His Royal Highness, John David Vance, First of His Name, Beloved of the gods, Protector of the Realm, Duke of Greenland, Regent of Alberta, and Master and Commander of the Gulf of America. May his kingdom exist for thousand years under the favor of Heaven!
(I sometimes don't know when I'm kidding anymore.)
More seriously, I wish Trump had put Vance in charge of DOGE. It would be an ideal post for him-- he's competent as far as I know, dedicated to the cause, and he actually was elected to office. Trump probably would hate this, but it would keep Vance on his toes and in the public eye rather than becoming the Invisible Man.
Yes, the DOGE thing is a mixed bag. For Elon to call for the impeachment of a judge who comes up with a ruling he doesn't like is not a good look. Vance gallantly stepped in and is taking the fire now for saying what is true, that it was none of the judge's business, but that's to be solved on appeal, not with King Techbro running his mouth. And there is an undeniable element of performative cruelty in the emails, etc., which I don't think J.D. would have put up with. But who's listening?
Musk is great to have on team, but me too, I suspect it’s DOGE that’s going to be responsible for Trump II’s first major instance of “overplaying your hand”. And it’s going to be collateral damage that becomes obvious only months later.
Trump has the mandate to demolish the deep state. Musk and DOGE are one of the wrecking balls Trump has employed to this end. It is going to be destructive; I'm fine with that.
I find this hyperbolic. WWII level of evil? Huh? Snotty arrogant attitudes , fief-building bossery, and under the table graft are molehills not mountains.
And do bear in mind that about half the citizenry is not supportive of these efforts. You cannot have "total victory" with that being the case. I'll be happy if the stable is swept out and freshened-- but I want the horses to be unhurt.
FWIW, I still don't think you should trust Elon as far as you can throw him. A lot of his anti-wokeness is mainly performative and may be centered around his own interests.
Anecdotal example, but my friend's wife manages finance at Spacex and got us in for a quick office tour late last year. Inside the office, everyone still had name tags for pronouns, and when filling out our security badge, we had a drop down list of 50+ genders to choose from. Keep in mind this is after Trump won and Elon was publicly against the gender crap.
Now you might think "maybe Elon that was outside of Elon's control" but cmon, the guy had enough time to paste pictures of himself in maracas on every rocket schematic as a human scale (how many Elon's high is this thruster 🙄). And he could force the officr cafeteria to sell nothing but bananas for a day because he thought a 20 year old meme was funny that week. But no, he didn't care enough to remove the pronouns or genderless restrooms from the office space.
I predict within 2 years Elon oversteps due to his narcissism and then spends the rest of Trump's term trashing him and the "far right"
Wow. This is pretty interesting stuff. Certainly the squalor of his personal life is off-putting as well. I'd be just a worried about his not being neuro-typical. I detect a lack of empathy and I think we're seeing it in his depredations.
Only Musk could do DOGE. The technical expertise and engineering mindset comes from him and is manifest in his stable of "big-balls" gangster programmers. I love JD but he's not Elon Musk.
I very much disagree. And I fail to see why all Musk's involvement was crucial. Anyone with sufficiently capable staff and dedication to the project could head the project. Vance would be a natural.
Yes, I think Vance could do it. But recall that Musk also has X. He's using his platform to reinforce the work of his DOGE team in a way that Vance couldn't do. No one could. Sure it's juvenile, like a boys high school locker room at times (Big Balls!), but it is very effective messaging that subverts and avoids the usual media traps.
After the long march through the institutions reached its end goal, democracy is no longer We the People, but We the institutions, and if the Trump administration and Congress don’t come up with a way to more permanently reestablish sanity in how government is run, the crazies currently getting the axe will all be back. And probably with back pay.
Seriously, J.D.'s succession is the key to the whole thing. Remember, the Democrats had the White House FOR 20 YEARS after FDR's first inaugural and Eisenhower very cannily decided that dismantling the New Deal was a pipe dream. Which is another reason a very close watch must be kept on Marco Rubio, Teen Vampire.
Yeah, that's not what he actually said, but it completely makes sense that MSNBC would spin it that way in order to sow dissension and that you would slurp it up.
He declined to endorse Vance right now for something that's nearly four years down the road. From a management perspective it makes sense. He wants to keep Vance on his toes, of course, but he also needs to keep the other hopefuls like Lil' Marco, GNoemie, and Meatball Ron's hopes alive so that they'll keep working hard to implement his agenda. If he said upfront today that Vance was definitely going to be his pick in 2028, then the others might start sabotaging his agenda out of spite, Rubio in particular.
“So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early, we're just starting,”
This is a perectly reasonable thing to say and it doesn't pour cold water on "any notion of Vance succeeding him" and you know that.
I like Vance a lot and would like to see him succeed Trump, but we don't need to be taking a "it's his turn" approach. He has to go through the primaries when the time comes, just like anybody else, not getting chosen as a successor by the current president.
But Trump tends to focus on personal slights and ignore bigger matters. As Rod has said before he has a tendency to fight like a gesticulating drunk in a bar fight.
The Daily Mail reported yesterday that J.D. was the motive force behind the jettisoning of Gaetz--no details, just the fact. If that's the case there's hope. To my knowledge nobody talks to Trump like an adult except family members, and now J.D., who must have said something like, "I get it you're pwning the Dems, but if you're going to get Pam anyway, why not save the capital? The Senate will not consent." This is an enormous, courageous achievement.
If the DM report is true, that's a very good sign.
God help and protect JDV. He's the one I'm most concerned about, not because of any personal issues or inability to do the job, but because he has to walk a very fine line in multiple scenarios.
My point is that moralizing over stuff from the 1960s, when a great many college boys avoided service in a war that was obviously asinine, is not a fruitful avenue nowadays. Vance did go to Iraq during our conflict there and he gets zero plaudits from the same people criticizing Trump, which says 0 about either Trump or Vance, but volumes about their critics.
This could have been a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times circa 1969.
If I am not mistaken, Trump graduated from college in 1968. His student deferment would have ended then. By 1968, it had become apparent to the American people that the war in Vietnam was a disaster and that Lyndon Johnson hadn't a clue how to change things. If Robert Kennedy hadn't been killed, he won have won the nomination. He had caught the wave.
People turned to Nixon, and most of the 57,000 Americans who were killed in Vietnam died during his Presidency. It didn't have to be. Nixon could have done what I think RFK would have done, announced with a rather brutal suddenness that our interests didn't lie in the fate of South Vietnam, and that he was withdrawing all of our forces in Vietnam and sending them to reinforce South Korea and Western Europe. He could have pulled it off.
You're obviously very young, and have no sense of the history of the United States in the 1960s. You probably don't know that Lyndon Johnson campaigned for election in 1964 on a pledge not to widen our military activity in Vietnam. He won in a 60/40 landslide. The American people were never eager to be in that war, but when Johnson broke his pledge in 1965, the American people went along with it on the premise that the president knew best. By 1967, the antiwar movement was huge. If Trump did fake his way out of service I find it hard to blame him.
In the last four years you may have noticed what happens to ardor to join the military when young people become aware that the president is a fraud and a drip.
"My friend, who is white, also told me about his son, in college, and how right-wing the kid is. This is the second friend my age who has recently reported that his college-age son and their friends are all-out right-wing. The details they shared indicated that these guys have just had it — Had. It. — with being told by the overculture, and the overculture’s institutions, that they are pieces of crap because they are white and male, and because normal manifestations of masculinity are signs of their unworthiness, even wickedness. So they don’t care."
My son is exactly the same way - and he's not white! He lives with his elderly grandmother and ensures she is properly cared for, doing much of the work himself, which shows he is not atomized. We brought him into the country as a baby, as a legal immigrant, and he is loving the ICE actions against the illegal immigrants. His views on crime carry a strong vigilante flavor. He must be getting this from his peers (who collectively include EVERY non-white category), because they go far beyond the rather mild law-and-order views I gave him.
My sons are all in the trades, after two of them were kicked out of college over covid rules. We are university educated people, but did not have the heart to encourage our sons to go into debt in institutions where there is no financial aid for white boys, to graduate at the very bottom of the hiring pyramid. Instead, they got jobs that pay well, learning skills that will always be needed, and hopefully we'll add business management classes through online classes when they get their journeyman's. There is no "higher education" anymore. But there are disseminated book lists and chats. We're going back to the Victorian amateur, or the Polish "University of the air" i guess. I don't know if the universities can be saved. And so much research has been wasted and subverted. We can't wait for it to clean itself up. We have life to live.
Hmm. Define this right-wingery. I occasionally see young guys who gripe (justifiably) about DEI or the feminization of workplaces-- and sometimes latch onto cookoo-for-cocoa-puffs conspiracy theories. Or worse: guys adopt Andrew Tate sexual morals or outright racist memes. And while my church has gotten its share on young male inquirers overall I don't see any great return to old-time Christian faith and morality. It's almost as if a mirror image of the Woke Left is forming, creating a Woke Right that even shares some basic epistemic foundations with the Woke Left, and has no patience for tradition either.
I’m worried that not enough conservatives/traditionalists are pointing out the Trump is going about all this in a foolish manner. Stacks of executive orders are what got us in the mess. Look at the stuff Biden and Obama signed off on! They don’t stick around any longer than the president and are able to quashed by the other branches. We have both sides of congress…this could all be done in a way that respects the Constitutional order of our country and hard to simply be flipped by fiat. This is all going to blow up in our faces shortly. Mark my words.
It won't blow up if the Republican Congress passes legislation to make this permanent. Everyone needs to turn up the heat on their Republican Senators and Representatives.
Which happens? Congressional action? Or that enough Trump supporters will actually and consistently engage with their representatives? Yes, there is much room for failure here.
I think congress had to be shown that Trump's policies were actaully popular before they would move on them. Most of the Republicans in congress were perfectly content with the status quo, or willing to accept it. Some Republican congressmen from Indiana might see that we're underwritng LBGTQ+ representation in Argentine tv shows aimed at teenagers and shake his head, but what he wants is an Amazon distribution center in his district.
While I dearly hope the Republican-lead congress steps up and codifies into law all Trump's EOs, I think Trump is too smart to follow congress's lead. Rather, he's doing the EO, showing its popular with the people and then turning to congress to codify. Placing congress in the leadership role would have been ill-advised.
Exactly. Trump now is far more aware of the tools of government than he was eight years ago. And he’s apparently using them wisely and strategically. We’ll see how well it works though.
Sure, because doing that worked out so well for Trump 1.0. Go along with all the old hands in Washington. Listen to the old guard like Cocaine Mitch and Miss Lindsey Graham about "institutional norms" and "respecting muh prinzipuls."
F*** that. We've elected Gozer the Gozerian and Elon Musk is the chosen form of the Destructor. Many Shuvs and Zuuls and DEI hires shall know what it is like to be roasted in the depths of the Slor in the coming days, I can tell you.
Trump should always remember how ungrateful Americans are. Danes lost 43 soldiers fighting Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan only to recently learn how ungrateful Americans are. When Americans came crying about their Towers that fell the Danes should have kicked them in the ass.
Trump should watch out with Americans. They will turn on him and start spitting in his face.
But unless EO’s are incorporated into law, they’ll all be thrown out by the next Democratic administration. Which could take awhile if the Democrats don’t get their act together, but eventually there will be a Democratic Congress & president. They may figure out how they managed to alienate their base & not put all the weird stuff back but that’s a big maybe.
As I've said over and over, Trump is at heart an autocrat. This seems totally obvious to me. He thinks that once he's boss, whatever he says should happen must happen, and if it doesn't, it's intolerable insubordination, and somebody needs to be fired. The gamble in voting for him was always that our institutions would still be sound enough to keep his id in check. Time will tell whether that works out.
You are confusing “autocrat” with “executive”. Trump has never spoken against Congress or the courts as institutions per se, however much he might have criticized specific rulings, judges or members of Congress. He respects the architecture of the government, or has to date. What actual evidence do you have that says otherwise, beyond subjective opinion?
No I'm not. I may be wrong but I know what I mean and they're not the same thing. I hope you're right that he does respect the architecture of the government but I'm not convinced. Does he genuinely respect it, in the sense of honoring it as a noble thing, or does he only submit because he lacks the force to do otherwise? That's a form of respect, obviously, but not what I would like to see in a president.
I'm assessing his personality based on what he's said and done and I may be wrong. I hope I am in fact. Of course it's "subjective." If I say "I don't trust that salesman" it doesn't necessarily mean that I know for certain that he's lying to me. It may only mean that there's something about his manner, speech, and behavior that causes me to distrust him. Is that "probing his heart"? Well, yeah. We do it all the time.
There is no objective evidence that would prove it either way as of now. We could swap anecdotes uselessly for a long time, I'm sure. But in any case you are way, way off in concluding that I'm a "hater" who is only mimicking other "haters." I voted for the guy in 20 and 24 and would do so again, given the situation and the available options. I will be delighted if he turns out to be a much better man than I think he is.
Obama and Biden certainly exceeded their constitutional powers on occasion. Yet they don’t get the same smears. Trump simply has a large, forceful personality, which is a shocking thing for many of the more pusillanimous of his opponents, not that that describes any of the present company. It’s an aesthetic charge, as far as I can tell.
Whether or not it blows up in our faces, it's surely happening because Congress, esp the House, has been derelict in its duties to actually pass laws and otherwise govern in its sphere for at least the past 40 years (under mostly Dem control, IIRC).
OT, but I have begun, for the first time, blocking certain Substack writings from appearing on my feed. A typical story I don't want to reward is an account of Trump's arrest, trial, and execution of John Bolton for treason by military police.
Imagining tight shot on Bolton's "dead" face before his moustach detatches and scurries into a drain pipe, deep in the pipes below the city Bolton remerges in his full physical form and trudges through the darkness, vowing revenge on the human menace.....
More realistically Bolton is probably just going to be working in a think tank and showing up on panel discussions with Piers Morgan and Destiny.
It was enjoyable to watch Hurts take off and embarrass defenders, just like he used to do for Alabama and Oklahoma. Good times. Mostly I was just happy to see Taylor Swift's boyfriend's team lose.
Her getting loudly, loudly booed by the crowd was also quite enjoyable, the perfect pairing with the raucous applause Trump got during the National Anthem. You just know that the production team was waiting for KC to do something spectacular on the field so they could cut to get her reaction. KC was so hapless through the first half that they finally just cut to her near the end of the second quarter to prove she was there. She was absolutely roasted once her image hit the Jumbotron. They didn't show her again for the rest of the game. Glorious.
I've sometimes been for KC in the World Series. When it came to football, somehow I just wanted Philadelphia to take it all. They were expected to lose, until they didn't.
I was actually surprised by everybody lining up behind the Chiefs. After watching the Eagles demolish the 'Washington football team', I figured the Eagles looked pretty good.
I was surprised that Trump was pulling for the Chiefs. I thought he’d want Taylor’s boyfriend’s team to lose. But I guess it was Pat Mahomes’ wife Brittany being a big MAGA girl. Or maybe he just liked their chances. Trump left early, I don’t blame him. It was embarrassing for the Chiefs. I am a Ravens & Commanders fan but I rooted for the Eagles because I was tired of the Chiefs winning. Plus I liked that Hurts & Surianni praised God for their talent. But now I’m happy because baseball will start soon.
Ross Douthat says that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have to get married and have children for the sake of America and that the MAGA right hates the normality that Swift and Kelce bring because they themselves are abnormal.
I wouldn't say that Taylor and Travis have to get married, but it certainly would be good for America if they did. Marriage and child-rearing are cratering in the United States, and I suppose it's the same around the world. If those two get married and have children, I suspect it would have a measurable positive impact on marriage and childbirth rates in the United States.
They don’t have to marry each other if they realize they are incompatible but they should definitely marry someone. Especially Taylor Swift as she is very popular and her having a happy marriage with kids would have a measurable positive impact, as you stated.
Figures that you would be for the bigger and more liberal Philadelphia. Last year you were probably for San Francisco.
Ross Douthat says that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have to get married and have children for the sake of America and that the MAGA right hates the normality that Swift and Kelce bring because the MAGA right is abnormal.
"Bama folks" at large didn't reject him. Tua came off the bench and saved, in a very spectacular way, a very important game that was about to be lost with Hurts. Coaches made the kinds of decisions that coaches have to make and chose to stay with Tua, and Jalen transferred. But Bama fans in general still loved Jalen. And were vigorously rooting for the Eagles last night.
Also, don't forget the following year that Hurts was able to come off the bench in the SEC championship game after Tua was hurt and get the win against Georgia. That was a nice moment in sportsball history.
But after that Hurts made the decision to transfer to OK because Tua had proven to be the superior QB for the Crimson Tide and he didn't want to stay in Tua's shadow. No hard feelings on any side about it, as far as I know. Bama fans still like him. I still do.
I assure you I haven't forgotten it! "Nice moment" is putting it mildly. And last night Bama fans got a special thrill out of seeing Hurts complete a pass to DeVonta Smith for a touchdown. Bama's glory days are probably past for now, in college football's new dispensation, no matter who the coach is, so it was a nice flashback. Sigh.
I think 6 Dawgs as well, mostly on defense. And although this may be bad memories for them, Devonta Smith running down the left sideline is one of my favorite things in all of football.
The Caliphate is as dead as the Roman Empire-- though yes, Christendom spent many centuries trying to recreate the imperial office which is why there were all those guys titled "Kaiser", "Tsar" and "Empereur". None of whom manage to found a true empire, and modernity finally killed that off. I see the same thing happening in the Arab/Islamic world. There's a certain nostalgia for the old caliphate notion (which on a practical level seldom worked as desired in actual practice) but the forces of modernity-- and one of those is nationalism-- cut it off at the knees.
You’re probably right, although any group proclaiming a caliphate gets a lot of recruits. But my point to Rod was that “reform” in the Islamic world tends to go in a direction we may not like.
I think a lot of people really don't understand quite how different public opinion is in the Islamic world. There are tens of millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of Muslims who support the death penalty for apostasy.
I follow cricket and the Afghanistan men's national team has been something of a Cinderella story in recent years. But there's been some controversy since the Taliban regime refuses to allow women to compete in cricket (normally the international governing body would expect countries to support and fund women's cricket). Facebook comments on ESPNCricinfo's articles about this usually have a steady stream of Afghans--who know enough English to comment in English--saying that women shouldn't be playing cricket. It really just shows what a waste of money and lives were spent in 20 years of trying to make Afghanistan into a liberal democracy.
I had a classroom full of Saudis show this look of absolute shock and horror when I told them that witchcraft was legal in the United States. It's a capital crime in their country.
"If you don't like the religious, right, wait until you see the post-religious right." Douthat
Douthat's readers are eighty percent people on the left. He was warning his readers a few years back about the future of conservatism. Christianity is receding as is Christian politics. In Trump's Republican Party, the Christians get judicial appointments that all conservatives of all stripes would wish and nothing more. Trump doesn't even care that two prominent men in his administration are homosexual. Christians can't and won't object.
Trump's people are the anti-woke, normal people who the left hates. He's the owner of the town auto repair shop who watches stock car(I refuse to call it NASCAR) races, loves his grilled steak and hunts deer every November. She's the home-schooling mom with five children who gave up her $80,000 a year job to raise her children in a sane environment. He's the construction worker who works outdoors in fifteen degree cold and resents taxes and hates an establishment who hates him. She's a divorced waitress with three children who doesn't report her tips and doesn't like what the anti-American teachers at her children's school teach her children about how evil George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee were. These people puzzle at why Bud Light would have a transgender sissy as a spokesperson, why the Washington Redskins would change its name even though ninety percent of Indians support the monicker Redskins, why state governments would help a confused child of eleven to cut off his male genitals and be given female genitals, why Aunt Jemima pancake mix would be flushed down the memory hole and why Uncle Ben's rice would lose the honorable title of uncle.
The woke left earned the current blowback. Sadly, I don't know how much of the institutional left will be incinerated by the blowback. I wish it was burned to cinders but that is unlikely. And I don't think the institutional left plans to change its ways. They still have overwhelming institutional power. Harvard and Yale aren't changing. Hollywood isn't going to change. Look at some of the films up for the Oscars. Money-losing celebrations of perversions. The governments of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts aren't changing. They'll double-down as Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker are doing. The Democrats aren't changing. They'll lick their wounds, double-down on their celebration of deviancy, and re-take Congress and eventually the presidency. After all, they won 48.5 % of the vote in 2024 with a lousy candidate. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aren't changing.
What is great about the new Trump conservatism is that it is willing to fight and wants to fight.
I think we should encourage Pritzker, Newsom et al., to double down on all their policies. Particularly the transgender and immigration policies. These policies are 80-20 policies; to double down on the 20 side is to commit suicide (politically).
Trump’s immigration policy is currently popular because he has not kept his word about mass deportations. But he is reportedly increasingly angry at Homan and ICE for failing him. If that is true and he gets his way to be far more brutal and cruel very soon the attitudes of the majority will change. Remind yourself how unpopular his kidnapping of kids from their parents was.
The stupider policies in Illinois get, the more Illinois people (especially Chicago) move to Wisconsin permanently. Most of them are okay; they get acclimated in, but we've got enough already. 🙃
I buy a lot in metals for work. What this has done is turn the two domestic manufactures of brass nipples cheaper now than foreign imports. They were already price competitive. On brass fittings the playing field will not be more even but they are about two different fittings really. An 1 1/4 brass domestic tee weighs as much as a 2 import tee. There is just more brass in domestic fittings. The same goes for galvanized and black steel fittings. As for import steel pipe. American pipe is better but has been more costly. American pipe is better as it is seamless and import has a seam in it. For pex fittings there is only one company that manufactures in the US. The last Trump tariffs made them cost competitive and we stock and buy from them. They now will be cheaper. Glad we already were a good customer as many more will not flock to them. I do expect to buy more and more American and we already intentionally buy American and stock about 60-70% domestic products. The problem is that often there are only one or two domestic suppliers for about 20 Chinese or foreign suppliers
I'm glad to hear this. Unfortunately, I am in electronics and many types of components have zero domestic equivalents (many components are flat-out unique), so all the tariffs are doing are driving up my costs without helping any US OEMs. Any given microchip out there can easily pass through 3-5 different nations (or even start here as a die, but be exported elsewhere for other work) before ever hitting US shores. I keep hoping Trump's team pays attention to this because this is slamming the high-tech sector for no real benefit.
"I know perfectly well that I’m wrong to exult in Trump’s anti-wokeness and not to care so much about things like tariffs."
Well, I wouldn't say "wrong" per se - we care about the things that most affect us. I own a manufacturing business and these tariffs hit me directly on the supply chain side, and harm my ability to export to Mexico and Canada. I'm naturally going to be more interested than you in this matter. Doesn't make you "wrong". But you still should keep a weather-eye on the foolish things Trump does, for they will be his undoing.
One of the things people routinely forget when exulting in the 2017-2019 economy was that the groundwork for the Biden-era inflation was laid... by Trump. His tariffs were causing a rapid run-up in costs on the wholesale market (which consumers tend not to feel for 12-36 months, depending on the end goods), and his outrageous first term spending was driving up prices on the demand-size in those same goods too. Covid obviously made it worse, as did Biden's own economic idiocy writ-large, but the inflation started under Trump, and even absent Covid and Biden, had Trump won 2020 he would have been dealing with it. He got this second opportunity in no small part because the Left was manifestly worse at dealing with it at every level.
So it's good to keep an eye on this. It's not your "beat", of course, so it's not wrong for you to not care as much about it, but it is good to at least keep your ears open.
I have had similar thoughts and you do people a favor here by pointing these things out.. Trump used the threat of tariffs on Colombia to good effect.I think there is an excellent case to be made at least in the short term for tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles but that is largely because of the idiocy of EV mandates in the US which should be abolished. I fail to see the logic of putting tariffs on things we don’t produce or can only produce at a level of cost that is so high it makes no economic sense and far from stimulating growth does the opposite. That is a real potential problem here.
Some tariffs might make sense but I'm not much into tariff wars. I can see tariffs on China, a country that has industrialized at the expense of America, but I don't see any sense getting into a tariff war with Canada, an ally with a similar economy to our own.
"I don't see any sense getting into a tariff war with Canada".
It makes perfect sense when you realize that Trump wants to make economic war on Canada so as to annex the country and make it into the 51st state.
I know that most Americans, including Rod, are ignoring this because they don't take it seriously. Here in Canada, we do take it seriously and Canadian businesses are looking to decouple from the US as much as possible.
"America first" actually means American alone. Good luck fighting off China with no allies.
I don’t think he’d like the result if we annexed Canada. First of all, you’d mostly vote for Democrats, probably. Second of all, that Canadian welfare state ain’t cheap to run.
It’s too soon to be cautioning the overreach of what is happening. Besides, you can’t stop human nature’s desire for justice, which may spill into retribution. I may not like it, but I accept it as life. Why? Because there have been people physically and materially harmed by the hypocritical and narcissistic lying scumbag narcissists who’ve been morally preening and dismissing us irredeemables, while being supported by the very people they hate. There are not enough F words at the store for all the conversations going on right now.
Plus, more revelations are still to come, so it’s too early to say but, but, before it’s all revealed. Because, it may turn out they do deserve all that’s coming. You can’t manage a pendulum swinging back without disrupting its natural motion. Oh well. This is the reality of the crisis turning, and compromise will eventually happen, though I’m more optimistic about the path to get there.
I have been thinking for a couple of weeks that if Rod were not still in a state of induced euphoria, he would be starting to feel the first cold breeze of horror and doubt on the back of his neck. But, as he often does, Rod has laid that out for himself, and for us, with unsparing honesty. Still, he does remain in a state of euphoria.
I'm finding the right words to explain to a Missionary Baptist pastor I've known for years that I am happy to see DEI die. It will probably be a bit of a shock. But silence can sometimes be taken for consent, and can therefore be a lie. Trump is primarily a destructive force. Neither he nor Vance are capable of building something sustainable, although I think Vance is motivated to try. But a lot of traditional Democratic voters are chattering about what the party needs for a comeback. Its beyond that point. We need to be talking about what new and very different alternatives can rise to fill the vacuum Trump is creating, a vacuum that is in some ways salutary, but far from all of it.
Still, there will come a day when Rod looks back on the sheer enthusiasm of his support for Trump this time around the same way he looks back on his blind support for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
LOL. As if those who disagree with you don't read or know things. And as if we did not already have four years of this president. Your complete denial and inability to confront the issue objectively and get past your prissy distaste is not "knowing" things, never mind "observation."
I don't know that I would term Vance as a destructive force. We have't seen him in action on his own. Trump however is just the (Chinese version of) the Monkey King.
The Monkey King is a mythical figure who runs around creating chaos to spite the gods. Buddhist moralists see him as example of life lived by the basest desires. Chairman Mao liked to claim himself as the Monkey King because he was tearing down capitalism and imperialism. And we all know of Mao's colossal death toll and the damage he did the venerable old culture of China.
That Trump is very good at destruction, and with much Sturm und Drang in which he prides himself. He is far inferior when it comes to repairing things. or building anew. See: Ronald Reagan as someone who did do a good job at repairing and building (no, I do not mean to deify him-- he was mortal and made mistakes too)
I have a busy afternoon coming up so please excuse me if I don't get back here till much later.
I have been to NYC exactly once-- in the fall of Y2K. I wanted to go back in spring of 2020 to visit St Patrick's as I was about to write an important scene in my fiction that takes place there and I wanted to get the ambiance and detail right,. Well, we all know what happened then-- I had to content myself with virtual tours of the cathedral.
I didn't know you wrote fiction, Jon. Are you published? Can you share any of your work?
For me I've been to St. Patrick's as a tourist numerous times, but never as a practicing Catholic. I am looking forward to going to Mass with my wife (who gets baptized at Easter) there in the near future!
“Still, there will come a day when Rod looks back on the sheer enthusiasm of his support for Trump this time around the same way he looks back on his blind support for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Yes, I’ve been thinking this as well. Were it not their people in power, I suspect that Rod and a lot of folks here would be appalled at what anti-democratic policies are being implemented. This is not how a president acts. He wants to be king, and congress seems willing to treat him as such. We are but one step away from the courts have made their decision, now let them enforce it.
I don't see what is "anti-democratic" about running on a platform of reform and then implementing those reforms as rapidly as possible. The majority voted for this version of Trump.
There is this little detail called the Constitution of the United States of America. Conservatives used to admire the way it restrains the exercise of state power, and allocates specific delegated powers. Actually, liberals used to find a lot to admire about that too. Both have fallen off the wagon.
Good job channeling your inner Catturd. Is there an actual argument in there or is it just "If Trump doesn't get his way, then the Constitution is nothing more than a suicide pact!"
Depends on what you mean by "doesn't get his way." If it is by lawful means, that's one thing. If it is by Deep State chicanery and Dem douchbaggery, that's something else.
And if it means continued economic, social and political destruction of our nation, practically indistinguishable from what our enemies seek to do to us, that's a suicide pact.
Economic incompetence in pursuit of failed theories? Check. Government slave to cultural decadence? Check. Foreign invasion? Check. Government in service to foreign interests in place of the people it is honor bound to serve? Check, check, and check.
As Justice Scalia said so well, the constitution does not mean what we would like it to mean, it means what it says. No branch or agency of the federal government has any right to exist or exercise any power at all except insofar as it is granted by the Constitution.
The executive has long had the power to create agencies and bureaus. And DOGE is helping with an essential function, finding corruption, getting rid of waste, etc.
Do you have a problem with that, uncovering and dealing with all those things?
Wishing for the same outcomes from the Trump administration that we got from Bush Jr and those foreign wars feels unseemly to me. Why? So you can say: "I was right all along! See what supporting Trump has brought?"
The analogy is a bit larger than that -- although Trump's bombastic statements about Gaza, including his latest declaration that Palestinians (who haven't left) have no right to return there might qualify. I was thinking that eventually Rod will realize that he has been swept up in a rush of emotion to endorse a program and government that by and large, with 20/20 hindsight, he will abhor. He didn't become a fan of ISIS in order to criticize Bush admin policy, and he need not accommodate to DEI in order to recognize that Trump is doing his best to destroy constitutional government.
I think it is not for the “I told you so” but rather for “see - God and justice do exist”. Here we have a man who spent his life bragging, lying, grabbing p*ssies, cheating on all three of his wives, fantasizing about having sex with his daughter, walking in on underage beauty pageant contestants, calling my fellow Catholics “rapists” and being the embodiment of the sin of Pride. He famously never asked God for forgiveness. Why? Because he thought that he is God.
Such a man shouldn’t meet his punishment only after death. It would be demoralizing for everyone. It would teach people that it is OK to behave like that. That is why he must be punished while he is still alive, here, on earth.
The Bible is very clear that evil men can flourish in this life and good people suffer. If you actually were familliar with the Bible and the moral teachings of your church you would know this.
"What I do care about is … America is back! Watch Jon Batiste’s great New Orleans rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and how the crowd reacted when the camera rested on El Trumpo Magnifico."
When Bud Grant was the Mn. Vikings coach he had the team practice standing for national anthem
Does anyone have a subscription to the Atlantic? There is a newsworthy article written by David Frum: If Liberals won't enforce borders then Facists will. (Don't have a subscription but I have heard people talk about it)
Seems to make the point that Rod and others have touched on: that if left leaning govenments refuse to protect borders because they deem it racist, yet citizens want it closed, then voters will turn to facists to protect them. I think this goes to the heart of the "vibe shift" the Trump 2.0 has ushered in. Everyone is fed up with the lecturing, and the open borders, the crime.
I would say he's right in that, though I don't expect President Trump to push illegal border crossers back across the border with a fleet of bulldozers, if he did do that I really wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
Walk like a man, with Franki Valli's horrifying screech. Just remember, you're not a man until you see yourself on the TV. I've run accross so many awful people in my lifetime that I will never, ever, ever, look outside of myself for authoritative meaning. The left says boo and the right wets its panties in fear. Maybe God will return and beat the ever lovin' stuffin' out of them. They deserve it.
"By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.”"
All you had to do is watch the Super Bowl commercials to see that the "Upper-middle-class men" learned their lesson well.
What will replace it? I'm not worrying.
His Royal Highness, John David Vance, First of His Name, Beloved of the gods, Protector of the Realm, Duke of Greenland, Regent of Alberta, and Master and Commander of the Gulf of America. May his kingdom exist for thousand years under the favor of Heaven!
(I sometimes don't know when I'm kidding anymore.)
LOL! Of course I don't believe it for one second, but very well played!
More seriously, I wish Trump had put Vance in charge of DOGE. It would be an ideal post for him-- he's competent as far as I know, dedicated to the cause, and he actually was elected to office. Trump probably would hate this, but it would keep Vance on his toes and in the public eye rather than becoming the Invisible Man.
Yes, the DOGE thing is a mixed bag. For Elon to call for the impeachment of a judge who comes up with a ruling he doesn't like is not a good look. Vance gallantly stepped in and is taking the fire now for saying what is true, that it was none of the judge's business, but that's to be solved on appeal, not with King Techbro running his mouth. And there is an undeniable element of performative cruelty in the emails, etc., which I don't think J.D. would have put up with. But who's listening?
Musk is great to have on team, but me too, I suspect it’s DOGE that’s going to be responsible for Trump II’s first major instance of “overplaying your hand”. And it’s going to be collateral damage that becomes obvious only months later.
Trump has the mandate to demolish the deep state. Musk and DOGE are one of the wrecking balls Trump has employed to this end. It is going to be destructive; I'm fine with that.
"I'm prepared to support carpet-bombing and nuking their cities in order to achieve victory."
Even if meant metaphorically, this is a psychotic attitude. Keep worshipping your orange calf, dude.
I find this hyperbolic. WWII level of evil? Huh? Snotty arrogant attitudes , fief-building bossery, and under the table graft are molehills not mountains.
And do bear in mind that about half the citizenry is not supportive of these efforts. You cannot have "total victory" with that being the case. I'll be happy if the stable is swept out and freshened-- but I want the horses to be unhurt.
FWIW, I still don't think you should trust Elon as far as you can throw him. A lot of his anti-wokeness is mainly performative and may be centered around his own interests.
Anecdotal example, but my friend's wife manages finance at Spacex and got us in for a quick office tour late last year. Inside the office, everyone still had name tags for pronouns, and when filling out our security badge, we had a drop down list of 50+ genders to choose from. Keep in mind this is after Trump won and Elon was publicly against the gender crap.
Now you might think "maybe Elon that was outside of Elon's control" but cmon, the guy had enough time to paste pictures of himself in maracas on every rocket schematic as a human scale (how many Elon's high is this thruster 🙄). And he could force the officr cafeteria to sell nothing but bananas for a day because he thought a 20 year old meme was funny that week. But no, he didn't care enough to remove the pronouns or genderless restrooms from the office space.
I predict within 2 years Elon oversteps due to his narcissism and then spends the rest of Trump's term trashing him and the "far right"
Wow. This is pretty interesting stuff. Certainly the squalor of his personal life is off-putting as well. I'd be just a worried about his not being neuro-typical. I detect a lack of empathy and I think we're seeing it in his depredations.
Only Musk could do DOGE. The technical expertise and engineering mindset comes from him and is manifest in his stable of "big-balls" gangster programmers. I love JD but he's not Elon Musk.
I very much disagree. And I fail to see why all Musk's involvement was crucial. Anyone with sufficiently capable staff and dedication to the project could head the project. Vance would be a natural.
Yes, I think Vance could do it. But recall that Musk also has X. He's using his platform to reinforce the work of his DOGE team in a way that Vance couldn't do. No one could. Sure it's juvenile, like a boys high school locker room at times (Big Balls!), but it is very effective messaging that subverts and avoids the usual media traps.
I don't know about all the fancy titles, but if Trump 2 goes as well as it seems it will, I would say it is highly likely.
Especially if the Dems refuse to break with the madness they are currenly enveloped.
Well, hopefully a massive bloc of voters will break with the Dems. We need something totally new to fill the vacuum Trump is creating.
Whatever alternative that is is going to need all the help it can get to get past the institutional jougernaut that is the Democrat leadership.
That seems to be the case. They think they'll win if they double down. Sad, really.
After the long march through the institutions reached its end goal, democracy is no longer We the People, but We the institutions, and if the Trump administration and Congress don’t come up with a way to more permanently reestablish sanity in how government is run, the crazies currently getting the axe will all be back. And probably with back pay.
Comic books can be fun.
LOL!
Seriously, J.D.'s succession is the key to the whole thing. Remember, the Democrats had the White House FOR 20 YEARS after FDR's first inaugural and Eisenhower very cannily decided that dismantling the New Deal was a pipe dream. Which is another reason a very close watch must be kept on Marco Rubio, Teen Vampire.
“Which is another reason a very close watch must be kept on Marco Rubio, Teen Vampire.”
A close watch to help him win, of course?
I think it's the opposite Theodore has in mind.
"Seriously, J.D.'s succession is the key to the whole thing."
And it's a plan totally endorsed by Trump... oh wait. Narcissist gotta narcissist.
Angling for a post as courtier are you?
Hilarious.
Don't hate the player! Hate the game!
Classic. I'd take my hat off to you but I haven't got a hat.
The territorial acquisitions don’t impress me (Canadian here),
Alas, Trump just poured ice cold water on any notion of Vance succeeding him.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-shuts-down-idea-of-jd-vance-as-his-successor-for-president-in-blow-for-vp/ar-AA1yMlSP?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=b5e6633ad03b410684d5cc52c56d6805&ei=18
Yeah, that's not what he actually said, but it completely makes sense that MSNBC would spin it that way in order to sow dissension and that you would slurp it up.
He declined to endorse Vance right now for something that's nearly four years down the road. From a management perspective it makes sense. He wants to keep Vance on his toes, of course, but he also needs to keep the other hopefuls like Lil' Marco, GNoemie, and Meatball Ron's hopes alive so that they'll keep working hard to implement his agenda. If he said upfront today that Vance was definitely going to be his pick in 2028, then the others might start sabotaging his agenda out of spite, Rubio in particular.
“So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early, we're just starting,”
This is a perectly reasonable thing to say and it doesn't pour cold water on "any notion of Vance succeeding him" and you know that.
I like Vance a lot and would like to see him succeed Trump, but we don't need to be taking a "it's his turn" approach. He has to go through the primaries when the time comes, just like anybody else, not getting chosen as a successor by the current president.
Trump might not be Romantic but he's a fighter. Sort of like Andrew Jackson, Stonewall Jackson and the Outlaw Josie Wales all rolled up into one.
That's big-R Romantic! It's not a dirty word.
But Trump tends to focus on personal slights and ignore bigger matters. As Rod has said before he has a tendency to fight like a gesticulating drunk in a bar fight.
The Daily Mail reported yesterday that J.D. was the motive force behind the jettisoning of Gaetz--no details, just the fact. If that's the case there's hope. To my knowledge nobody talks to Trump like an adult except family members, and now J.D., who must have said something like, "I get it you're pwning the Dems, but if you're going to get Pam anyway, why not save the capital? The Senate will not consent." This is an enormous, courageous achievement.
Vance, with his formation in business as well as law, is uniquely qualified to be trusted by Trump.
If the DM report is true, that's a very good sign.
God help and protect JDV. He's the one I'm most concerned about, not because of any personal issues or inability to do the job, but because he has to walk a very fine line in multiple scenarios.
Dana
Did they all have bone spurs too?
Oooooh, that's so edgy.
Trump is a coward who faked bone spurs to dodge the draft.
And thankfully he did avoid that pointless quagmire. He’s more useful now than as a name on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.
And not everybody's father could get them a spot in the Air National Gaurd.
My point is that moralizing over stuff from the 1960s, when a great many college boys avoided service in a war that was obviously asinine, is not a fruitful avenue nowadays. Vance did go to Iraq during our conflict there and he gets zero plaudits from the same people criticizing Trump, which says 0 about either Trump or Vance, but volumes about their critics.
This could have been a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times circa 1969.
If I am not mistaken, Trump graduated from college in 1968. His student deferment would have ended then. By 1968, it had become apparent to the American people that the war in Vietnam was a disaster and that Lyndon Johnson hadn't a clue how to change things. If Robert Kennedy hadn't been killed, he won have won the nomination. He had caught the wave.
People turned to Nixon, and most of the 57,000 Americans who were killed in Vietnam died during his Presidency. It didn't have to be. Nixon could have done what I think RFK would have done, announced with a rather brutal suddenness that our interests didn't lie in the fate of South Vietnam, and that he was withdrawing all of our forces in Vietnam and sending them to reinforce South Korea and Western Europe. He could have pulled it off.
You're obviously very young, and have no sense of the history of the United States in the 1960s. You probably don't know that Lyndon Johnson campaigned for election in 1964 on a pledge not to widen our military activity in Vietnam. He won in a 60/40 landslide. The American people were never eager to be in that war, but when Johnson broke his pledge in 1965, the American people went along with it on the premise that the president knew best. By 1967, the antiwar movement was huge. If Trump did fake his way out of service I find it hard to blame him.
In the last four years you may have noticed what happens to ardor to join the military when young people become aware that the president is a fraud and a drip.
OK.
"My friend, who is white, also told me about his son, in college, and how right-wing the kid is. This is the second friend my age who has recently reported that his college-age son and their friends are all-out right-wing. The details they shared indicated that these guys have just had it — Had. It. — with being told by the overculture, and the overculture’s institutions, that they are pieces of crap because they are white and male, and because normal manifestations of masculinity are signs of their unworthiness, even wickedness. So they don’t care."
My son is exactly the same way - and he's not white! He lives with his elderly grandmother and ensures she is properly cared for, doing much of the work himself, which shows he is not atomized. We brought him into the country as a baby, as a legal immigrant, and he is loving the ICE actions against the illegal immigrants. His views on crime carry a strong vigilante flavor. He must be getting this from his peers (who collectively include EVERY non-white category), because they go far beyond the rather mild law-and-order views I gave him.
My sons are all in the trades, after two of them were kicked out of college over covid rules. We are university educated people, but did not have the heart to encourage our sons to go into debt in institutions where there is no financial aid for white boys, to graduate at the very bottom of the hiring pyramid. Instead, they got jobs that pay well, learning skills that will always be needed, and hopefully we'll add business management classes through online classes when they get their journeyman's. There is no "higher education" anymore. But there are disseminated book lists and chats. We're going back to the Victorian amateur, or the Polish "University of the air" i guess. I don't know if the universities can be saved. And so much research has been wasted and subverted. We can't wait for it to clean itself up. We have life to live.
Hmm. Define this right-wingery. I occasionally see young guys who gripe (justifiably) about DEI or the feminization of workplaces-- and sometimes latch onto cookoo-for-cocoa-puffs conspiracy theories. Or worse: guys adopt Andrew Tate sexual morals or outright racist memes. And while my church has gotten its share on young male inquirers overall I don't see any great return to old-time Christian faith and morality. It's almost as if a mirror image of the Woke Left is forming, creating a Woke Right that even shares some basic epistemic foundations with the Woke Left, and has no patience for tradition either.
I’m worried that not enough conservatives/traditionalists are pointing out the Trump is going about all this in a foolish manner. Stacks of executive orders are what got us in the mess. Look at the stuff Biden and Obama signed off on! They don’t stick around any longer than the president and are able to quashed by the other branches. We have both sides of congress…this could all be done in a way that respects the Constitutional order of our country and hard to simply be flipped by fiat. This is all going to blow up in our faces shortly. Mark my words.
It won't blow up if the Republican Congress passes legislation to make this permanent. Everyone needs to turn up the heat on their Republican Senators and Representatives.
I’ll give you $20 if that actually happens.
Which happens? Congressional action? Or that enough Trump supporters will actually and consistently engage with their representatives? Yes, there is much room for failure here.
All of the above!
I think congress had to be shown that Trump's policies were actaully popular before they would move on them. Most of the Republicans in congress were perfectly content with the status quo, or willing to accept it. Some Republican congressmen from Indiana might see that we're underwritng LBGTQ+ representation in Argentine tv shows aimed at teenagers and shake his head, but what he wants is an Amazon distribution center in his district.
Agreed.
Every word true.
While I dearly hope the Republican-lead congress steps up and codifies into law all Trump's EOs, I think Trump is too smart to follow congress's lead. Rather, he's doing the EO, showing its popular with the people and then turning to congress to codify. Placing congress in the leadership role would have been ill-advised.
Exactly. Trump now is far more aware of the tools of government than he was eight years ago. And he’s apparently using them wisely and strategically. We’ll see how well it works though.
Sure, because doing that worked out so well for Trump 1.0. Go along with all the old hands in Washington. Listen to the old guard like Cocaine Mitch and Miss Lindsey Graham about "institutional norms" and "respecting muh prinzipuls."
F*** that. We've elected Gozer the Gozerian and Elon Musk is the chosen form of the Destructor. Many Shuvs and Zuuls and DEI hires shall know what it is like to be roasted in the depths of the Slor in the coming days, I can tell you.
Trump should always remember how ungrateful Americans are. Danes lost 43 soldiers fighting Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan only to recently learn how ungrateful Americans are. When Americans came crying about their Towers that fell the Danes should have kicked them in the ass.
Trump should watch out with Americans. They will turn on him and start spitting in his face.
Ungrateful? Or obliviously self-centered?
Yet you feel entitled to our protection.
You get many props for this genius Ghostbusters reference. So many props.
But unless EO’s are incorporated into law, they’ll all be thrown out by the next Democratic administration. Which could take awhile if the Democrats don’t get their act together, but eventually there will be a Democratic Congress & president. They may figure out how they managed to alienate their base & not put all the weird stuff back but that’s a big maybe.
As I've said over and over, Trump is at heart an autocrat. This seems totally obvious to me. He thinks that once he's boss, whatever he says should happen must happen, and if it doesn't, it's intolerable insubordination, and somebody needs to be fired. The gamble in voting for him was always that our institutions would still be sound enough to keep his id in check. Time will tell whether that works out.
You are confusing “autocrat” with “executive”. Trump has never spoken against Congress or the courts as institutions per se, however much he might have criticized specific rulings, judges or members of Congress. He respects the architecture of the government, or has to date. What actual evidence do you have that says otherwise, beyond subjective opinion?
No I'm not. I may be wrong but I know what I mean and they're not the same thing. I hope you're right that he does respect the architecture of the government but I'm not convinced. Does he genuinely respect it, in the sense of honoring it as a noble thing, or does he only submit because he lacks the force to do otherwise? That's a form of respect, obviously, but not what I would like to see in a president.
You’re trying to plumb the man’s heart. What actual evidence do you have except all his other haters who say the same thing?
I'm assessing his personality based on what he's said and done and I may be wrong. I hope I am in fact. Of course it's "subjective." If I say "I don't trust that salesman" it doesn't necessarily mean that I know for certain that he's lying to me. It may only mean that there's something about his manner, speech, and behavior that causes me to distrust him. Is that "probing his heart"? Well, yeah. We do it all the time.
There is no objective evidence that would prove it either way as of now. We could swap anecdotes uselessly for a long time, I'm sure. But in any case you are way, way off in concluding that I'm a "hater" who is only mimicking other "haters." I voted for the guy in 20 and 24 and would do so again, given the situation and the available options. I will be delighted if he turns out to be a much better man than I think he is.
I’m with Mac.
Obama and Biden certainly exceeded their constitutional powers on occasion. Yet they don’t get the same smears. Trump simply has a large, forceful personality, which is a shocking thing for many of the more pusillanimous of his opponents, not that that describes any of the present company. It’s an aesthetic charge, as far as I can tell.
The institutes are not sound - they are rotten to the core and that is why people voted for a reckoning.
Whether or not it blows up in our faces, it's surely happening because Congress, esp the House, has been derelict in its duties to actually pass laws and otherwise govern in its sphere for at least the past 40 years (under mostly Dem control, IIRC).
Dana
OT, but I have begun, for the first time, blocking certain Substack writings from appearing on my feed. A typical story I don't want to reward is an account of Trump's arrest, trial, and execution of John Bolton for treason by military police.
Imagining tight shot on Bolton's "dead" face before his moustach detatches and scurries into a drain pipe, deep in the pipes below the city Bolton remerges in his full physical form and trudges through the darkness, vowing revenge on the human menace.....
More realistically Bolton is probably just going to be working in a think tank and showing up on panel discussions with Piers Morgan and Destiny.
What do you mean, that the Super Bowl wasn't an SEC game? Philadelphia had six Bama all stars playing for them, including the best quarterback ever.
But seriously, Rod. This may be your best column yet. Very accurately condenses the full range of what we're facing. Perhaps the seeds of a new book?
It was enjoyable to watch Hurts take off and embarrass defenders, just like he used to do for Alabama and Oklahoma. Good times. Mostly I was just happy to see Taylor Swift's boyfriend's team lose.
Her getting loudly, loudly booed by the crowd was also quite enjoyable, the perfect pairing with the raucous applause Trump got during the National Anthem. You just know that the production team was waiting for KC to do something spectacular on the field so they could cut to get her reaction. KC was so hapless through the first half that they finally just cut to her near the end of the second quarter to prove she was there. She was absolutely roasted once her image hit the Jumbotron. They didn't show her again for the rest of the game. Glorious.
I've sometimes been for KC in the World Series. When it came to football, somehow I just wanted Philadelphia to take it all. They were expected to lose, until they didn't.
I was actually surprised by everybody lining up behind the Chiefs. After watching the Eagles demolish the 'Washington football team', I figured the Eagles looked pretty good.
I was surprised that Trump was pulling for the Chiefs. I thought he’d want Taylor’s boyfriend’s team to lose. But I guess it was Pat Mahomes’ wife Brittany being a big MAGA girl. Or maybe he just liked their chances. Trump left early, I don’t blame him. It was embarrassing for the Chiefs. I am a Ravens & Commanders fan but I rooted for the Eagles because I was tired of the Chiefs winning. Plus I liked that Hurts & Surianni praised God for their talent. But now I’m happy because baseball will start soon.
Go White Sox !!!
My daughter wrote that Tay Tay got the ick in real time. What's the over/under for her dropping Travis by Valentine's Day?
Yeesh, if it's that easy to get the ick, maybe one shouldn't date people. At all.
Ross Douthat says that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have to get married and have children for the sake of America and that the MAGA right hates the normality that Swift and Kelce bring because they themselves are abnormal.
I wouldn't say that Taylor and Travis have to get married, but it certainly would be good for America if they did. Marriage and child-rearing are cratering in the United States, and I suppose it's the same around the world. If those two get married and have children, I suspect it would have a measurable positive impact on marriage and childbirth rates in the United States.
They don’t have to marry each other if they realize they are incompatible but they should definitely marry someone. Especially Taylor Swift as she is very popular and her having a happy marriage with kids would have a measurable positive impact, as you stated.
Figures that you would be for the bigger and more liberal Philadelphia. Last year you were probably for San Francisco.
Ross Douthat says that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have to get married and have children for the sake of America and that the MAGA right hates the normality that Swift and Kelce bring because the MAGA right is abnormal.
Whatever. My wife and I were talking and neither of us could initially remember who played the Chief's in last year's game. We finally looked it up.
Other than the Super Bowl, I don't watch any other NFL games all year.
Is it fair for Bama folks to claim Hurts after so clearly rejecting him?
"Bama folks" at large didn't reject him. Tua came off the bench and saved, in a very spectacular way, a very important game that was about to be lost with Hurts. Coaches made the kinds of decisions that coaches have to make and chose to stay with Tua, and Jalen transferred. But Bama fans in general still loved Jalen. And were vigorously rooting for the Eagles last night.
I’m glad to hear that. He’s a resilient fellow.
Also, don't forget the following year that Hurts was able to come off the bench in the SEC championship game after Tua was hurt and get the win against Georgia. That was a nice moment in sportsball history.
https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2018-12-01/alabama-vs-georgia-jalen-hurts-completes-miracle-comeback-lead
But after that Hurts made the decision to transfer to OK because Tua had proven to be the superior QB for the Crimson Tide and he didn't want to stay in Tua's shadow. No hard feelings on any side about it, as far as I know. Bama fans still like him. I still do.
I assure you I haven't forgotten it! "Nice moment" is putting it mildly. And last night Bama fans got a special thrill out of seeing Hurts complete a pass to DeVonta Smith for a touchdown. Bama's glory days are probably past for now, in college football's new dispensation, no matter who the coach is, so it was a nice flashback. Sigh.
The NIL stuff has put Bama in a competitive disadvantage money wise. I suspect Saban saw this coming and it spurred him to retirement.
I like Hurts too. I'd forgotten about the win against Georgia.
I think 6 Dawgs as well, mostly on defense. And although this may be bad memories for them, Devonta Smith running down the left sideline is one of my favorite things in all of football.
Reform in the Arab World + Islamic values = caliphate
The Caliphate is as dead as the Roman Empire-- though yes, Christendom spent many centuries trying to recreate the imperial office which is why there were all those guys titled "Kaiser", "Tsar" and "Empereur". None of whom manage to found a true empire, and modernity finally killed that off. I see the same thing happening in the Arab/Islamic world. There's a certain nostalgia for the old caliphate notion (which on a practical level seldom worked as desired in actual practice) but the forces of modernity-- and one of those is nationalism-- cut it off at the knees.
You’re probably right, although any group proclaiming a caliphate gets a lot of recruits. But my point to Rod was that “reform” in the Islamic world tends to go in a direction we may not like.
A Saudi student of mine said "Even if we could vote, you probably wouldn't like who we voted for."
I think a lot of people really don't understand quite how different public opinion is in the Islamic world. There are tens of millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of Muslims who support the death penalty for apostasy.
I follow cricket and the Afghanistan men's national team has been something of a Cinderella story in recent years. But there's been some controversy since the Taliban regime refuses to allow women to compete in cricket (normally the international governing body would expect countries to support and fund women's cricket). Facebook comments on ESPNCricinfo's articles about this usually have a steady stream of Afghans--who know enough English to comment in English--saying that women shouldn't be playing cricket. It really just shows what a waste of money and lives were spent in 20 years of trying to make Afghanistan into a liberal democracy.
I had a classroom full of Saudis show this look of absolute shock and horror when I told them that witchcraft was legal in the United States. It's a capital crime in their country.
"If you don't like the religious, right, wait until you see the post-religious right." Douthat
Douthat's readers are eighty percent people on the left. He was warning his readers a few years back about the future of conservatism. Christianity is receding as is Christian politics. In Trump's Republican Party, the Christians get judicial appointments that all conservatives of all stripes would wish and nothing more. Trump doesn't even care that two prominent men in his administration are homosexual. Christians can't and won't object.
Trump's people are the anti-woke, normal people who the left hates. He's the owner of the town auto repair shop who watches stock car(I refuse to call it NASCAR) races, loves his grilled steak and hunts deer every November. She's the home-schooling mom with five children who gave up her $80,000 a year job to raise her children in a sane environment. He's the construction worker who works outdoors in fifteen degree cold and resents taxes and hates an establishment who hates him. She's a divorced waitress with three children who doesn't report her tips and doesn't like what the anti-American teachers at her children's school teach her children about how evil George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee were. These people puzzle at why Bud Light would have a transgender sissy as a spokesperson, why the Washington Redskins would change its name even though ninety percent of Indians support the monicker Redskins, why state governments would help a confused child of eleven to cut off his male genitals and be given female genitals, why Aunt Jemima pancake mix would be flushed down the memory hole and why Uncle Ben's rice would lose the honorable title of uncle.
The woke left earned the current blowback. Sadly, I don't know how much of the institutional left will be incinerated by the blowback. I wish it was burned to cinders but that is unlikely. And I don't think the institutional left plans to change its ways. They still have overwhelming institutional power. Harvard and Yale aren't changing. Hollywood isn't going to change. Look at some of the films up for the Oscars. Money-losing celebrations of perversions. The governments of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts aren't changing. They'll double-down as Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker are doing. The Democrats aren't changing. They'll lick their wounds, double-down on their celebration of deviancy, and re-take Congress and eventually the presidency. After all, they won 48.5 % of the vote in 2024 with a lousy candidate. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aren't changing.
What is great about the new Trump conservatism is that it is willing to fight and wants to fight.
Douthat's point was to tell the Left that it is foolish to demonize the Religious Right.
I think we should encourage Pritzker, Newsom et al., to double down on all their policies. Particularly the transgender and immigration policies. These policies are 80-20 policies; to double down on the 20 side is to commit suicide (politically).
Trump’s immigration policy is currently popular because he has not kept his word about mass deportations. But he is reportedly increasingly angry at Homan and ICE for failing him. If that is true and he gets his way to be far more brutal and cruel very soon the attitudes of the majority will change. Remind yourself how unpopular his kidnapping of kids from their parents was.
The stupider policies in Illinois get, the more Illinois people (especially Chicago) move to Wisconsin permanently. Most of them are okay; they get acclimated in, but we've got enough already. 🙃
That’s bad luck for Wisconsin.
I buy a lot in metals for work. What this has done is turn the two domestic manufactures of brass nipples cheaper now than foreign imports. They were already price competitive. On brass fittings the playing field will not be more even but they are about two different fittings really. An 1 1/4 brass domestic tee weighs as much as a 2 import tee. There is just more brass in domestic fittings. The same goes for galvanized and black steel fittings. As for import steel pipe. American pipe is better but has been more costly. American pipe is better as it is seamless and import has a seam in it. For pex fittings there is only one company that manufactures in the US. The last Trump tariffs made them cost competitive and we stock and buy from them. They now will be cheaper. Glad we already were a good customer as many more will not flock to them. I do expect to buy more and more American and we already intentionally buy American and stock about 60-70% domestic products. The problem is that often there are only one or two domestic suppliers for about 20 Chinese or foreign suppliers
I'm glad to hear this. Unfortunately, I am in electronics and many types of components have zero domestic equivalents (many components are flat-out unique), so all the tariffs are doing are driving up my costs without helping any US OEMs. Any given microchip out there can easily pass through 3-5 different nations (or even start here as a die, but be exported elsewhere for other work) before ever hitting US shores. I keep hoping Trump's team pays attention to this because this is slamming the high-tech sector for no real benefit.
Yes I do hope they pay attention to this. If they don't then he is just going to hurt the country.
"I know perfectly well that I’m wrong to exult in Trump’s anti-wokeness and not to care so much about things like tariffs."
Well, I wouldn't say "wrong" per se - we care about the things that most affect us. I own a manufacturing business and these tariffs hit me directly on the supply chain side, and harm my ability to export to Mexico and Canada. I'm naturally going to be more interested than you in this matter. Doesn't make you "wrong". But you still should keep a weather-eye on the foolish things Trump does, for they will be his undoing.
One of the things people routinely forget when exulting in the 2017-2019 economy was that the groundwork for the Biden-era inflation was laid... by Trump. His tariffs were causing a rapid run-up in costs on the wholesale market (which consumers tend not to feel for 12-36 months, depending on the end goods), and his outrageous first term spending was driving up prices on the demand-size in those same goods too. Covid obviously made it worse, as did Biden's own economic idiocy writ-large, but the inflation started under Trump, and even absent Covid and Biden, had Trump won 2020 he would have been dealing with it. He got this second opportunity in no small part because the Left was manifestly worse at dealing with it at every level.
So it's good to keep an eye on this. It's not your "beat", of course, so it's not wrong for you to not care as much about it, but it is good to at least keep your ears open.
I have had similar thoughts and you do people a favor here by pointing these things out.. Trump used the threat of tariffs on Colombia to good effect.I think there is an excellent case to be made at least in the short term for tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles but that is largely because of the idiocy of EV mandates in the US which should be abolished. I fail to see the logic of putting tariffs on things we don’t produce or can only produce at a level of cost that is so high it makes no economic sense and far from stimulating growth does the opposite. That is a real potential problem here.
Some tariffs might make sense but I'm not much into tariff wars. I can see tariffs on China, a country that has industrialized at the expense of America, but I don't see any sense getting into a tariff war with Canada, an ally with a similar economy to our own.
"I don't see any sense getting into a tariff war with Canada".
It makes perfect sense when you realize that Trump wants to make economic war on Canada so as to annex the country and make it into the 51st state.
I know that most Americans, including Rod, are ignoring this because they don't take it seriously. Here in Canada, we do take it seriously and Canadian businesses are looking to decouple from the US as much as possible.
"America first" actually means American alone. Good luck fighting off China with no allies.
I don’t think he’d like the result if we annexed Canada. First of all, you’d mostly vote for Democrats, probably. Second of all, that Canadian welfare state ain’t cheap to run.
It’s too soon to be cautioning the overreach of what is happening. Besides, you can’t stop human nature’s desire for justice, which may spill into retribution. I may not like it, but I accept it as life. Why? Because there have been people physically and materially harmed by the hypocritical and narcissistic lying scumbag narcissists who’ve been morally preening and dismissing us irredeemables, while being supported by the very people they hate. There are not enough F words at the store for all the conversations going on right now.
Plus, more revelations are still to come, so it’s too early to say but, but, before it’s all revealed. Because, it may turn out they do deserve all that’s coming. You can’t manage a pendulum swinging back without disrupting its natural motion. Oh well. This is the reality of the crisis turning, and compromise will eventually happen, though I’m more optimistic about the path to get there.
I have been thinking for a couple of weeks that if Rod were not still in a state of induced euphoria, he would be starting to feel the first cold breeze of horror and doubt on the back of his neck. But, as he often does, Rod has laid that out for himself, and for us, with unsparing honesty. Still, he does remain in a state of euphoria.
I'm finding the right words to explain to a Missionary Baptist pastor I've known for years that I am happy to see DEI die. It will probably be a bit of a shock. But silence can sometimes be taken for consent, and can therefore be a lie. Trump is primarily a destructive force. Neither he nor Vance are capable of building something sustainable, although I think Vance is motivated to try. But a lot of traditional Democratic voters are chattering about what the party needs for a comeback. Its beyond that point. We need to be talking about what new and very different alternatives can rise to fill the vacuum Trump is creating, a vacuum that is in some ways salutary, but far from all of it.
Still, there will come a day when Rod looks back on the sheer enthusiasm of his support for Trump this time around the same way he looks back on his blind support for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Trump is primarily a destructive force. Neither he nor Vance are capable of building something sustainable,"
Can I borrow your crystal ball?
I don't have one. I read and I know things. Observation beats magic every time.
LOL. As if those who disagree with you don't read or know things. And as if we did not already have four years of this president. Your complete denial and inability to confront the issue objectively and get past your prissy distaste is not "knowing" things, never mind "observation."
I don't know that I would term Vance as a destructive force. We have't seen him in action on his own. Trump however is just the (Chinese version of) the Monkey King.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by Trump as the monkey king?
The Monkey King is a mythical figure who runs around creating chaos to spite the gods. Buddhist moralists see him as example of life lived by the basest desires. Chairman Mao liked to claim himself as the Monkey King because he was tearing down capitalism and imperialism. And we all know of Mao's colossal death toll and the damage he did the venerable old culture of China.
I know who the monkey king was, but was curious what you meant.
It means he doesn't like Trump.
That Trump is very good at destruction, and with much Sturm und Drang in which he prides himself. He is far inferior when it comes to repairing things. or building anew. See: Ronald Reagan as someone who did do a good job at repairing and building (no, I do not mean to deify him-- he was mortal and made mistakes too)
I have a busy afternoon coming up so please excuse me if I don't get back here till much later.
Have a good afternoon. I don't think we need to follow up on this topic.
Have you been to Trump Tower in NYC? It is hardly ephemeral.
I have been to NYC exactly once-- in the fall of Y2K. I wanted to go back in spring of 2020 to visit St Patrick's as I was about to write an important scene in my fiction that takes place there and I wanted to get the ambiance and detail right,. Well, we all know what happened then-- I had to content myself with virtual tours of the cathedral.
I didn't know you wrote fiction, Jon. Are you published? Can you share any of your work?
For me I've been to St. Patrick's as a tourist numerous times, but never as a practicing Catholic. I am looking forward to going to Mass with my wife (who gets baptized at Easter) there in the near future!
“Still, there will come a day when Rod looks back on the sheer enthusiasm of his support for Trump this time around the same way he looks back on his blind support for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Yes, I’ve been thinking this as well. Were it not their people in power, I suspect that Rod and a lot of folks here would be appalled at what anti-democratic policies are being implemented. This is not how a president acts. He wants to be king, and congress seems willing to treat him as such. We are but one step away from the courts have made their decision, now let them enforce it.
I don't see what is "anti-democratic" about running on a platform of reform and then implementing those reforms as rapidly as possible. The majority voted for this version of Trump.
There is this little detail called the Constitution of the United States of America. Conservatives used to admire the way it restrains the exercise of state power, and allocates specific delegated powers. Actually, liberals used to find a lot to admire about that too. Both have fallen off the wagon.
The Constitution isn't a suicide pact, despite what the "muh norms" crowd insists on.
Good job channeling your inner Catturd. Is there an actual argument in there or is it just "If Trump doesn't get his way, then the Constitution is nothing more than a suicide pact!"
Depends on what you mean by "doesn't get his way." If it is by lawful means, that's one thing. If it is by Deep State chicanery and Dem douchbaggery, that's something else.
And if it means continued economic, social and political destruction of our nation, practically indistinguishable from what our enemies seek to do to us, that's a suicide pact.
Economic incompetence in pursuit of failed theories? Check. Government slave to cultural decadence? Check. Foreign invasion? Check. Government in service to foreign interests in place of the people it is honor bound to serve? Check, check, and check.
The day of the Left is done.
As Justice Scalia said so well, the constitution does not mean what we would like it to mean, it means what it says. No branch or agency of the federal government has any right to exist or exercise any power at all except insofar as it is granted by the Constitution.
The executive has long had the power to create agencies and bureaus. And DOGE is helping with an essential function, finding corruption, getting rid of waste, etc.
Do you have a problem with that, uncovering and dealing with all those things?
Wishing for the same outcomes from the Trump administration that we got from Bush Jr and those foreign wars feels unseemly to me. Why? So you can say: "I was right all along! See what supporting Trump has brought?"
The analogy is a bit larger than that -- although Trump's bombastic statements about Gaza, including his latest declaration that Palestinians (who haven't left) have no right to return there might qualify. I was thinking that eventually Rod will realize that he has been swept up in a rush of emotion to endorse a program and government that by and large, with 20/20 hindsight, he will abhor. He didn't become a fan of ISIS in order to criticize Bush admin policy, and he need not accommodate to DEI in order to recognize that Trump is doing his best to destroy constitutional government.
I think it is not for the “I told you so” but rather for “see - God and justice do exist”. Here we have a man who spent his life bragging, lying, grabbing p*ssies, cheating on all three of his wives, fantasizing about having sex with his daughter, walking in on underage beauty pageant contestants, calling my fellow Catholics “rapists” and being the embodiment of the sin of Pride. He famously never asked God for forgiveness. Why? Because he thought that he is God.
Such a man shouldn’t meet his punishment only after death. It would be demoralizing for everyone. It would teach people that it is OK to behave like that. That is why he must be punished while he is still alive, here, on earth.
The Bible is very clear that evil men can flourish in this life and good people suffer. If you actually were familliar with the Bible and the moral teachings of your church you would know this.
"What I do care about is … America is back! Watch Jon Batiste’s great New Orleans rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and how the crowd reacted when the camera rested on El Trumpo Magnifico."
When Bud Grant was the Mn. Vikings coach he had the team practice standing for national anthem
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zfMagMsXY8I/hqdefault.jpg
Different time.
There was no kneeling.
Would that Bud had instead had them practicing on how to stop the run. (MN kid, here, who's heart was broken by the Vikes too many times)
“America is back!” - That’s what Biden said when he was sworn in.
He didn't mean it. He also said "build back better." Whoops.
Does anyone have a subscription to the Atlantic? There is a newsworthy article written by David Frum: If Liberals won't enforce borders then Facists will. (Don't have a subscription but I have heard people talk about it)
Seems to make the point that Rod and others have touched on: that if left leaning govenments refuse to protect borders because they deem it racist, yet citizens want it closed, then voters will turn to facists to protect them. I think this goes to the heart of the "vibe shift" the Trump 2.0 has ushered in. Everyone is fed up with the lecturing, and the open borders, the crime.
The Atlantic? David Frum? Surely you jest.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day & a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile,
David always takes the statesmanlike approach.
Frum can. His parents gave him a lot of money.
He wrote that some years back. He was right.
How is he right? Are you saying Trump is a fascist?
I would say he's right in that, though I don't expect President Trump to push illegal border crossers back across the border with a fleet of bulldozers, if he did do that I really wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
That was written in 2019, before the insanity of Biden’s open borders.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/
Walk like a man, with Franki Valli's horrifying screech. Just remember, you're not a man until you see yourself on the TV. I've run accross so many awful people in my lifetime that I will never, ever, ever, look outside of myself for authoritative meaning. The left says boo and the right wets its panties in fear. Maybe God will return and beat the ever lovin' stuffin' out of them. They deserve it.
"By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.”"
All you had to do is watch the Super Bowl commercials to see that the "Upper-middle-class men" learned their lesson well.