1/. Interesting story - hope the Democrats take advantage if it....
Apart from Donald Trump, the basic problem of the Republican Party’s so-called fever — the extent to which it has been captured by nihilists and ideological extremists — is that the party is untethered from any electoral dynamic that might force it to moderate its behavior.
For example, despite the much-discussed willingness of some Black and Hispanic men to support the occasional Republican candidate (mostly Trump), the Republican coalition is still overwhelmingly white and conservative and spread throughout the nation’s rural and exurban counties. In theory, there are tensions within the Republican coalition — the party’s commitment to the interests of the superrich is an uneasy fit, to say the least, with the most downscale elements of its blue-collar constituency; in practice, those tensions are subsumed by commitments to a shared cultural (and often religious) identity.
2/. Tim Walz - what a speech on night 3!
And what a nice person, great story from Rolling Stone on the Governor, with a few clips to watch [again!].
He's super nice, but don't forget you don't get to be Commander Sergeant Major in the Guard without a spine of steel!
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, where he officially accepted the vice presidential nomination in front of a raucous audience in Chicago’s United Center. “It is the honor of my life to accept your nomination as vice president of the United States,” Walz declared to deafening cheers within the arena. Walz spoke in front of a sea of “Coach Walz” signs, and used several football metaphors throughout his speech, which came shortly after a member of the high school team he coached spoke at the convention, backed by several other players from the team. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-walz-rocks-dnc-torches-gop-acceptance-speech-1235085342/#recipient_hashed=fbbe473f5037f7de779a9b352866aaa97ce40dede88d542358cbe645dd211019&recipient_salt=72f9aae92f438bcc1f8948b09959b8992e4c153d9d01266946bf43b0824dab99
Tim Walz full speech - 18 minutes of neighborliness.....with some amazing zingers...
3/. Iran has just released these emails.....
4/. The smartest and most articulate politician we have is Pete Buttigeg.
He's often on Fox News, and crushes them every time, and here's his speech at the DNC. Eight excellent minutes.....
Such a pleasure to see him frustrate a Fox News host.....
And a quick interview with Stephen Colbert.....excellent....2 minutes....
5/. Trump has now taken on Taylor Swift, with AI images of her endorsing him....he is desperate....
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has posted on social media fake images suggesting that pop star Taylor Swift and her legion of fans are backing him in the upcoming United States election.
Trump posted the images, all of which appear to be AI-generated deepfakes taken from right-wing social media accounts with a history of sharing misinformation, along with a message saying “I accept!”
6/. Tom Tomorrow with revised campaign slogans....
7/. You may have seen Oprah's speech at the DNC, and if you, like me, knew who she was
but never saw her shows, she rocked.
What a speaker, just a WOW.....a couple of clips in the story....
Oprah Winfrey called upon independent and undecided voters to support Vice President Kamala Harris on this year’s presidential ballot during a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday evening. The media mogul opened her speech by emphasizing: “America is an ongoing project. It requires commitment. It requires being open to the hard work and the heart work of democracy and every now and then, it requires standing up to life’s bullies.”
Winfrey then offered an example of the “best of America,” squeezing in a dig at Donald Trump’s running mate J.D Vance’s largely unpopular “cat lady” remarks: “When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about a homeowner’s race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted — no! We just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out too.”
Oprah's full speech....an inspirational 14 minutes!
8/. Remember Ben Sasse, the former Senator that DeSantis gave the top job at the University of Florida?
The UF Student newspaper {The Alligator} broke this story about his alleged corruption and murky contracts, and he "resigned".
In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.
Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.
A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.
Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/08/sasse-s-spending-spree-former-uf-president-channeled-millions-to-gop-allies-secretive-contracts?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
9/. We all know one of these....
10/. Got an hour?
This is the DNC roll call with music for every state, played by DJ Cassidy....
Not seen it yet, but it's apparently wonderful.....
11/. Bob Lefsetz is optimistic!
Not his usual schtick, which is a lot of gloom.....
Has Kamala Harris’s campaign ushered in a new era of optimism?
Was the pent-up demand already there, just waiting to be released?
And was Taylor Swift’s Eras tour just a harbinger of a new era? And the nearly overnight success of Chappell Roan indicative of this newfound optimism?
Let’s be clear, there’s been a lot to be pessimistic about. The ’08 crash. Covid. And the hulking giant, income inequality. People thought not only could they not get ahead, but they were falling behind. And they were angry.
But something funny happened along the way, the younger generations detached. This is where Biden and the Democrats had it wrong. They looked on paper and saw what Joe had done, they looked at it as a math problem as opposed to an emotional one. People were beaten down, they were depressed, they wanted a ray of sunshine, ergo Harris’s great success.
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/08/20/optimism/
12/. Only too accurate....
13/. The Star Spangled Banner from the DNC....the best I've ever seen....
14/. I read Heather Cox Richardson every morning, and she really puts the news in perspective.
But this posting is exceptional, about the power driven MAGA movement and its blatant corruption.
The complaint of Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) last weekend on CNN that Democrats are bullying him by calling him weird has stuck with me. As I wrote at the time, Republicans have made punching down their stock in trade for decades, and Vance’s complaint suggests that the Democrats are finally pushing back. It strikes me that behind this shifting power dynamic is a huge story about American politics.
Since the 1950s, those determined to get rid of business regulation, social welfare programs, government infrastructure spending, and federal protection of civil rights have relied on a rhetorical structure that centers “real” Americans who allegedly want nothing from government and warns that un-American forces who want government handouts are undermining the country by bringing socialism or racial, gender, or religious equality. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-16-2024?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=20533&post_id=147807649&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
15/ Elon Musk is extremely dangerous....
Just over three years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.
Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
16/ Trump has become completely incoherent.....good article.....
Donald Trump has never been what you’d call eloquent. An orator, he is not. And yet, the former president seems to be getting even more incoherent by the day, as his latest “press conference” underscored Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at his Bedminister country club in New Jersey, Trump stood before a display of groceries—coffee, cereal, milk—for what was billed as a presser on the economy, one of those “issues” his allies and advisers wish he’d spend more time talking about. What everyone got instead was a series of rants on subjects ranging from his angerat Kamala Harris calling him and JD Vance “weird” to the “bird cemeteries” under windmills to his math-defying contention that “beyond…100 percent” of job creation under Joe Biden in the past year has “gone to migrants.”
18/. Selling your house? There are new rules to follow....
Sweeping changes to the real estate industry are now in effect, five months after the National Association of Realtors agreed to a landmark settlement over the way agents are paid commissions.
On Aug. 17, real estate agents across the country began following new practices that require buyers to sign a form before an agent can show them a home, and may radically lower the commission they ask sellers to pay during a home sale.
For years, the standard commission has been 5 to 6 percent, shouldered by home sellers and then split between real estate agents for the seller and the buyer. That fee, while technically negotiable, was at the heart of a lawsuit brought against N.A.R. by a group of home sellers in Missouri, who said the fee was inflated. The home sellers argued that N.A.R., and brokerages who required their agents to be members of N.A.R., had violated antitrust laws by mandating that the seller’s agent make an offer of payment to the buyer’s agent, and setting rules that led to an industrywide standard commission.
Those rules are gone.
19/. Vanity Fair lists 47 new movies to watch out for this fall.....
20/. Acclaimed as the best TV show ever made, "Homicide-Life On The Street" is now streaming.....
I saw every episode, and I totally agree - it's even better than The Sopranos.....
There is television before Homicide: Life on the Street and there is television after Homicide: Life on the Street.
That’s not hyperbole: the Baltimore-set police procedural, which ran on NBC for seven seasons and 122 episodes (plus the feature-length Homicide: The Movie), is not merely one of the greatest dramas ever to come across the airwaves, it led directly to the “Golden Age of Television” of the following decade.
Today's awful groaner.....
A guy was playing golf one day and he got lost.
He saw a lady up ahead of him and went to her and said, "Can you please help me, I don't know what Hole I'm on."
She told him "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 7; you're on 6."
He thanked her and continued playing golf. Later, he got lost again.
He saw the same lady and went to her again kind of embarrassed.
"I'm sorry to bother you again but I'm lost; can you please tell me what hole I'm on."
She told him, "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 14; you are on 13."
Again, he thanked her and continued playing golf.
When he finished he saw her in the clubhouse.
He went up to her and asked if he could buy her a drink for helping him out.
As they were drinking and talking, he asked her what she did for a living.
"I'm in sales," she said.
He replied, "No kidding; so am I."
She responded that it was too embarrassing to tell; but after he kept pleading to know what she sold, she finally said that she would tell him if he promised not to laugh.
She said, "I sell sanitary napkins."
He immediately fell to the floor laughing hysterically.
She said, "You promised you wouldn't laugh".
He replied (still with tears in his eyes), "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. I sell toilet paper..... I'm still one Hole behind you."
Today's Scottish joke
A Glasgow man phones a Dentist to enquire about the cost for a tooth extraction.
"£85 pounds for an extraction, sir" the dentist replied.
"£85 quid! Huv ye no'got anythin' cheaper?"
"That's the normal charge," said the dentist.
"Whit aboot if ye didnae use any anaesthetic?"
"That's unusual, sir, but I could do it and would knock £15 pounds off."
"Whit aboot if ye used one of your dentist trainees and still without any anaesthetic?"
"I can't guarantee their professionalism and it'll be painful. But the price could drop by £20 pounds."
"How aboot if ye make it a trainin' session, ave yer student do the extraction with the other students watchin' and learnin?"
"It'll be good for the students", mulled the dentist. "I'll charge you £5 pounds but it will be traumatic."
"Och, now yer talkin' laddie! It's a deal," said the Scotsman. "Can ye confirm an appointment for the wife next Tuesday then?"
Today's blonde joke
A man got on a bus with both of his front trouser pockets full of golf balls and sat down next to a beautiful blonde.
The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets.
Finally, after several curious glances from her, he announced,
"It's golf balls."
The blonde continued to look at him for a very long time, thinking deeply about what he had said.
After several minutes, not being able to contain her curiosity any longer, she asked,
"Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?"
Today's ISIS joke
A large group of Isis fighters in Iraq are moving down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a sand dune: "One Marine is better than ten Isis fighters".
The Isis commander quickly orders 10 of best men over the dune where a gun battle breaks out and continues for a few minutes, then silence.
The voice once again calls out: "One Marine is better than one hundred Isis 'S.O.B.'s'".
Furious, the Isis commander sends his next best 100 troops over the dune and instantly a huge gun fight commences. After 10 minutes of battle, again silence.
The voice calls out again: "One Marine is better than a thousand Isis fighters."
The enraged Isis commander musters 1,000 fighters and sends them to the other side of the dune. Rifle fire, machine guns, grenades, rockets and cannon fire ring out as a terrible battle is fought ..... then silence.
Eventually, one badly wounded Isis fighter crawls back over the dune and with his dying words tells his commander, "Don't send any more men ... it's a trap. There's two of them."
Today's Attorney joke...
Arnie Schwartz, a criminal attorney arrived home late, after a very tough day trying to get a stay of execution.
His last minute plea for clemency to the governor had failed and he was feeling worn out and depressed.
As soon as he walked through the door at home, his wife started on him, “What time of night to be getting home is this?
Where have you been? Dinner is cold and I'm not reheating it.” And on and on and on.
Too shattered to play his usual role in this familiar ritual, he poured himself a shot of whiskey, and headed off for a long hot soak in the bathtub, pursued by the predictable sarcastic remarks as he dragged himself up the stairs. While he was in the bath, the phone rang.
The wife answered and was told that her husband's client, James Wright, had been granted a stay of execution after all. Wright would not be hanged tonight.
Finally realizing what a terrible day he must have had, she decided to go upstairs and give him the good news.
As she opened the bathroom door, she was greeted by the sight of her husband’s tush as he bent over naked, drying his legs and feet.
‘They're not hanging Wright’ she said.
He whirled around and screamed, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOMAN, DON'T YOU EVER STOP?!”
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