Wednesday Open Thread

7 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

1. "Truth about JD Vance" Marcy at EmptyWheel.

   Before the Vice Presidential debate last night, I tested a hypothesis:

   Hypothesis: Like Trump, JD is a sociopath.

   Unlike Trump, JD is not a narcissist.

   It’s a lot harder to work that to your advantage in a debate.

   By that I meant that JD lies as much as Trump does, but because his ego is not as fragile as Trump’s, he would bulldoze through the same lies Trump wanted to tell without getting distracted by his own ego.

   That prediction held up. JD smoothly lied over and over again. This is a man who — by description — came naturally to pitching the Iraq invasion. Occasionally (such as when Walz noted that Trump built just 2% of his wall and Mexico didn’t pay for it), Vance seemed to visibly wince about how bad the product he’s selling is. But otherwise he smoothly pitched policies that only work when they come packaged in fear-mongering and hatred. He smoothly claimed that censorship by private companies was a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump siccing a mob on Mike Pence.

   …

   But in a piece explaining why there’s such a real risk Trump will still win, John Ganz raised another reason why, I think, JD whines so much about the media. Ganz noted that consensus media has collapsed in America — and Donald Trump has stepped into that void, cultivating rabid support from the fragmented world of disaffected conspiracy theorists left behind.

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   1. If I were Tlump, I’d forget all about The Purge and Jaws and The Silence Of The Lambs and all those other distractions movies that someone keeps putting at the top of my queue, and I’d be studying The Parallax View very closely; over and over.  Peter Thiel and his MOTU cabal don’t really want that ineffectual moron Tlump in the White House for the next four years, but they really do want JD Vance there.

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2. Walz achieved what he needed make a few hits and remain warm.

   Vance achieved what he needed to an extent. He was nice-ish only needing his mic cut once…

   All in all won't move the dial

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3. I commented last night when the moderator asked JD about his comment that DJT was "America's Hitler." I didn't expect a real answer, and what we got was 99% pure avoidance. IMHO, it was like the moderator asked the question and left the room to get a sandwich while the candidate said whatever the hell he felt like, when what viewers really needed was a good follow-up question pressing him for a real answer. Sorry for the long quote to follow, but it's just to prove my point:

   JDV: Well, first of all, Margaret, because I've always been open and sometimes, of course, I've disagreed with the President, but I've also been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump. I was wrong, first of all, because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record. But most importantly, Donald Trump delivered for the American people rising wages, rising take home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans. A secure southern border. A lot of things, frankly, that I didn't think he'd be able to deliver on. And yeah, when you screw up, when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people about it. It's one of the reasons, Margaret, why I've done so many interviews is because I think it's important to actually explain to the American people where I come down on the issues and what changed.  Now you pointed out to messages from 2020. Margaret, I've been extremely consistent that I think there were a lot of things that we could have done better in the Trump administration the first round, if Congress was doing its job. I strongly believe, and I've been a United States Senator, that Congress is not just a high-class debating society. It's not just a forum for senators and congressmen to whine about problems. It's a forum to govern. So there were a lot of things on the border, on tariffs, for example, where I think that we could have done so much more if the Republican Congress and the Democrats in Congress had been a little bit better about how they governed the country. They were so obsessed with impeaching Donald Trump, they couldn't actually govern. And I want to talk about this tariff issue in particular, Margaret, because, you know, Tim just accused this of being a national sales tax. Look, the one thing, and you're not probably surprised to hear me praising Joe Biden, but the one thing that Joe Biden did is he continued some of the Trump tariffs that protected American manufacturing jobs. And it's the one issue, the most pro-worker part of the Biden administration. It's the one issue where Kamala Harris has run away from Joe Biden's record. Think about this. If you're trying to employ slave laborers in China at $3 a day, you're going to do that and undercut the wages of American workers unless our country stands up for itself and says you're not accessing our markets unless you're paying middle class Americans a fair wage.

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   1. ‘America’s Hitler.’  (JD Vance – 2016)

       

      ‘America’s Hitler — Yes! And, that’s a good thing!  Heil Trump!’ (The same, but more pandering, asshole – 2024)

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      1. Your quote would've been better than his, BF5, and would have saved the time spent in hardcore spin cycle. That spin had some serious G force!

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4. Maybe it’s me, but the way Vance directly addressed Brennan repeatedly in that extended quote was creepy in a setting where the participants were supposed to be speaking to a larger audience. It almost felt like it was supposed to be intimidating.

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