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.
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.
No, but he's got a powerful friend in Tucker Carlson, who is antisemitic. If Vance doesn't disavow Tucker's views publicly, the media will use it against him.
And yet, Petey, you are somehow never able to respond to the specific examples we give of Tucker's dubious behavior and statements.
'
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.
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.
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.
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..."
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, Kamala will not run again; she is not stupid. OK, well at least she is not that stupid
Or at least the party bosses are not stupid enough to let her.
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.
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.
JD is not antisemitic.
No, but he's got a powerful friend in Tucker Carlson, who is antisemitic. If Vance doesn't disavow Tucker's views publicly, the media will use it against him.
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.
'
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?
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.
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.
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.
Excellent reference - full marks!
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.
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
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..."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. Me too.
What kind of "secular homogenized continent" has dangerous no-go zones for it's natives?
I’m an AntiNoemian.
I see what you did there.