Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

One year ago today… “Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory that Biden won’t be on the ballot” (NBC):

Though no incumbent president has declined to seek a second term since Lyndon Johnson in 1969, there is an unfounded conversation among a faction on the political right that goes something like this: Democratic power brokers will intervene at the last minute to replace a weakened 80-year-old Biden with someone else as the party’s nominee.

Let’s go back four years to see what I was writing here….

• Who is the Big Money candidate this year? (Biden got more money and it came from the richest Americans who, of course, became vastly wealthier during the Biden-Harris administration)
• The CDC and our state public health department tell us how to trick or treat
• Do lobbyists support Biden-Harris or Trump-Pence? (photos of the sign forests that people in Bethesda, Maryland and Lincoln, Maskachusetts put up before the election)
• The six-car Donald Trump Express HO-scale train (still available today, now with a 2024 box car!)
• Why can’t people who’ve previously been infected with COVID-19 clean car interiors? (part of the Maskachusetts system for preventing COVID-19 spread in which schools were closed and marijuana stores were open; note that the state ended up with a higher age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate than Florida’s)
• Faith in the Church of Shutdown not shaken by weight gain (“A Boston friend who is about 60 years old recently shared that the 50+ shutdown orders from the Maskachusetts governor had resulted in the loss of her fitness habits, a cessation in her gym visits, a substantial weight gain, and a general feeling of poor health. The shutdown that protected her from Covid-19, in other words, has rendered her far more vulnerable to Covid-19 than she ever was previously…)
• Who has watched Hamilton more than once on Disney+? (same question today! Now that peasants have access to Hamilton are the elites still bragging about having scored $1000/seat tickets? In Denver recently nobody was rushing to buy tickets at $50-250.)
• COVID-19 in the school that shut down to avoid COVID-19 (the teachers can’t go back to work because the students exercised what had previously been considered their First Amendment right to assemble)
• Why can’t Michael Bloomberg run a fleet of abortion buses? (the question is even more relevant today; why aren’t there abortion care buses for pregnant people who live in states that don’t allow abortion care at all stages of a pregnant person’s pregnancy?)

As part of my software expert witness slavery, I’ve been working with some young attorneys. Billing rate for first year associates is now nearly $1,000 per hour, which they admit “is a lot of money for someone who doesn’t know anything.” Those fresh out of law school generally conform to orthodox ruling party political points of view. Abortion care should be provided at taxpayer expense at any stage of a pregnant person’s pregnancy (as in Maskachusetts!). If a respiratory virus emerges, Science requires that residents of the U.S. be locked down and making it illegal for healthy Americans to assemble does not violate what those without legal training might have understood as a Constitutional right to assemble. When schools are churches are ordered shut, it makes good epidemiological sense to keep alcohol and marijuana stores open and allow people to meet up via Tinder and then share a bed.

A senior associate got into the mix and he turned out to be a self-described libertarian. He pronounced “Kamala” the way that seemingly most people did through June 2024. It’s unclear how it should be pronounced, actually. Maybe “comma-la” (from Harris herself?). An Indian friend (not Elizabeth Warren) says the initial K should be pronounced more like a G. Maybe the pronunciation actually is different depending on which accent Kamala Harris is using that day or that hour?

What I found interesting was that a non-Deplorable took personal offense at “Kamala” being pronounced, from his point of view, incorrectly. His plan to vote for Kamala Harris gave him a stake in ensuring that everyone who failed to conform with the pronunciation of the moment was disciplined.

I’ve directly observed similar exchanges a couple of other times. The Democrat explicitly says that he/she/ze/they is being “disrespected” if the Deplorable doesn’t speak Sanskrit properly.

Separately, what if one were to send the following drinking glass to a Kamala Harris supporter?

What level of disrespect would that be?

A recent tweet from the person most qualified to be President of the United States:

This gives me a chance to dredge up one of my favorite stories at the intersection of African and American politics…

Idi Amin sent a letter to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”

(from the book Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators by Riccardo Orizio)

Still in the news, if not the New York Times authorized version, “Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff slapped me in the face so hard I spun around … I’m disgusted by his fake ‘perfect spouse’ persona” (Daily Mail):

The woman, a successful New York attorney, is remaining anonymous, but decided to speak out after Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband, denied the claims through a spokesman.

Emhoff’s accuser, who DailyMail.com is naming only as ‘Jane’, initially declined to comment on the record. But Emhoff’s denial, and his alleged hypocrisy by claiming to be a feminist in media interviews, finally became too much for her.

‘What’s frightening for a woman that’s been on the other end of it, is watching this completely fabricated persona being portrayed,’ Jane said.

‘He’s being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.’

But the second gentleman has since continued to brag about his long-held feminist values in softball media interviews arranged by the Harris presidential campaign.

‘Every time I see Doug on TV portraying the persona of a perfect spouse and non-toxic man, I wonder if Najen is watching too and feeling as disgusted as I am,’ Jane said.

(“Najen” is a reference to the Emhoff nanny who was apparently happy to do a lot of stuff that the wife wasn’t)