal of Rod's Substack for liberal readers is that they can follow along this kind of thinking as it takes place, step by step, due to Rod's preternatural gift for writing. "When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?"
* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/rod-drehers-monastic-vision
Re: Many of us were brought up to believe that 'liberalism' simply equated to the guarantee of basic fairness and freedom for everyone, and only turned 'far-right' after coming to believe -- through hard experience -- that liberalism is actually nothing of the kind.
The problem with this is that it conflates US political liberalism of the moment with the larger, older tradition of liberalism. The latter rests on three great principles: Religious liberty, government by consent of the governed and a rejection of any sort of aristocracy based on birth. I see no problem arising from those principles, and no reason whatsoever for rejecting them.
The woes of today arise from a different source: our technologies which have enabled all manner of human vice and wickedness.
A slave used to ride in the chariot behind Caesar when he arrived in Rome to cheering crowds after a military victory and kept repeating, "Remember, you are only a man."
That happened for Triumphators throughout the Republic. The General’s face was painted red, like the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, so the slave, and the bawdy songs the legionaries sang, were to bring him back down to Earth.
Life is a strruggle against the demands of the ego. I think Rod has his firmly in hand, but everyone needs a reminder. I admire the guy, but Trump is what happens when it goes rampant.
Yeah, Trump could definitely use someone in his ear reminding him he’s a mere mortal.
"This is the kind of thing that an administration down in the polls in an election year cannot afford to tolerate. Why would the president put up with this?"
Because they are his kind of people, and he would do the same thing if he were in their position.
Congratulations on a good profile. Nice picture too.
And about AI, run don’t walk to Ted Gioia’s latest entry, “All This Has Happened in Just the Last 15 Days...” Wow!
Best wishes and prayers for a quick recovery.
AI was used in the Venzuela operation:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used-anthropics-claude-in-maduro-venezuela-raid-583aff17?mod=djemalertNEWS
I should have posted this a few days ago as to your next book's focus on the 1920's and 1930's-your Weimar world. I just finished Joseph Loconte's second book on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, The War For Middle Earth (the first was A Hobbit a Wardrobe and a Great War). He includes a lot of history of the times and the resistance of both authors to the cultural and philosophical trends. Their first hand experiences of the wars undergirds much of their writings during both wars and well after. Some of that might help with the next book.
"Because we can."
If there was a red button that would destroy the universe, people would stand in line to push it to see if it's true.
The boys would absolutely line up to press the button. Your comment reminded me of a funny story, a few months ago, our music director handed our son the remote to turn off the bells if Mass runs over a bit. So, our 15 year old boy sat there for all of Mass desperately wanting to press that big red button to see what it would do. All the adults around us, especially the men were barely concealing their desire to dare him to press it and barely concealing their delight in watching me glare at him to 'stop fiddling with it!'. I glare at them, too....lol, sometimes, Mass is fun.
Yep! Your son showed great self-control.
He had a lot of help from me glaring at him and the crucifix in front of him 🤣
I'm a button pusher from way back. I'm not sure I could resist the temptation to see if it really worked. I once pushed the "J2" button on a secure telephone and it was answered by a 3 star admiral. "Sorry Sir I misdialed!" (Brave Search for "J2 Joint Staff": Director for Intelligence, J2, holds the rank of Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy.)
Stay in the car! Don’t touch anything!
Started no good story, ever!
Ironically, this is actually the solution to the Chinese sci-fi book The Three Body Problem.
Why put up with this alleged incident from Noem? Because Trump 1.0 was betrayed and burned by the people he hired in his first administration. For him that means you hire who you know won't work to undermine you.
Yeah, but is she worth the risk? Homan is proven and a zero risk.
That’s up to Trump. Whoever he hires will be his man or woman.
They might bring their children to hang out with convicted sex offenders, but it's cool as long as they're loyal to Trump! Inspiring leadership indeed.
Would you like me to point out Democrat sex offenders? Biden showered inappropriately with his underage daughter. He also had a penchant for sniffing little girls. You are good with that.
Actually, I'd like you to show me where I defended these types. Unlike you, James, I don't consider any of these politicians and their lackeys part of my tribe. Ergo, I don't feel the need to defend any of them with hackish whataboutism.
I ask you to do the same regarding your vile comment. It is noted that you don’t like it when you get called out. You have no defense.
Except that people like Noem with their idiocy are also undermining him. Perhaps someone needs to explain to Mr. Trump that you also need to hire people who are competent. Incompetence will wreck a regime just as surely (perhaps more so) than deliberate malice.
Trump I don’t think has a problem firing people. When he hired her she seemed okay. Compared to “Admiral” Levine she is a winner. The media has no problem attacking anyone who works for Trump, no matter how good they are. I tend to ignore them since they have lost all credibility.
Do you think the tale Rod relates above was made up out of whole cloth by the media?
He reported what the media said. I don’t blame him, but I don’t believe the media about anything. That’s the consequence of their constant lying.
Warning: bluntness. If you don't believe anything in the media you are a fool.
Example: If you were down here in Florida or elsewhere on the Gulf or Atlantic Coast would you disbelieve a hurricane warning and evacuation orders being reported in the press and on TV? If so, well, it's your funeral.
Actually if they said the sky was blue I would check.
I think I'll actually buy a real, physical magazine - The Atlantic - for the first time in many years for this Rod piece. Blessings to you, Rod, as we rush into Great Lent.
Two decent articles from the Atlantic... Ever since Covid (and probably before that) they've been just awful. Perhaps they are taking a different editorial route now.
The Atlantic did quietly retire some of their more obnoxious voices a while back (e..g, Ibram Kendi)
Yeah. Me too.
What kind of "secular homogenized continent" has dangerous no-go zones for it's natives?
Big cities often have crime-ridden districts that sensible people avoid. That's been true forever. Augustus' Rome, Florence of the di Medici and George III's London were very dangerous places too and people who could afford guards did not venture out at night without them.
I’m an AntiNoemian.
I see what you did there.
A great formulation. Even though I don’t uniformly oppose her—despite her antipathy to dogs.