This could be the year

[Citizen XXX]

As I cannot in good conscience support either of the main parties, I had a look at third-party and independent candidates. Barring any troubling revelations, I am tentatively prepared to endorse



The Prohibition Party. Founded 154 years ago, it is the oldest existing third party in the United States.


All the teetotallers in one room - what fun!

Some things I like about them. List grabbed from their Wikipedia page:
- A non-interventionist foreign policy
- Pro-choice
- Anti death penalty
- Abolition of the Federal Reserve
- Strict laws against usury. Definitely down with usury.
- A fully funded Social Security system
- Increased spending on public works projects
- Job training programs paid for by tariffs
- Free college education for all Americans
- Want to abolish state lotteries
- Opposition to testing on animals, and the use of animals in sport
- Fair trade
- Use of human rights considerations in determining most favored nation status
- Opposition to pornography. I think we could at least use a little pushback at this point.

Things I don't mind about them:
- They want so-called blue laws prohibiting employers in all fields except public safety from requiring employees to work on the Sabbath, aka Sunday for us heathens. Sure, why not.
- Campaigns to promote temperance. Good luck with that! But I admire the sheer implausibility of it. The fact that I don't drink actually didn't enter into my decision-making process.
- Opposition to physician-assisted suicide

Things I'm not so keen on:
- A strict interpretation of the Second Amendment
- Opposition to attempts to remove religion from the public square
- Prohibition of all non-medicinal drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. Let's see how that temperance campaign goes first, shall we?
- Frankly their name is a bit of a downer
- Free college education for all Americans. I don't rate a college education at all these days, so this would be a huge waste of money.

Their presidential nominee this year is a guy called Michael Wood. I don't know who that is and am not even going to bother googling. Their pick for VP is from Ohio. So am I!

Not sure what the camel is about.


XXX?

[Detectorist]

https://www.donotpanic.news/p/biden-resigns-while-sick-with-covid

Joe Biden just quit the presidential campaign.

In his withdrawal letter touting his achievements, he says we ‘overcame the pandemic.’

A letter he wrote while literally sick with the pandemic virus.

For a third time.

Does this mean we overcame the pandemic?

We overcame the pandemic by believing the lies we were told and the lies we told ourselves.

We overcame the pandemic by breathing a sigh of relief when it was no longer in the headlines.

We overcame the pandemic through the normalization of extra suffering and death.

We overcame the pandemic by turning away.

We overcame the pandemic by accepting a worse world.

We overcame the pandemic by pretending our responsibilities to each other ended with a vaccine.

We overcame the pandemic by trampling on the vulnerable.

It’s also instructive to see the treatment Biden received for a virus we overcame.

Antivirals

Round-the-clock O2 monitoring, blood pressure and temperature checks

Blood panel to check red blood cell function

White blood cell panel to check immune system function

Metabolic panel to test electrolytes, kidney, liver function

What do we get?

We get told it’s just a cold and to get back to work.

You’re very lucky to get antivirals outside the US, and lucky in the US if you’re considered eligible and your insurance covers it.

That’s if you even know you have it, because most people were long ago discouraged from testing.

physical reality has this knack of being real.

. . .

From the Naked Capitalism commentariat:

I have a, usually well-concealed, perverse passion for the insights of the Guardian’s House Derango, Simon Tisdall, whose “thoughts” we might consider if any of us feels the need to celebrate the achievements of the Biden Presiduncey. I suggest that it might well be advisable to thoroughly empty your bladder before engaging with the inimitably Tisdallian final two paragraphs: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/22/post-joe-biden-era-democrats-donald-trump

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/links-7-23-2024.html#comment-4075509
Meaty comment on Covid as relates to sport and academia

. . .

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/us-voters-want-change-bidens-exit-hasnt-fixed-that.html

the ‘best economy’ does not reach to a lot of the elements neoliberalism has gutted so deeply, for example, affordable homeownership everywhere, or in the US, accessible, affordable health care and higher education. For the working class, these things are gone – basically gone to private equity – and ‘the best economy in 14 years’ doesn’t change that...

Why has the left been so unsuccessful in harnessing the enormous discontent that most people have with the state of the world? Offering a vision that deals with the very same fears and anxieties that the right has mobilised is utterly crucial.

That means taking very seriously that most people are rightly terrified about the future and are also dealing with a deep sense of loss; lost affordable transportation, education, housing and health, but also lost stability of family, identity and place and with all of this a lost sense of safety, security and futurity. These fears and losses need to be addressed directly – not with the kind of technical accounts that people like Biden offer about insulin prices or a bit of debt relief – but with a compelling way forward to a different order. Even with Starmer, as you say, there’s no clear agenda, no manifesto, no big picture. Yet the big picture is exactly what the right offers, and wins with!

So we need to begin by taking seriously that many working- and middle-class people feel great anxiety, fear and loss, and articulate a collective path forward that is deeply compelling, not one built on technicalities, identities and small fixes.

“the original sin” of current DNC politics is Obama’s pivot to bog-standard neoliberalism in January 2009. All those 20 y.o. crying while listening to Obama’s Election Day speech are 35 y.o. now—I doubt that this is the future that they envisioned (crushing housing costs, crushing childcare costs, a generational decline in their standard of living when compared to their parents).

Hell hath no fury like a young person’s dream scorned.

[A Visitor from Outer Space]

Which one got the face hugger? I forget.

[Tunes out and zooms away]

https://x.com/NoahGarfinkel/status/1833708370974695574
https://x.com/MallymkunMousey/status/1833901476034584969

https://pluralia.forumverona.com/en/a/the-great-debate-trump-talked-substance-but-kamala-won-on-tone-and-looks/

[H. L. Mencken]

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

. . .

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

. . .

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

. . .

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

. . .

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

. . .

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

. . .

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

. . .

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

. . .

I've just saved you a trip to BrainyQuote.

[weathered man]

https://x.com/Rachael_ICU/status/1847130863273726197

[George Ent]

(Bikespotting @ 3 minutes)

https://x.com/noapologyUSA/status/1853855972109803838

They have woken the ancient ones.

The Amish may not have singlehandedly won it for Trump, but to me their fight to be left alone is emblematic of an increasing disgust with the authoritarian left. Maybe they also liked the fact that he's less war happy than the dems.

[@jollygoodthen]

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1854242284952519158

'To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future' - Plutarch
Judging by my X feed, a lot of progressives think the only mistake they've made recently is failing to call opponents Nazis often enough.

https://x.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1854392650486468860

I'm so glad the US hasn't elected, as their first female president, a woman who doesn't know what a woman is.

https://x.com/JustineBateman/status/1854911656289071200

Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.

https://x.com/MiroRichard/status/1854671873289646500

Therapy nation must end. I don't care about your feelings.

[sam]

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4983994-language-gap-elite-working-america/

[sam]

Or you could say republicans law maker banned males from women’s toilets

https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1858848622206742717
"If we’re going to dance, let’s all dance in the sunlight."

(https://x.com/OkayBiology/status/1858905761142944103)

https://x.com/RepNancyMace/status/1858917861797904700
Danger Will Robinson

https://x.com/RepNancyMace/status/1858901799295742089
https://x.com/RepNancyMace/status/1859668785730551841
This is what being on fire looks like
https://x.com/marycatedelvey/status/1859700478281732223

Manufacturing a culture war? Is this the mansplaining version of ‘I don’t care about women’s safety’?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5212927-republican-congresswoman-bring-forward-bill-to-ban-transwomen-from-female-facilities-in-congress



https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5212214-the-democrats-need-an-honest-conversation-on-gender-identity-part-2
(Part 1 was also a page turner)



A Democratic Reckoning on “Gender Identity”?

The “contact hypothesis,” which predicts that the public becomes more sympathetic to a group and its expressed needs as contact with members of that group become more routine, has not held in the case of people who identify as transgender. Quite the opposite, in fact: as the American public became more familiar with such people, it became less accepting of the transgender movement’s belief system and policy preferences.

Transgenderism is over

Transgenderism hit the early mainstream in 2014, when Time magazine announced the “transgender tipping point.” 2014 to 2019 saw the most intense period of anti-TERF persecution, particularly within academia and the media. People who are mostly oblivious to the preoccupations of political activists slowly became aware that this was something they were supposed to care about. After 2020, it became common to see the progress pride flag in provincial bookshops or outside suburban churches. Civil servants and police officers began to include their pronouns in their email signatures. ”It filtered down through the department stores” as Miranda Priestly would say, “and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.” Transgenderism became uncool.

Good to be an optimist, but careful with the past tense...