POST 1089
Trump Must Never Get His Hands On Any Power Greater Than The Flush Handle Of A Prison Toilet
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Check the clock below. There are just 99 days until the November 5 election. There is so much work to do and your democracy and your love of freedom are calling out to your hands, your mind, your heart and your feet to get in the game. For direction on that, click here and review the action list in the Rhymes of the Week section. Today is a very good day for that. Think: Paul Revere’s Ride.
Lebanon and Middletown
We were in the southwest corner of Ohio in the town of Lebanon, where we joined local Democrats to watch and then agonize over the debate last month. The next day the sun was blindingly bright and the temperature and humidity were impressively high by noon, when Witt’s Frozen Custard opened. We got a couple of crazy delicious frozen custard cones and went to work on them, attempting to keep pace with the melting and dripping. It was messy and glorious.
Continuing on our trip brought us to Middletown, Ohio. It’s a charming Midwest town, a suburb of Cincinnati, a fact which now raises eyebrows. JD Vance is from Middletown. But he proclaims his connection to poor Appalachia, seemingly wanting us to believe he’s an everyman.
Except Middletown is across the state from anything that might even remotely be described as Appalachia. The nearest thing he can claim is that his grandparents came from there. He didn’t.
Who is this guy? Just how stupid does he think we are?
A Stunning Moment Of “Huh?“
JD Vance has done nothing during his 1.5 years in the Senate other than to fill a seat with his butt. He has no governing experience and has a terrible work record in nearly all the jobs into which billionaire Peter Thiel provided him a red carpet. His auto-biography sort of honors the poor Whites of his imagined Appalachian upbringing.* At the same time he demeans them and has advocated for ending every program that can help these people. His attitude seems to be, “I got mine. Too bad for you – you’re on your own.”
He has expressed great criticism of and disaffection from Trump, having proclaimed himself a Never Trumper.** Click the pic to the left for clarity on that.
More recently he has prostrated himself before Trump and abandoned whatever integrity he had remaining. He is where he is only by virtue of massive support from billionaire elites and some demonic, self-aggrandizing scheme from Trump’s evil imagination.
He is against most things that the vast majority of Americans support. He argues for the end of our republic and says he would have done the great betrayal. It’s what Mike Pence refused to do: Disenfranchise all Americans and subvert the Constitution.
That’s a long way from the oath he swore when entering the Marines and the oath of office for Congress to which he swore, hand on Bible. The list of Vance’s disqualifiers is long and inglorious.
About that oath . . .
The Presidential, Vice Presidential, Congressional and military oaths are essentially the same.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
JD Vance swore to that oath twice and is not obeying it. Indeed, both Trump and Vance want to terminate our Constitution.
Note that none of the above deals with Vance’s profound weirdness – like”childless cat ladies” – and this. This guy is Sarah Palin, only worse.
Hypocrisy? Cowardice? Moral bankruptcy? Dishonesty? You pick.
So, about that stunning moment of “Huh?” – Why did Trump pick Vance?
Rather than offering my own deciphering, Rachel Maddow’s is, unsurprisingly, far better, offering a clear explanation of why Trump picked shape-shifter Vance. As you listen, keep in mind that Trump is just two Big Macs away from a coronary. If he were to be elected, that would give us President Vance in short order. The purple majesty of the mountains quakes in fear.
Watch and listen to Rachel’s explanation. Then “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Our call to duty is clear.
Shock
From the New York Times:
A new book by Trump’s nephew says the former president suggested some disabled people “should just die.”
- Did that shock you? After 8 years of Trump’s non-stop shaking of our national tectonic plates, I’m wondering if we are beyond the ability to be shocked. Whether we are or not, all that upheaval is reason enough to reject Trump and everything MAGA. It’s time to invite all MAGAs to un-clench their fists and to come back into the fold of caring, patriotic Americans. Perhaps we can be friendly neighbors again.
Just For Fun
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Not sure, but I think it’s real.
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* I like Maureen Dowd’s term for Vance: faux-billy.
** Vance’s wife Usha says Trump appalls her – but now she’s on the team. I guess spinelessness runs in the family.
“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
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– Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016.
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2 Responses to Why JD Vance?
Kirk Landers July 28, 2024
I’ve given Vance the benefit of the doubt on his Appalachian roots. Cincinnati’s airport is in Kentucky and I always thought the KY coal fields must be somewhere nearby too. Either way, I think we’re going to owe Mr. Vance some gratitude at the end of this election cycle. While Trump’s single virtue as a politician has been showing pols the power of being one’s self in public, Vance is demonstrating the limits of that power.
Rational, democracy-loving people now have a strong, articulate, intelligent candidate in Kamala Harris to support. That Vance would try to denigrate such a charismatic candidate with barbs about gestation (there is, by the way, no sterner test of character than step-parenting) is to demonstrate a degree of lunacy that even some MAGAs could find frightening…especially from a guy who has described in his own words having sex with a couch.
The most interesting thing about Vance is wondering how someone so obviously intelligent and at least somewhat worldly (just surviving a hitch in the Marines is an education) could so radically misjudge how the public would respond to his inane remarks.
Jack Altschuler July 28, 2024
Geography clarifier:
Coal country in Kentucky is located the same as in Ohio – in the eastern part of the state. The Cincinnati/Covington airport is in the western part of the state, as is Middletown, OH. Giving Vance any benefit is, of course, your option. However, there is no doubt: he is no product of Appalachia.