In which Killer saves the day, with a perfumed, musky Mein Gott as. the bonus ...

 

The reptiles remain obsessed and Americana litters the top of the digital edition this morning ...

Petulant Peta was at it, naturally doing her best to tear down the fully BRAT woman, and praising the diet Mountain Dew man ...

The pond couldn't be bothered giving her the screen caps treatment, and instead just ran with her praise of JD, which came at the tail end of her piece ...

...As a kid from the white underclass who resisted the lure of drugs, the scourge of welfare, the tyranny of low expectations and the general culture of individual and collective self-loathing, Vance exemplifies a less patrician, less establishmentarian conservatism that, if coupled with governmental competence, might readily turn out to be more compelling to voters than the somewhat bloodless managerialism recently on display from most Anglosphere centre-right parties.
At least potentially, he’s a more attractive political personality than Trump, a millionaire’s son who became a crony capitalist and reality TV star; understanding that the swing-state voters that Republicans need to win are more likely to see Vance as one of them than Trump. And the same too when it comes to Harris, which makes her pick of running mate critically important.
The conservatism of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan was never mainly about creating market freedoms, boosting business and exalting the individual – and to the extent that it was, these were means to making countries stronger, governments better and communities more prosperous.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has blasted Vice President Kamala Harris on her immigration record amid the US border crisis. “Kamala Harris is America’s border czar, and how is our border doing, ladies and gentlemen? She hasn’t talked to the chief of Border Patrol a single time in her entire tenure as border czar,” Mr Vance said. “The border crisis is a Kamala Harris crisis – let’s not let her ever forget, let’s never stop reminding her of that fact.”
Real conservatism has always been about respect for everything that makes us human: our families, our neighbourhoods and our countries – and it’s these existential attachments that feed the “make America great again” passion that Trump is harnessing.
This is where Vance, who could so easily have fallen into victimhood, is potentially far more totemic than Trump himself, because his life testifies that America can still be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And as for the policies that Trump and Vance are enunciating, it’s an entirely conservative instinct to want to control the borders and maintain the character of the country. It’s perfectly conservative to extract more gas to keep energy prices down and produce fewer emissions than coal. And it’s hardly un-conservative to want to protect American workers from an impossible competition with people earning far less and to help to preserve US technological mastery.
Imposing much higher tariffs on Chinese goods, given this new era of great power competition, is less a distortion of free market principles than an assertion of American patriotism. And what could be more conservative than that?

Thus, in petulant Peta manner, she managed to avoid all the best of JD, celebrated by Bess Levin in Vanity Fair by outlining some of the ideas of the diet Mountain Dew man in J.D. Vance’s Extreme Political Positions on Everything From Abortion to Staying in a Violent Marriage for the Sake of the Kids (possible paywall) ...

Abortion
Vance is stridently opposed to abortion. In 2021, he argued against exceptions for incest and rape, saying, “two wrongs don’t make a right,” and adding: “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” Later, he vaguely expressed support for “reasonable exceptions,” and has graciously said there should be an exception if the mother’s life is in danger. While running for Senate in 2022, his campaign website read “Ban Abortion.” During a debate with Democratic representative Tim Ryan, Vance said he was fine with a national abortion ban, saying, “Some minimum national standard is totally fine with me.”
Vance has also compared abortion to slavery.

Uh huh ...calling the infallible Pope ...

There were a lot more ...

Divorce
Vance has suggested people should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their kids. Speaking to Pacifica Christian High School in 2021, he claimed that divorce inflicts terrible harm on children and that it would be better for people in unhappy marriages to stay together, even if said marriages are “violent.” Vance told the audience: “My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways. But they never got divorced. They were together to the end, till death do us part—that was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the ’70s or ’80s. And I think that probably, I was personally, and a lot the kids in my community who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, right? Like any other business deal, once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go on to a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately, I think a lot of kids suffered.”
Vance writes in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, that his grandfather was a “violent drunk” and his grandmother a “violent nondrunk.” In one anecdote, he says that before he was born, his grandmother told his grandfather that she would kill him if he ever returned home drunk again—and when he did, she tried. “Mamaw, never one to tell a lie, calmly retrieved a gasoline canister from the garage, poured it all over her husband, lit a match, and dropped it on his chest. When Papaw burst into flames, their 11-year-old daughter jumped into action to put out the fire and save his life.”
IVF
Despite praising Hungary’s policies that incentivize families to have children, Vance voted against a Democratic bill that would have protected access to IVF.
LGBTQ+ rights
Vance wants to ban gender-affirming care for minors and last year introduced legislation that would make providing such care a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. In 2022, he stated he “strongly disagree[s]” that gender identity and sexual orientation should be protected classes in nondiscrimination laws. He said that if he were in office at the time, he would have opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrined the right of same-sex and interracial couples to marry.
Ukraine
In a podcast with Steve Bannon in 2022, Vance said, “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine. I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
Vance also attempted, unsuccessfully, to block a $60 billion aid package for the country, writing in an oped: “I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war.”
Immigration
In campaign fundraising message sent earlier this month, Vance claimed that “hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are entering our country and being sent to our neighborhoods, our cities, our schools, and our communities,” and declared: “We need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally.” As the National Catholic Reporter pointed out, that would be between 11 million and 12 million people.
Climate change
Unlike scientists, Vance does not believe climate change is anything to be worried about. He also doesn’t believe humans have played any role in climate change, saying, “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia.”
Gun control
Vance has come out against gun reform and blasted a Democratic effort to ban bump stocks. The NRA has praised Trump’s decision to make Vance his running mate.
The 2020 election and January 6
Vance has repeated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, said he would have done Trump’s bidding on January 6, and refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election.

Oh dear, none of that for this possum ...

The original provided justifying links, and anyone interested can head off to the story. 

The interesting question is whether petulant Peta herself is the sort of trad wife woman who would appeal to JD.

Take a trip back in time ...

A tough approach, and knees up Mother Brown? 

Hie thee to a kitchen, woman ...

Meanwhile, when it comes to that excruciating Mountain Dew joke, some might choose to follow Ian Bogost in The Atlantic J. D. Vance Has a Point About Mountain Dew (possible paywall), based on the insider knowledge that 'mountain dew' was originally Appalachian for moonshine ...

The pond preferred this account in People, J.D. Vance Slammed by Internet for 'Cringe' Diet Mountain Dew Joke: 'Alienated Every Voter Base'. (The pond linking to People? The pond will go anywhere for a laugh).

“I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too,” he said, adding, “But—it’s good.” His audience laughed, and Vance laughed before punctuating the moment: “I love you guys.”
The internet is weighing in on an awkward joke made by Donald Trump's vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, during a Monday campaign rally.
Vance made the remarks while speaking about voter ID laws, saying, "It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe... Well, they say it's racist to do anything."
"I had a diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today and I'm sure they're going to call that racist, too," he added. "But, it's good."
At that point, one person in the audience could be heard clapping, as Vance laughed at his own joke and said, "I love you guys."
Social media users were quick to weigh in, with many saying the moment was "awkward."
Even some of Vance's colleagues offered their takes, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wrote on X (formerly Twitter): "Vance’s stump has got a nice Jeb Bush quality to it. And I mean that in the worst way possible."
As Ocasio-Cortez and others on X noted, the Vance joke had echoes of a similar viral moment from 2016, when then-Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush prompted the audience at a New Hampshire campaign event to clap for him after a punchline failed to deliver any applause.
The moment was also seized on by the Kamala Harris campaign, which shared footage of Vance's joke without any commentary, leaving other social media users to weigh in.
"Bro is trying so hard," wrote one X user. Others wrote that Vance was "cringe" or "boring."
Others took issue with the type of soda Vance — who shot to fame with his controversial memoir about growing up in Appalachia — claimed to be drinking.
"If JD Vance would have simply said 'Mountain Dew' it would’ve been fine, relatable even. That’s a regular Joe blue collar soda. What kind of sick freak drinks diet Mountain Dew. Alienated every voter base with one line," wrote another X user.

Indeed, what sort of weak-kneed, lily-livered wuss or puss drinks "diet" anything? 

Talk about a wimp, talk about a cowardly custard pussy ...

Diet?!

Why, back in the day, a sip of Lillyman's proudly Tamworthian cordials could guarantee you diabetes for life. You could feel the sugar hit the throat, pure and raw. No chemicals needed of the pathetic "diet" kind, in a pathetic bid to stave off the American penchant for obesity.

Here, have a cartoon to celebrate ...

Luckily Killer was on hand to save the pond with a bit of gloom and doom ... a sure sign that the BRAT woman is having an impact ... and naturally Killer was still afflicted by his Kovid Kapers, which the pond will do its best to ignore ...

It's the old ruling 'leets and the decline and fall of the west routine, with Killer apparently unaware that the chairman emeritus, spectacularly nonagenarian, still sticks his fingers into American politics and into company affairs, as his underlings go about slashing and burning, though you can only read about it in the Graudian in Big names chopped as News Corp redundancies hit newspapers and national reporting team.

Now there's a genuine decline and fall story, a follow-up to Christopher Warren's story News Corp is ailing. How long will the Murdochs prop it up?

They've already given up propping up the visual distractions department ...

Frankly it's a long time since the pond thought about Paglia while Ioannidis is a classic example of Killer's fears about Covid. 

To briefly detour to WaPo back in 2020 (paywall) ...

...Ioannidis, 55, insists he is doing what he has always done: following the data and sometimes contending with the head winds of conventional wisdom or popular opinion. He says governments should focus on protecting the sick and elderly from infection while keeping businesses and schools open for the less vulnerable.
“There is a lethal virus circulating out there. We all have responsibility to do our best to contain it as much as possible. It’s not a joke. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not fake,” he told The Washington Post. “But we don’t panic. We don’t destroy our world. We don’t freeze everything.”
But as the pandemic enters its deadliest phase, Ioannidis is losing the argument over how to combat covid-19. Among epidemiologists, consensus now exists that it was inaction, not overreaction, that helped create the worst public health crisis in a century. The uncontrolled spread of the virus has led to overrun ICUs in South Dakota and makeshift morgues in Texas. States and countries are locking down in a bid to preserve lives as vaccines start to roll out. Even Sweden, which resisted tough restrictions through the spring, is now reversing course to avert catastrophe.
Ioannidis still has defenders, who say he offers a cautionary tale of how partisanship has poisoned scientific discourse about the coronavirus — and in the case of the YouTube video, led to its outright suppression.
But his critics say the Stanford doctor is violating the principles of intellectual rigor he has spent much of his career espousing — refusing to admit his mistaken judgments and recklessly lending a scientific imprimatur to forces that defy public-health directives for irrational reasons.
Steven Goodman, an epidemiologist who co-directs a Stanford research institute with Ioannidis, said he worries about the role his longtime colleague and some other scientists have played in the highly politicized dispute over the coronavirus response.
“Debates among scientists about the evidence are healthy. But if conducted in public the rules change,” Goodman said. “They can confuse people and undermine the consistent messaging needed for public health. Politicians can also misuse these debates to undermine public health policies they don’t like. The result? Our complete failure to contain covid-19.”
Doubt is a cardinal virtue in the sciences, which advance through skeptics’ willingness to question the experts. But it can be disastrous in public health, where lives depend on people’s willingness to trust those same experts. And in 2020 America — in the era of QAnon, covid denial, bleach ingestion and disputed mail ballots — some accuse Ioannidis, the famous skeptic, of becoming a much more dangerous man than he realizes.
“I’m so excited about this next interview,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on April 21. Her upcoming guest, she said, would explain that the coronavirus’s prevalence in the population “may be 55 times higher than previously thought by the, quote, ‘experts,’” — here Ingraham raised her hands in a pair of mocking air quotes — “meaning the true fatality of the virus is somewhere below that of seasonal influenza.”
“Professor,” she continued, “it’s great to have you on tonight.”
Ioannidis appeared on-screen and began to guardedly explain the results of new research suggesting the virus might be less deadly than previously estimated (though not, as Ingraham claimed, less deadly than the flu). He said more studies were needed.
“Science is the best thing that can happen to humans,” he said. “And if we have good data, we can use science to really act decisively …”
Ingraham cut him off, asserting that the virus and the deaths it was causing were “largely relegated to a few key areas.” She asked whether it was responsible for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield to warn of another wave of deaths when winter arrived.
“All predictions and all forecasts, they can be made,” Ioannidis said. “Personally, I would avoid making them, putting a lot of trust in them, because we just don’t know.”
Ingraham grinned.
“Professor, I wish I could read your entire CV, because it is so impressive,” she said.

Now that's Killer's sort of guy, but back to the Kurrent Killer Kaper ...

Indeed, indeed, and the pond has no idea why the US allowed chairman emeritus Rupert and his spawn into the country, let alone Killer himself ... and naturally the decline and fall of Rome is next on the menu, because apparently Rome opened itself up to parvenus and spivs of the chairman Rupert kind ...

The pond will overlook Killer's ongoing Covid obsession, so bizarre it infests everything he scribbles, like a mind virus, and has absolutely no idea why Killer would be quoting Daron Acemoglu, what with him being one of those millions of unwanted new immigrants, legal and illegal.

The Turkish American pundit was out and about in the NY Times a few days ago (paywall) in company with James A. Robinson ... inter alia ...

..Center-left parties need to lead the way in breaking this mold. This must start by severing ties with tech billionaires, pharmaceutical giants and Wall Street tycoons. It is difficult to believe that a party that gets funding and ideas from the very wealthy will work hard for the well-being of the most disadvantaged. They must promote to leadership people with a background in manual work and from different educational paths. One visible and symbolic way of achieving this is to reserve a fraction of candidacies and leadership positions for individuals without a college degree. Similar strategies have been successfully used by Swedish social democrats and local governments in India.
Where the center-left leads, the center-right should follow. In the United States, Republicans have already made inroads with working-class voters, and a stronger commitment from Democrats can push the G.O.P. in a more pro-worker direction, too. Campaign-finance reform would help, including public money for candidates that refuse support from big donors. There is also a case for introducing proportional representation voting, which can allow new parties to take up the mantle of working-class causes if the two major parties cannot get their act together. This could start at the local level, without the need for a constitutional amendment.
Center-left parties must also rekindle political egalitarianism, and this cannot be done unless they walk back from the culture wars. It is commendable that the center-left has defended and given voice to some of the most disadvantaged groups in society, including minorities and immigrants. They must also find a way of articulating these ideas in a way that is acceptable to a working-class base. Humanitarian relief for refugees can appeal more to voters when combined with strong security at the border.
Democracy does not need to follow a majoritarian opinion on every topic, but it cannot sideline the views of the majority of the population, even on divisive subjects such as immigration.
Donald Trump is likely to become more popular after the attempt against his life. Yet a politician whose most distinctive policy achievement is tax cuts that favor the rich cannot be a true representative of the working people. His track record of polarizing, violent rhetoric, personalizing power and eroding institutional checks makes it clear that a second Trump term would significantly weaken and even fundamentally threaten democratic institutions. Some pundits are as worried about his newly anointed running mate, Senator JD Vance, as they are about Mr. Trump.
The silver lining here is that Mr. Vance’s unabashed economic populism and Mr. Trump’s appeal to the working class may force a deeper soul-searching among the Democrats. If they take serious steps to reinvent themselves as the party of the working people, Mr. Trump may have inadvertently put democracy toward a better path.

Once again Killer has shot and scored, and left just a gobbet to go...

Yep, that BRAT woman has really stuck a stick in the ant nest, or a wasp in the hive mind, and made the reptiles reach for the panic button.

For a bonus, the pond wisely held on to a Mein Gott that was out and about yesterday, featuring a man responsible some of the weird trends around us ...

There were the usual set of snaps to accompany the story ...

 

... but the point is that Musk is a form of AI, generating an endless wave of headlines in a way no human intelligence could manage.

These were the headlines yesterday ...

... and these were the headlines today, with that talk of the $45 million a month, originally raised in a WJ story, but now apparently a fever dream ...

That last NPR headline is the most interesting one. 

The mango Mussolini is notoriously hostile to EVs, though on a good day he targets Chinese EVs and on a bad day he rambles on about all EVs being bad, and Tesla right at the moment is feeling the pain ... and that's what set Mein Gott off ...

The relationship between the orange swamp monster and whatever Musk is remains deeply weird ...

It's the sort of entertainment filthy rich people are supposed to offer those gawking on from the bleachers or the stalls ... though you have to spare a moment of deep sympathy for any kid with Musk for a parent ... here no unconditional love, no unconditional love here,  just a form of hate-filled psychosis ...

Never mind, Mein Gott has done his job and the pond might as well toss off the last two gobbets in a sprint to the finish line...

No sooner had Mein Gott put aside his keyboard than Uncle Elon had gazumped him with another headline:

Elon Musk might have Tesla invest $5 billion in his AI startup xAI, The billionaire posted a poll on his social media platform X, asking if his EV company should invest in his AI startup

Or Musk launches poll asking if Tesla should invest $5 bln in xAI, early votes in favour

This is what happens when you have a filthy rich man clearly bored out of his brain and in a fever setting off a daily set of brain snaps.

For some reason the pond was reminded of the Rosseau-like fable told by George Monbiot in Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich - and that threatens us all ...

..Extreme wealth can severely hamper enjoyment. As Michael Mechanic documents in his book, Jackpot, there are two groups of people who have to think about money all the time: the very poor and the very rich. Immense wealth possesses you just as much as you possess it: managing it becomes a full-time job. You don’t know whom to trust; you can start to imagine your friends aren’t friends at all; it can dominate and poison your family relationships. It can hollow you out, socially, intellectually and morally.

But I think there might be a further corroding aspect of wealth that hasn’t been widely discussed. Great wealth flattens the world. If you can go anywhere and do anything, everything is over the horizon. You speed past the local and the particular, towards an endlessly escalating ideal of luxury: the better marina, the bigger yacht, the private jet, the super-home. The satisfaction horizon can retreat before you. Place has no meaning, other than as a setting that might impress the friends you no longer trust. But anyone who is impressed by money is not worth impressing.

There also seems to be a connection between speed, noise and ego. There must be something unresolved about a person who feels the need to fill the sky with noise and capture the attention of everyone he passes, whether he is on the road or the water. And yes, it is almost always a “he”. Studies show an association between traditional concepts of masculinity, speed and dangerous driving. It’s unsurprising that attempts to restrain driving behaviour, such as speed cameras and low-traffic neighbourhoods, have become such potent themes in the culture wars, animated by perceived threats to traditional gender roles and power relations.

You might even start to be abusive and generate hate speech towards your very own spawn.

Never mind, strangle the pond in the shallows before things get too deep. 

Time to wrap up with a couple of cartoons, about as close to the Olympics as the pond will get (is every street in Paris still littered with dog poo, as it was when the pond visited?), while the war and the Gaza genocide goes on ...