Running Against Ms Harris, Alternative View

Mr Trump's private life has not been off limits in 2016, 2020 or today.  An important questions for Republicans in the 2024 Presidential Race is if Democratic Nominee Harris' personal life should be off limits.  Will the Republicans gain more votes by scuffing her up or by walking past the issue in a dignified manner.  The answer turns on how we view the female voting block.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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YOU DON’T HIT A GIRL

From According to Hoyt, by Author Sarah Hoyt, 25 July 2024.

Here is the lede plus seven:

I’m tired. Maybe the fact that Canada is burning and in the air again has to do with this, or maybe it is the eternal wishful stupidity of the right.  Could be either or.

Unfortunately this means I have a fever, which lately happens when I’m having an auto-immune outbreak.

For those of you who are new here, when I get a fever it’s like when other people are on prednisone.  I lose what little governor I have. , Also, because my head hurts, I become very short on patience.

What does this mean?  Well– The old hands will tell you.

It means I roll up my sleeves, turn the Heinlein picture to the wall and speak without prettifying it for the sensitive souls.  I’m sorry.  But in case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m tired.

On facebook, someone took offense at my “Getting it out of the way” post.  First at my saying that Kamala probably has less recent African ancestry than I do — and mine isn’t that recent.  It’s someone who comments here, but he primly informed me that a little research would have prevented my embarrassing faux pas, since her father is of Jamaican ancestry so, obviously she has recent African ancestry.

Head>desk, repeat with gusto.  He then insisted the “cast of her father’s features” meant he was black.  I know that what y’all are conditioned to think of as “black” reads as “What?” to me, but seriously, the man looks Mediterranean with some English and I checked with people born here.  Also, I’m not going to post my own family photos, but the side that so far as we know (unless that’s the tiny amount of Nigerian in my 23 and me.  Yes, that’s right.  I’m a princess!) has no African blood looks more African than Kamala’s father.  Because, well… Portugal is a very mixed place, but also because what American’s consider “black” is not.

But even so, my contention in making that statement was not to dispute one-drop rules, because frankly who cares, but to argue that Kamala is no more black than I am:  She’s not black American by culture or ancestry.  Meaning that as far as there is a common (and there is) experience among Americans of (some) African ancestry whose ancestors were brought here as slaves, she ain’t got it.  She got made “black” because Joe wanted a “black woman” vice president and it was her or the “real governor of Georgia.”  That was it.  Which is disingenuous.

For those who don't follow Sarah, she is an immigrant from Portugal, having come here initially as a high school exchange student.  There is much more to the blog post.  Read the whole thing.

I take Ms Hoyt's point about is Vice President Harris Black.  When I look at her, or listen to her, I do not think Black.  I think Indian Subcontinent.  I am sure some would suggest I am in some form of denial.  Perhaps I am.  However, in my dillusion I am not denigrating her.  I liked Governoors Bobby Jindal and Nicky Haley and I liked Vivek Ramaswamy.

And, Vice President Harris was mentored, may still be being mentored, by the smartest politician in California, and perhaps in the US, former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Besides the issue of is Ms Harris a Black candidate or a Middle Class "White Adjacent" candidate is the question of if her previous sex life is fair game for criticism.  I think it is disrespectful of her Husband. : Blogger Hoyt thinks we should not be delicate about this, just as Democrats and the Media (and the courts) have not held back in going after Mr Trump's private life.  We are in the big leagues now.

I still wish to focus on policy and Ms Harris' policy record as VEEP, Senator and California Attorney General. : For others, your milage may differ.  The question is, will US female voters clutch their pearls or will they be willing to take a hard 360 degree look at Ms Harris?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Who is Our President?

For John, BLUF:  Sadly, our President is dishonest, not in the exagerated way President Donald Trump is, but in the very marrow of his bones, from early in his life.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Not-So-Fond Farewell to Joe Biden

Here is the sub-headline:

The old boy’s winking Irish charm never worked on me.

From The Wall Street Journal, by Opinion Writer Joseph Epstein, 24 July 2024 at 3:27 pm ET.

Here is the lede plus four:

I’m pleased that Joe Biden has left the 2024 presidential race.  I’ll be even more delighted when his term ends.  Even though the old boy has limited his interviews and public appearances more than any other president in the modern era, I long ago had more than my fill of him.

After more than 50 years in government, Mr. Biden has become the emblematic politician, which is no compliment.  He came into office promising to heal the rifts dividing the country, and instead widened them by his own leftward political turn.  He continues to call himself Catholic yet is blithely pro-choice on abortion.  Everything about him—his ideas, his language, his very smile—seems fake.

Mr. Biden doesn’t lie as often as Donald Trump, but his lies are grander.  He claims to have inherited high inflation and worked sedulously to lower it.  He claims to have enlarged and held the North Atlantic Treaty Organization together.  He claims to have created millions of new jobs.  None of these claims hold up under even cursory investigation.

He frequently recounts uninteresting advice his working-class father gave him.  He never misses a chance to tell you that he lost his son Beau, who served in Iraq but didn’t die there.  No Irishman is ever taken in by Irish charm.  If I am any measure, it doesn’t work so well on Jews either.

So many of Mr. Biden’s sentences begin with the word “look.”  A great many others never find their ending.  During speeches he is imprisoned by the teleprompter; interviews often find him clutching his notes.  When he leans in to whisper what he takes to be crucial sentiments, as if speaking in italics, he doesn’t deliver.  He has managed to seem, somehow, fragile yet unsympathetic.

President Biden can not seem to let the truth be the truth.  He must embelish it, not by polishing it, but by blowing it all out of proportion.  His exageration of the truth is so bad that people are able to easily see through it.  It is blatant and even the best efforts of his Press Secretary, Ms Karine Jean-Pierre, can not sustain his fsbrications.♠

What disappoints me is that my friends tend to trust President Biden as a truth teller and to believe what he dishes out to us.  Otherwise, how do we explain his election in 2020?  In a previous bid for the White House he stumbled when he took Welsh MP Neil Kinnock's life story and made it his own and the trick became public.  But, it wasn't his first act of plgerism.  He seems not to have learned from his time in Law School.  Isn't this something he should have learned in High School?

Hat tip to the Howie Carr Show.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I do not envy the Press Secretary her job.  She must keep straight President Biden's fantesy life and continuiliy provide support his his tall tales.  She is doing a hard job very well.

The Best Line

For John, BLUF:  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a great speech before a Joint Session of Congress today at 2:00 PM.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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‘Iran’s Useful Idiots’:"  Bibi Netanyahu Delivers Harsh Dose Of Reality To ‘Gays For Gaza’ Protesters

From Daily Caller, by Reporter Harold Hutchison, 24 July 2024, 5:09 PM ET.

Here are two key paragraphs:

“For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building, not that many, but they’re there, and throughout this city,” Netanyahu said."  “Well, I have a message for these protesters, when the tyrants of Tehran who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”

“Some of these protesters, it’s amazing, absolutely amazing, some of these protesters hold up signs proclaiming ‘Gays for Gaza,’” Netanyahu continued."  “They might as well hold up signs saying chickens for KFC."  These protesters chant ‘from the river to the sea,’ but many don’t have a clue what river and what sea they are talking about."  They not only get an F in geography, they get an F in history!”

The Prime Minister says Protestors "might as well hold up signs saying chickens for KFC."  Amazing good comparison.

I listened to his speech before a joint session of Congress and it was excellent.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Be Careful How You Fight Ms Kamala Harris

For John, BLUF:  Don't fight the new Democratic Candidate, Ms Harris, by bringing up her past life.  Stick to the policy issues.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Men, This Is the Best Campaign Advice You'll Get  (Ladies, Tell Them I'm Right)

From PJ Media, by Opinion Writer Stephen Green, 23 Jult 2023, 1:00 PM.

Here is the lede plus five:

"No, we’re not winning.  We’re 10 points behind," my friend and Townhall colleague Kurt Schlichter advised on Sunday when Vice President Harris became the de facto Democrat presidential nominee.  "GET TO WORK!"

Fight like you're 10 points down, even when you aren't, is always good election advice.  It is not, however, the best advice you'll get during this campaign season.  Because there's fighting just to throw some punches, even if some of them miss or end up hitting yourself or your friends.  And then there's fighting smart.

On Sunday, Collin Rugg made a perfectly fair comment about Harris.  "Kamala Harris is proof that women can sleep their way to the top," he posted.  "How inspiring."

It's fair.  It's true.  But was it smart?  "You cannot build a successful political movement by a process of subtraction," Stacy McCain warned during the 2008 presidential race, and I took those words to heart.

Film Ladd is one of my two favorite conservative movie critics (the other is Christian Toto, naturally), and he had a gentle correction for Rugg that stuck with me until the issue cropped up again on Tuesday morning.  Ladd posted on Sunday that "From a tactical standpoint men on the right need to stay out of mentioning Kamala's raunchy past" because "women in the know will be more than happy to tell low-information women voters all about it."

"Men watch team sports where valiant men band together to confront the opposition head-on," he added.  "Women love to watch other women tear each other apart.  Just stay out of it."

The Republican Campaign Team, and its supporters, need to act like gentlemen.  They need to be polite toward the opposition.  They need to focus on the policy facts.

Otherwise they will look small and Ms Harris will benefit as a result.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

A Distopian View

For John, BLUF:  Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard takes a look at VEEP Kamala Harris as 2024 Presidential Candidate.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Tulsi on Kamala

From 𝕏, by Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

Here is the post:

Tulsi Gabbard 🌺
@TulsiGabbard

Biden’s out, Kamala is in.  Don’t be fooled: policies won’t change.  Just like Biden wasn’t the one calling the shots, Kamala Harris won’t be either.  She is the new figurehead for the deep state and the maidservant of Hillary Clinton, queen of the cabal of warmongers.  They will continue their efforts to engulf the world in war and taking away our liberty.

Not an optomisatic view, but not incorrect either.

The Republican Ticket is going to need a new playbook against Ms Harris

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

University Indoctrination

For John, BLUF:  We have thought of higher eductioin as being about expanding one's knowledge, but now it appears to be about indoctrination.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Samizdata quote of the day – The American University Madrassa System

From Samizdata, by Samizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts), 21 July 2024.

Here is the lede plus two:

You might be wondering, where does all this come from, can we blame those French thinkers?  Is Foucault to blame?  No, not really.

It’s the American University that has whipped up this dish, and it all really started to take shape and form in the early nineties, so about 40 years ago.  The second generation “thinkers” then were building on Neo-Marxist and Post-Modern ideas sourced from the 60s and 70s, but those ideas would not have had the influence they have today without a second and third generation of thinkers and professors in American Universities that have ended up influencing a generation that has then gone out into the world and redesigned that world along those ideas.  We are all paying the price today.

The right way to think about the American University as a generator and propagator of these ideas is the way that you already think about The Madras as a potentially indoctrinating breeding ground for Islamic Extremism.

And there is more ar the link.

I do think this theory explains univerity student response to the Hamas attack on Israel, back on 7 October.  Not every university student, but quite a few amongst the Ivy league.

One wonders about the future of our democratic experiment, given the ignorance of those being groomed to join our elites.  On thw other hand, Senator J D Vance, and his Wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, are both graduates of Yale Law School and seem to have turned out OK.

Regards  —  Cliff

Boeing in Uncontrolled Descent

For John, BLUF:  A tad sctalogical, but the point is a shift in focus from engineering and flying to management has damaged the performance of Boeing.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Boeing is everything wrong with American capitalism

Here is the sub-headline:

Boeing’s descent is a case study in how American capitalism has become so rotten. Robert Reich explains.

From Nation of Change, by Professor Robert Reich, 16 July 2024.

Here is the lede plus six:

Excuse my language, but why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?

Their planes are literally falling apart in the sky.

At least six Boeing planes have had parts fall off this year—including an exit door in mid-flight. A whistle-blower has accused Boeing of a “criminal cover-up” of its safety failures.

But beyond this one company, Boeing’s descent is a case study in how American capitalism has become so rotten. Let me explain.

I’m old enough to remember when people used to say “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”

But in 1997, everything changed when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas and became the only major maker of commercial aircraft in America. With no domestic rivals, it no longer needed to stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

Executives at Boeing who once specialized in engineering were replaced with Wall Street types who looked down on the engineers. One money-hungry CEO described those who cared too much about the integrity of Boeing’s planes, and not enough about its stock price, as “phenomenally talented assholes.”

It took the Professor a few paragraphs to get to the punchline.  An emphasis on "management' rather than engineering, has caused Boeing to lose its edge as an aircraft producer.  This issue has recently been discussed by Doctor Matthew Stewart, in his book:  The Management Myth:  Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong:  Debunking Modern Business Philosophy.

Here is the link to the Post on Professor Reich's own blog page.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff