^H

I’m bothered this morning by people for whom love for Officer Harris has become the new faith.

.

That’s almost as bad as the people praying outside abortion clinics.

Ofc. Harris will fix it all

—– *OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM* —–

Excuse my skepticism.

But there is a pang of sympathy to Rex Kramer in the video, there.

I don’t want your promo for the Party of the Klan. Really. You’ve done nothing to convince me.

---

Other stuff….

Different frustrations with work. I don’t even know what to say at this point.

I kind of would like to go see this. I don’t know if I can juggle the schedule enough to make it happen. Kind of a significant event the day before. Lots of stuff with work around that time. Then PCP appointment the next week.

I’m still doing too much — my sore hamstrings are an invisible testimony to that.

I had started writing a response to the interview with VP Harris, and SMA Tim Walz.

_{(Yeah, he was a pinned on CSM, but retired as an MSG, so I’m actually retroactively inflating his achievements more…)}

While I was underwhelmed, I was trying to be indifferent about it. Whatever. I’m not going to vote for her, and my opinion of President Trump gets lower pretty much every time he speaks. There also won’t be a Libertarian on the ballot in Virginia, so I’m not sure if there’ll be anything worth writing in. Glenn Youngkin, maybe?

The folks on The Fifth Column were actually harsher towards the performance than I was.

#442 – Kamala Speaks! Tim’s Gr – The Fifth Column – Apple Podcasts

I admit that I had it on in the background while I was working, but I don’t think it allayed my concerns any more. I went from oh-hell-no to no, and I’m back to oh-no.

Looking at the Senate polls, though, there is some points of reassurance. I think it probably ends up being pretty much tied again. Could be a surprise here and there; Larry Hogan could win in MDDR, and maybe the filibuster stays.

And a few more years of running on continuing resolutions because there’s no way to fix the broken mess that is the Federal Budget.

But what I was trying to do with what I’d started assembling was to write down little bits piece-by-piece, then write to those after having some time to reflect.

But i wanted to consume. Maybe i shouldn’t have done that, and waited to consume anything else until I’d spit out what I was trying to put together.

I suppose that that sort of approach might work better for things that are more settled. With something as fleeting as an election, maybe it’s impossible.

---

So, what else?

I think we finished up Hard Knocks last night. I actually do kinda like the staff that Eberflus has assembled in Chicago. I was really happy when he came in that they got back on the 4-3. Less enthused about the dink-a-lot “West Coast” offense, but it’s better than the stuff that’d been there the before.

But, on Hard Knocks, one of the interesting parts of the show was seeing who’d make the cut week-to-week.

“Bring Your Playbook” will lose all meaning.

We also started in on the Steve McNair thing on Netflix.

I was tired, so we stopped after the first episode, but it sounds like they’re going to get into some conspiracy stuff later on. Guess we’ll find out. But it seems to come down to advice an elderly, reserved southern gentleman once provided; “don’t go to sleep with someone crazier than you.”

To reword in a style closer to what my friends would say, “don’t stick your d— in the crazy.”

Staying with the NFL, my reaction to the stuff in Brazil with the Twi^H^H^HX ban is that the NFL should pull the Iggles-Peckers game scheduled for Sao Paulo.

*Searches the F’n Web*

Good.

The league can reimburse the teams for whatever costs might stem from it. Want to be a part of the free world, you have to allow things you don’t like.

That was the reaction I had almost immediately after reading the news.

That’s enough for now.

I’d started writing a long thing on my impressions of Officer Harris’s DNC performance.

I had a good headline written about Ofc. Harris’s speech, “Fears Allayed.” There was a marked departure from some of the stupid things that have been done leading up to her aborted candidacy in 2020, and things done by the Biden Administration.

Does that mean I’d ever vote for her? Hell to the NO.

She is, and will always be, a Cop Who Wants To Be President. That she backed down from some of the authoritarian impulses seen during the first two years of the Biden Administration don’t change what she and many members of her party did.

I understand that I’m supposed to be feeling JOY, but I don’t.

Even more so when I think about her choice of a running mate.

Some call it Authoritarianism, in Minnesota, they call it disease control.

The stuff with his National Guard service is also concerning. Do I think it’s really “stolen valor” that he portrayed himself as a CSM when he never finished the course, and retired as an MSG? No.

The 1995 DUI/DWI arrest really, really, really bothers me.

If he’d been on active duty, he would have faced very harsh penalties under the UCMJ. That he skated as a Guardsman is incredible.

So, too, is his continue employment with a school district.

I can remember my mother working for Fairfax County Public Schools and being nervous about having a glass of wine with dinner because of their policies regarding staff consumption. That would have been in about 1990?

Microsoft’s inline punctuation check is annoying.

Scads of speeches laying out standard Democrat talking points, but, largely her speech was made to erase the memory of what she, and her party, did since Obama left.

The things I’d wanted to write about also got derailed by some of the stuff from the Libertarians, and the RFK Jr. “drop-out.”

I listened to the SoHo Forum debate with Art Laffer and Chase Oliver. I could pick out a few things from each where I disagree, but the chances of me voting for Trump are about as close to zero as they’ve ever been, and Oliver probably won’t be on the ballot.

Even if he was there, I’d have trouble filling in the circle next to his name.

So march it on. I’m ready for the fall.

But not a traditional faith.

I’ve kind of been in a vacuum all week between physical therapy and a class I needed to take for work.

For too many of my acquaintances, it’s faith in one particular slice of a particular political persuasion.

Kind of coming out of my hole, and consuming information that’s been consistently accurate.

Where is that? Reason. their coverage of the authoritarian the Democrats picked as Officer Harris’s VP has been outstanding. So, too, has been their coverage on Venezuela.

My takes on the various topics?

Venezuela, and the rest of South America. I haven’t checked a lot of real news aside from a lot of derision from the world about the “election.”

That the ruling party, but the count presented by the government agency he controls, said that he got almost exactly 51% of the vote, when there’s other observers who say that the opposition got something like 70%. Even the rulers in the US have questioned the official result.

So have many of the other, even more left-leaning, South American leaders. But there’s not going to be any deep examination of that because there’s a genocide happening in Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry.

But they’ve been right about everything all the time.

And they’re doing incredibly well because of the amount of petroleum they’ve got.

That pretty much only places that don’t care about the environment will burn.

Argentina seems to be getting lost in the blurbs about Venezuela and Brazil. Milei has kind of come out against dollarization. I do kind of understand his reticence on this. The US dollar, in spite of the stupid spending coming from the other side of the Potomac, is still relatively stable. El Salvador, Panama, et. al., have all kind of stabilized on USD. Chile, with its Chicago School-educated politicians, and many other countries have chosen a different strategy.

The Canuckistania have based their currency on a variety of other currencies, and the price of petroleum. That oil is still going down in price. OPEC has cut production how many times in the past two years?

Bubuhbut, PETRODOLLAR~~`~

You can take a bunch of it out of the ground, but it’s not being bought and burned, it doesn’t matter.

The USD has value for a variety of reasons. Convertibility to either gold or petroleum really isn’t the big reason anymore. Maybe it was different in 1976, but….

I guess I understand the energy behind the attraction to the Austrian School, but, the hard realities of international relations, and running a country, have slapped him in the face hard.

But let’s run stories about how the Peronist who was there before Fernandez wriggled her way back in was chatting on his wife.

So he’s a piece of garbage, but at least he didn’t try to get the economy back on solid footing.

The past few days, the folks who’ve destroyed the Libertarian Party, reached an agreement with reached some sort of funds-sharing agreement with RFKJ.

Um.

And some notable public people have now endorsed RFKJ.

Okay, Rogan. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The polls don’t really clearly show what kind of effect RFKJ’s candidacy is going to have on the election.

i really do wonder what the vote totals are going to look like. The more I see, the mor I’m seeing signals of 1992.

I don’t have a good segue way to American politics, unfortunately. Robby Soave, and others, over at Reason have pretty convincingly brought out his glaring weaknesses.

For the record

• He retired as an E-8.
• He didn’t finish the school he needed to be a CSM.
• He was popped for a DUI in 1994. That sort of conviction would have pretty much killed any career you’d have had as an active duty enlistee.
• His inaction during the riots was incredibly apalling
• that COVID hotline.

So, kind of disgusted by everything at this point.

I’m not sleeping well again. This might be a symptom of MS, or it might be something else, entirely.

Katie Herzog posted an unpublished story to Blocked & Reported about how she has trouble seeing things in her mind’s eye (Link, but it is behind a paywall). “aphantasia“

She talked about something that’s an identified condition for people who have no “mind’s eye.”

I had one. As I’ve approached legal-blindness, I note that the things I see in my dreams have largely decreased with my vision-level awake.

It’s a fascinating concept. A lot of Katie’s research was from Digg^H^H^H^H^HReddit. I emailed it to my doc to discuss later this week.

I should go try to sleep some more.

But of the Army sort. Credit to discussion on this on Substack.

I did listen to the Charli XCX album on Apple Music. Emphatic “meh.” I do kinda enjoy some of her other music.

Obviously, the previous entry was written before Joey Bideness (Say that like you’re from Brooklyn; h/t Chris) was told to decided to go back to the duPont mansion or his beach condo in Rehoboth permanently.

I’d planned to vote for Joe, but it’s probably not going to matter at this point. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, along with Jersey Dave Smith as VP. (And that one’s because the Mises Caucus destroyed the Libertarian Party…)

I had a ton of stuff I wanted to write about, but I’m actually trying to do the work, and stay away from that compulsion.

But I still find my mind wander to what I’m going to do this fall/winter.

Can it be football season, already?

Glance to see if there’s anything interesting in DC that month, and not seeing anything.

Yes, the Liz Phair concert was really the highlight of last year.

A lot of stuff on my mind.

After nearly a week in the other swamp of the Southern Landmass.

Not as markedly different a world as it was during the lockdowns, but, in a way, refreshing getting away from the Beltway Swamp.

Some discussion of future plans. These aren’t easy discussions; but, it is somewhat comforting that guideposts are better set.

There are some similarities to Hillbilly Elegy, which I did just finish listening to, but the realities aren’t the same with my family, and my parents’ upbringing in Mississippi. (And I reflexively anticipate preening that I listened to it…..but I am nearly fucking blind….not that that matters in the least. I’m supposed to just sit on the public dole and vote for the Party of President Biden’s friend, Jim Eastland, until I die…)

Few people dictating how people should behave live really don’t have any connection to life outside affluent areas.

One of the things I was dealing with the past couple of days was something that wouldn’t even be a question in a DC suburb. The subdivision looks vaguely like something you’d see anywhere near one of the major East Coast metro areas. There’s a tool used to build a business, and it’s slightly unsightly. Can’t have that in our pristine neighborhood that was a swamp four years ago.

I could attribute it to happenstance that I’ve been listening to an awful lot of Bill Cunningham lately.

I am not terribly familiar with Cincinnati, but I think I have a lot more in common with them than the people who’ve been ensconced in the major metro areas for their entire lives.

“Where’d you go to school?”

“CNU.”

“What’s that?”

Even in Virginia, I get that a lot. Our most notable alumnus is probably the guy who came up with XKCD.

Though I was definitely experiencing some pretty significant effects of my condition when I was an ROTC cadet there, I was completely out-of-place amongst the cadets from William and Mary. I remember being on an FTX at Ft. AP Hill where they were discussing the boarding schools they’d attended.

I went to three high schools, graduating from Menchville. Bad Newz repruhshent. (Yes, I did see Michael Vick play high school football after I’d graduated.)

But I really find myself recoiling from the prescriptive attitudes that seem to permeate. We are the experts. We are THE SCIENCE. Thou shalt not do anything we don’t like. Unless, of course, it allows us to continue paying less for the behemoth of government we’ve created.

But do I see Vance as an Ivy Leaguer? Not so much. I see him as what he became to get out of Southern Ohio/Kentucky — A Marine.

That would probably draw more derision from the scolding class than anything else. Why would you go do that when you can party for years on someone else’s dime?

Apologies, naturally, for the disjointedness here. You can blame MS brain fog, but I’m also juggling back-and-forth among several foci.

So, back to the discussion on The Fifth Column Substack. And the overwhelming desire for Cincinnati Chili for dinner has subsided.

Do I agree with Senator Vance’s (and Donald Trump’s) fixes?

Um.

No.

As I wrote in a recent entry, I’m still kind of the you-broke-it-you-bought-it mindset. And there probably won’t even be a Libertarian on the Virginia ballot.

The only thing I’m looking forward to in November is being able to cast a ballot for the Swabbie pilot running against Antifa Dad.

Not going to really elaborate on what’s going on, but I’m not in my normal place this morning.

I still stand by what I last wrote; I think the party in power deserves full credit for the impending problems.

That an ActBlue donor might have disrupted that yesterday doesn’t do a lot to change my take.

You broke it, you bought it.

The shooter was twenty years old, and a registered Republican. I don’t know a ton about the politics in Western Pennsylvania, but it might be a case of you really need to be a member of the dominant party to vote in the party’s primary. I live in a city in Virginia that’s been Blue since the Northern Aggressors left in 1877. All of the local elections are basically the Democrat Primary.

But rest assured I’m going to look askance at you if I know you ever donated a penny to ActBlue.