In which Polonius prattles, the bromancer surfaces, and there's a Dame Slap bonus ...

 

The Succession saga continues apace in Are the lives of Rupert Murdoch and Succession's Logan Roy inching closer? 

The pond can't wait for the next stage in the "secret" legal battle to be given an airing...

Meanwhile, it seems JD Vance once had sex with a couch, which isn't nearly as amusing as the news that Joe Biden is dead ...

That Cathy Young Bulwark yarn was topped by news that JD was once a blogger, just like the pond...Inside JD Vance’s Blogger Days

...You likely won’t be shocked to hear that Vance’s nascent political writings are a far cry from the America First movement he’s attached himself to today. Back then, Vance profiled as a conservative think-tanker on the make, arguing earnestly for Paul Ryan-esque entitlement reform and against market-distorting ethanol subsidies. He proclaimed his appreciation for Andrew Sullivan (“a truly conservative thinker, though his politics have swung leftward lately”), but also center-left types like Matt Yglesias and avowedly left types like Paul Krugman.

Vance supported Jon Huntsman early in the 2012 cycle, arguing that his moderate style belied firm conservative policy beliefs: “He believes in low taxes, free markets, balanced budgets, the importance of the family, and the wisdom of an active—but measured—American foreign policy.”

Later, with the primary fight down to Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Vance lamented that other candidates better suited to unite the party hadn’t gotten in: “Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, or possibly even Chris Christie.” Publicly supporting any one of these guys these days would get you run out of the party of which Vance has just been appointed majordomo.

But the most interesting thing about Vance’s blogging isn’t just the reinvention it highlights. All of that is what it is; Vance is hardly the first Republican to recast himself as a MAGA populist the better to thrive in Donald Trump’s party. What’s more striking is the truth his blogs reveal: The old Vance would be genuinely repulsed by the Vance of today.

In his Huntsman post, Vance wrote of his dismay at the Tea Party proto-populism of Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, a “conservatism that is defined by what it opposes: science, liberalism, and gays.”

Vance himself had become conservative, he said, after being swayed by Robert Bork’s critique of the modern left’s “substitute spiritual movement” in the “absence of religious faith.”

“The liberals that I knew and saw on TV were passionate to a fault,” Vance wrote, while “the conservatives always seemed more mature and reasonable. That’s a big reason for why I became a conservative—I didn’t want to join the camp of unreasonable people.”

But he fretted that these boundaries were shifting: “with few exceptions,” he wrote, the “American right is no longer a bastion of maturity, but a factory of anger and contradiction.”

What would that Vance see in the GOP of today? What would the man who derided “a conservatism that is defined by what it opposes” make of a movement that values policy based largely on how badly it owns the libs? Would he deem the GOP of 2024 less “a factory of anger and contradiction” than the GOP of 2012?

And what would he make of the party’s young new heir apparent—the man who clawed his way to second chair by positioning himself as chief prophet of the “substitute spiritual movement” that is the cult of Trump? Would JD Vance the blogger be happy with himself?

The pond thought that would be a good warm up act for Polonius's prattle this Sunday, with the great scribbler seeking to defuse sundry orange Jesus bombs ... and as always, it's the fault of the ABC ...

To be fair - and remembering Polonius is never fair, though he is frequently clueless - it was JD himself who raised the spectre of Adolf ...

Tricky Dick or tricky Adolf? Seems fair ... but it seems to have passed Polonius by ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, is Polonius quoting former chairman Rudd with a straight face?

Meanwhile, in another country, you might read read the Beeb's Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency.

No need to go through it all, the original's over 900 pages and even the summaries tend to be long, but this caught the eye ...

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory".

In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.

The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.

The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.

Or you could read at CBS What is Project 2025? What to know about the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration - not limited to this excerpt:

The agenda takes aim at longstanding federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The agency is a component of the Commerce Department and the policy guide calls for it to be downsized. 

NOAA's six offices, including the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, "form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity," the guide states. 

The Department of Homeland Security, established in 2002, should be dismantled and its agencies either combined with others, or moved under the purview of other departments altogether, the policy book states. For example, immigration-related entities from the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Health and Human Services should form a standalone, Cabinet-level border and immigration agency staffed by more than 100,000 employees, according to the agenda.

If the policy recommendations are implemented, another federal agency that could come under the knife by the next administration, with action from Congress, is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The agenda seeks to bring a push by conservatives to target diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in higher education to the executive branch by wiping away a slew of DEI-related positions, policies and programs and calling for the elimination of funding for partners that promote DEI practices.

It states that U.S. Agency for International Development staff and grantees that "engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda" should be terminated. At the Treasury Department, the guide says the next administration should "treat the participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment."

The Project 2025 policy book also takes aim at more innocuous functions of government. It calls for the next presidential administration to eliminate or reform the dietary guidelines that have been published by the Department of Agriculture for more than 40 years, which the authors claim have been "infiltrated" by issues like climate change and sustainability.

Then there's the question of JD in all this, with The New Republic helping with this...

Roll on September, and in the meantime, the reptiles rolled out a video about the Secret Service in a bid to distract attention from Polonius being fatuous...

Then it was just a small gobbet to go, with Polonius attempting to do a Moonface, with everything the best in all possible worlds, unless you happened to feel unhappy about being made to carry your rapist's child to term...

Sharri, disrespect, is intended to reassure Polonial readers while he floats off with the pixies?

And so to more news. The pond refused to call it good news. Those who arrived yesterday at the pond heard a sad tale about the bromancer getting tangled in the reptile time warp and disappearing into some fundament. 

The pond was already deep into "Ned" and was pleased to have an excuse to disappear the bro just like the reptiles did ...

But you can't get rid of bad pennies, and the reptiles quickly restored the bromancer, and now the pond has no excuse ...

Stop right there. Go here ...

MINNEAPOLIS — Former President Donald Trump is using a 2022 Minnesota murder case to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump claims Harris helped raise millions and personally donated to a fund that got extra support to bail out protestors in the aftermath of George Floyd's death.

"One of the dangerous criminals Kamala helped bail out of jail was Shawn Michael Tillman," Trump said at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. "You know that name. A repeat offender who, with Harris's help, was set free. He then went on to murder a man on a train platform in St. Paul, Minnesota, shooting him in cold blood six times, lying on the ground."

While parts of Trump's statement are true — Shawn Michael Tillman did murder a man in St. Paul after being released from jail — other parts of the former president's statement are misleading.

In June of 2020, just after George Floyd's death, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted, "If you're able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota."

Nearly two years later, on April 25, 2022, Tillman was arrested in St. Paul on a gross misdemeanor indecent exposure charge. Bail is set at $2,000 dollars and he is put in jail.

On May 3, 2022, the Minnesota Freedom Fund paid his $2,000 bail and he was released. On May 20, 2022, Tillman murdered a man at the light rail station in downtown St. Paul. He is now serving a life sentence for that crime.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund said, "It is not correct that then-Sen. Harris has donated to our organization. We have no relationship with Harris beyond a single four-year-old tweet."

Or go here ...

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign accused Vice President Kamala Harris of encouraging people in 2020 to bail out of jail a St. Paul man who tried to kill Minneapolis cops five days after George Floyd’s police murder.

Trump’s “war room” posted on X that Harris raised money to bail Jaleel Stallings out of jail after he was “charged with the attempted murder of two police officers” alongside a photo of Harris laughing and Stallings’ mug shot.

“Kamala Harris is radically liberal and dangerously incompetent,” the post said.

It’s true that Stallings was charged with attempted murder, but the Trump campaign fails to mention that Stallings was acquitted by a jury of all charges and one officer involved in the incident later pleaded guilty to felony assault on Stallings, and apologized to him. 

On the night of May 30, 2020, Stallings was standing in a parking lot on Lake Street with a few others when suddenly shots rang out from a white cargo van that had been slowly creeping down the street before coming into view from behind a building. Two rounds were fired at the group.

Stallings was hit in the chest with what he thought was a bullet. He immediately drew his pistol and fired back at who he thought might be white supremacists that the governor had warned were fanning the flames of protest. He later testified that he purposely missed, aiming low, toward the front of the van, hoping to scare off whoever had shot at him.

Suddenly members of a SWAT team piled out of the unmarked van yelling, “Shots fired!” Stallings realized they were police, dropped his gun and lay face down on the pavement, arms spread-eagle, videos show. 

He’d been shot with one of the plastic projectiles the SWAT team had been firing at people out past a curfew as police struggled to get control of the city amid protests, arson and riots. Even though they were firing “less lethal” projectiles, under MPD policy, officers weren’t supposed to target a person’s head, neck, throat or chest “unless deadly force is justified,” because they could cause permanent damage or death.

Thinking someone had just tried to shoot them, the officers beat Stallings bloody for 30 seconds, and beat and Tasered his acquaintance for two minutes. Stallings was hospitalized with a fractured eye socket. Stallings is clearly beaten and bloody in his jail mug shot, but he had a weird smile on his face. He later said he was just happy to be alive.

There's more, but while some correspondents might dispute that the sun rises in the east, surely they can't dispute that the bromancer is a professional liar and distorter of truth ...

This was all sounding very familiar and deserving of a 'toon ...

The pond sensed it was going to be a long chariot race and resented the reptiles for disinterring the bromancer ...

Another JAQ. The pond is so over the reptiles just asking questions ... just as it's over the snaps the remnants of the graphics department produce as distracting illustrations...

Here's the routine. The bromancer purports mock horror at his orange Jesus, but then pronounces any rival as worse, and so he can in good conscience embrace the mango Mussolini ...

Every reasonable person would have to accept the result? The mango Mussolini would sit idly by and cop the indignity of being clocked on the noggin by a coconut, just as he peacefully accepted the result on January 6th and put a coup out of mind?

If you can believe that, the pond has a coconut for you ...

And so it was off to the final gobbet, and the only reason the pond hung in was to see the corner into which the bromancer had painted himself. 

Deep down he knows his orange Jesus is barking mad, and yet he knows he can't stray far from the reptile flock for fear of being painted a black sheep ... and so he must do a little both siderism, while in the mind he's planted the seed from the get go that a strong authoritarian of the Donald kind would be better than a Kamala ...

Actually if the pond happened to be an American voter, it would seem a simple matter ...

On the other hand ... will there ever be any need to vote?

And so to a bonus, and for once the pond is willing to give Dame Slap a go ... just for the lolz ...

First up, forget those links, they just keep you inside the hive mind ... and hang on, hang on, did Dame Slap just say that the warnings were set out below, in full?

Just to be clear, "F..k" is in full? That's how you spell the word in reptile la la land? JAQ.

The pond hastened to the original site to check, though it had to use Bing rather than Google to locate the exact text - another example of the decline and fall of the Google machine.

On arrival the pond discovered that the top of the page was just the usual bumpf ...

Down below there were bits of business, including the sort of warning that cinema goers have been getting for yonks ...

You actually had to click on the detailed warmings and content descriptions to get to the meaty bits ... and the very first thing to confront the pond was this ...

Yes, it was Dame Slap and the reptiles that had blinked first. 

"In full" had become "f..k", in short not in full at all. 

And as for the "c" word, famous for its appearance in Hamlet's "cuntry matters"?

It had become "and so on".

That's not in full, preening blonde princess.

If the theatre mob had been cowardly custards, wimps and pussies, they would have followed the reptile virtue signalling style and written their warning thusly: "f..ck", "s..t", "c..p" and "c..t".

Of course anyone who bothered to do a word search through the online Folger edition of the play would be reminded that "fuck" and "cunt" never appear in the play, and nor do "shit" and "crap".

There needed to be some kind of reminder to Shakespeare purists and pedants that this wasn't going to be the sort of straitlaced version a reptile might expect.

Dame Slap did include a promo snap for the play...

... but nowhere did Dame Slap bother to mention that the writer of the play was one Zinnie Harris, and it was a "new version, after Shakespeare."

Perhaps that was why there were content descriptions, because the content ain't pure Shakspere ...

What a gormless goose she is.

Who could possibly take seriously the thoughts of a woman who dresses like this?

Okay, okay, the pond should have probably have put up a content warning, but it expects the pond's readers and its correspondents to be made of sterner stuff ...and be able to take in that image without blinking.

Luckily there was just one more outburst from this gormless goose ...

No, you goose, this isn't Shakspere. This is Zinnie Harris doing a new version, "after Shakspere", and so in a way that might be called steering clear of Shakspere.

As for doubling down and donning the MAGA cap yet again, with delusional JD feather in the cap, what's new or surprising or startling? 

Except the hoarse horse laugh that his form of Catholic fundamentalism brings a message of resilience and responsibility. 

...In 2020, Vance wrote an essay detailing his journey from Pentecostalism through the new atheism of Christopher Hitchens and finally into Catholicism. He portrayed his young adult rejection of religion as essentially mimetic, something he absorbed from his university surroundings rather than decided on for himself. One of the things that brought him back to religion was meeting the right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who would eventually become a patron. Thiel “was possibly the smartest person I’d ever met, but he was also a Christian,” Vance wrote. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. By then, he’d become part of a new conservative elite in which many leading intellectual figures were also Catholic.

Now this person of unusual suggestibility has become second in command to a first-order demagogue, giving himself over to MAGA theology. As Mother Jones reported on Thursday, Vance recently endorsed a new book called “Unhumans,” co-written by the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, which demonizes progressives as nonpeople who must be crushed by extra-democratic means. “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” the book’s co-writers say.

It is perhaps not surprising that Vance has ended up in this milieu. Authoritarian personalities, as the German social psychologist Erich Fromm argued, long to dominate, but they long just as much to submit. (NY Times paywall)

Dame Slap secretly loves to submit. 

JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.

“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.” (Graudian)

Uh, that's really creepy, almost as creepy as Dame Slap fawning over the bearded one.

On the upside, at least JD might see hacks of the Dame Slap kind sent back to the kitchen to whip up a good meal for their man, and if they don't like it, a punch to the moosh should sort them out ...and then we'll see Dame Slap preparing for life in novel ways this pampered preening princess might not have imagined as her lot ...

Finally, the pond notes that the genocide continues, as does the sociopath's war in Ukraine ... while Bibi tries to save his bacon - huzzah for pork - by doing a tour ...

That allows the pond to provide a link to Tamar Glezerman's piece in the Graudian, Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Why did congress invite him to speak?

Only one complaint, with Glezerman perhaps being a little too subtle in the points she makes...

To put it bluntly - Benjamin Netanyahu is the enemy of the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and of every person on this earth who values human life. He is also personally responsible for October 7. The fact that he spoke in Congress, with tens of thousands dead in Gaza and no hostage deal in sight, is an embarrassment to Congress and to every single representative who attended.

When Netanyahu spoke to Congress, Congress should’ve walked out, not given him standing ovations. Even beyond the moral obvious, no dialogue should be had with this man for the same reason dialogue with Trump is a waste of time - all you’re ever going to get is another masterclass in gaslighting. And that is exactly what this speech was - from craven lying about the death toll in Gaza to craven lying about his attempts to free the hostages - A smorgasbord of craven lying, which congress, for some reason, could not stop applauding.

But if dialogue with Netanyahu must occur - there is only one question to be asked - it’s not about the hostages - why give him another chance to pretend he cares for the people whose return he is actively preventing? It’s not about the Palestinians being killed in tens of thousands and displaced in millions - he just told you they are not. That what you see, you did not see.

No, the question is biblical and it is - have you murdered and also inherited? Asked of Achav after he and Jezebel his wife murdered Navot to steal his vineyard. This question comes to say - How dare you? How dare you profiteer from a war you’re causing? How dare you shed crocodile tears for citizens you abandoned to get slaughtered, abused and kidnapped, and are now letting die, if not actively killing, in Gaza? How dare you use the blood on your hands to prolong your death grip on power?

And there is so much blood on Netanyahu’s hands it is up to his neck. He is practically drowning in it. The blood of my aunt Hannah Kritzman, who was 88 years old when she was murdered in Be’eri by Hamas. The same Hamas Netanyahu funded and then ignored warnings about.

The blood of tens of thousand Gazan civilians and who knows how many more under the rubble and the blood of the dead hostages who could’ve come home with a deal. Unfortunately, blood is Netanyahu’s sustenance - it keeps his career alive...

Best stop there before the pond gets angry. 

Best stop and end with a couple of 'toons, with the first featuring an excellent bromancer impression ... (that latest Japanese language version of Godzilla is passing fair. Watch the English language version if you have no soul or love of sushi).