Here’s a thread to discuss the California primary. Maybe we can take bets on how long it will take to count the votes? California is notorious for its dilatory tactics in that regard.
I’m especially curious about the LA mayoral race and Spencer Pratt. Here’s a poll, for what it’s worth:
A recent poll by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times shows a closely contested race among the top three candidates, while 11 other candidates are trailing significantly. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, has Bass leading with 26% support among likely voters. Raman follows closely at 25%, with Pratt at 22%.
Multiple polls found the crowded race has narrowed to a three-way contest between Democrats Xavier Becerra, a former health secretary and state attorney general, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host.
With its lack of cinematic or political stars, California’s gubernatorial race was atypical from the jump. But a mid-April scandal upended it, essentially allowing candidates to restart their campaigns. Still, Tuesday’s primary could bring unexpected results because more voters than usual held on to their ballots until the final stretch of the competitive race.
Three key polls were released in recent days and all three of them found former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra several points ahead of both Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton and investor Tom Steyer. PPIC has Becerra at 23%, IGS has him at 25% and Emerson shows him 28% of the vote. No other candidate received more than 22% of the vote in any of the polls.
The term “yellow dog Democrat” refers to the sort of person who would automatically vote for the Democrats’ nominee even if it were a yellow dog. It’s a surprisingly old term:
The term originated in the late 19th century. These voters would allegedly “vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican”, or, “vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket”.[1] The term is now more generally applied to refer to any Democrat who will vote a straight party ticket under any circumstances. The South Carolina Democratic Party and Mississippi Democratic Party, among other state parties, continue to use the phrase to refer to committed members of the Democratic Party in the “Yellow Dog Club”.
I submit that it’s outdated; it’s way too mild. For example, see this:
Susan Collins: 1) Voted to convict Trump of impeachment 2) Voted against Amy Coney Barrett & Pete Hegseth 3) Backed limits on Trump's military power 4) Wants to nuke his "Anti-Weaponization Fund"
And more. If *she* is your evil right-wing extremist, words do not mean anything. https://t.co/dLQakRiAkS
Perhaps they should be called “Platner Democrats,” although that doesn’t roll too trippingly off the tongue. But “the messier Platner turns out to be the more I hope he wins,” because Susan Collins (one of the few moderates left in Congress) is evil – well, that is much of the current Democrat Party in a nutshell.
As far as Platner goes, if you haven’t kept up with the latest revelations about him, see this and this at Ace’s.
Another example of a Platner Democrat is Jessica Tarlov and apparently the Democrats of Maine:
“There are Democrats who have concerns, and some of them are speaking out about it,” she conceded. “This was the first weekend that I feel like Democrats were really pushed on the Sunday shows. Dana Bash was doing that as well with Andy Kim from New Jersey, who wanted to talk about what’s going on at Delaney Hall. And she kept bringing it back to this. Listen, Graham Platner, his wife is not a professional political spouse, and Graham Platner is not a professional politician himself. And you’re seeing that come to light.”
I’m not sure how not being a “professional politician” is supposed to absolve you from having a Nazi tattoo for nearly twenty years, for making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments online, for having a sorta-potty fetish, and for maintaining an account on a chat app used by sexual predators, but hey, that’s apparently the argument Tarlov is choosing to make.
“Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills to win,” Tarlov continued. “He got her to jump into this race because someone like a Jared Golden didn’t want to get in. And that didn’t work. Mainers have consistently said, ‘We know who Graham Platner is and this is what our choice is at this point.’”
Not all Democrats feel this way. But of those who are objecting to Platner, is it because he’s a terrible person (in addition to having virtually no political experience) or because they think he may lose?
One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was this one in January of 2005, entitled, “The fine art of insulting half your audience.” Here’s an excerpt:
It happens nearly every time. I’ll be reading a short story, let’s say, enjoying myself, lost in the experience—when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap at Bush, or at those who support him. It’s not as though the story is even tangentially about politics, either; it can be about anything at all, it doesn’t really matter.
The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know—well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral—oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too—not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush.
Back when I was one of the gang, too, back when I was in with the in crowd (“if it’s square, we ain’t there”), did I notice when authors dragged in their political credentials from left field? Or perhaps it wasn’t quite as commonplace back then for them to do so?
At any rate, now it seems positively obligatory. I’m reading along, sunk deep within the story, bonding with the characters—and then, suddenly, it’s as though the author has reached a hand out of the pages of the magazine (OK, I’ll confess, sometimes it’s the New Yorker—yes, I still read it for the fiction, just as some people claim they read Playboy for the interviews) and slapped me across the face.
Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.
Well, it’s only gotten worse since then. Sometimes it works out for the artist; after all, one-half of the population of the US is still a lot of people. Plus, if the person is offering something of value – is a good singer or actor or writer – people on the opposite side of the political divide may decide to still buy their product rather than boycott them. But what of someone like Jimmy Kimball? Unfunny, unentertaining; all he’s got is dissing Trump and even the way he does that isn’t the least bit clever. Plus, he seems to consider himself some sort of hero.
Therefore, should anyone be surprised at his perhaps-pending cancellation? Of course not. But Jimmy seems to think he’s being persecuted, poor thing:
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host opened up in a new interview with Vulture about the future of the genre following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Show” on CBS and his own run-ins with Trump, including his suspension following comments made about the death of Charlie Kirk.
“I feel a little bit defeated about it,” Kimmel told Vulture after Colbert’s final episode aired on May 21. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future.”
Kimmel went on to say he was assured by the network that his show is still profitable, and yet they only renewed him for a year. Plus:
Asked if he has thought about retirement, Kimmel said he’s still unsure when his time will come. “It’s important to me to be responsible,” he said. “I know I could go out in a blaze of glory and get a lot of applause for it, but it would be a very selfish thing to do.”
That is, if he isn’t ousted first. Trump has repeatedly called for Kimmel to be fired, most recently when he made a joke about Melania Trump having a “glow like an expectant widow.” In that case and that of Kirk, Kimmel said he “had the truth on my side as a defense. What if I actually do do something wrong? I mean, that’s inevitable.”
Of the president, Kimmel said: “I don’t love him. I don’t hate him, either. I feel sorry for him. He obviously didn’t get hugged a lot.”
Sure thing, Jimmy; you don’t hate Trump at all. And that remark about not being hugged is about the typical level of Kimmel’s wit.
Makes one yearn – positively yearn – for the days of Johnny Carson, who must have had his political preferences but kept them to himself while being genuinely entertaining. But that was a long long time ago.
A mountain lion forced residents of Santa Monica and their tiny pets indoors as officials scoured the area for the apex predator.
The Santa Monica Police Department descended on the residential area of 14th and Montana Friday morning after someone allegedly saw the animal in the area. …
The mountain lion was first located sleeping in a residential backyard, and did not move from that location for several hours, a SMPD spokesperson told The California Post. …
After about six hours, the animal was reportedly hit with a tranquilizer, sending it running through the neighborhood. Officials were seen in a video chasing after the big cat in an attempt to wrangle and capture it. …
Finally, nine hours after it was first reported, the animal was successfully tranquilized and removed.
Just a few years ago I was staying with a friend in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It was April, and I went for a walk in a very built-up area of many homes. And yet I saw a mountain lion walking through a group of bushes not more than 50 yards away from me. I turned and slowly walked in another direction, heart pounding but trying not to transmit fear although I was quite frightened.
When that happened to me, it made me think of this old Kingston Trio song from my youth. It’s a California song:
And now of course we have to have the song “Wimoweh,” later called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” I prefer this older Weavers version (1955) to the later pop version by the Tokens:
Here is the original South African group who created the song. You can see how closely the Weavers stuck to this version:
First, a bit of background (if you’re unfamiliar with the story of the Andes crash, there may be a few spoilers here). I first read the definitive book on the subject, Alive, when it came out in 1974. I was transfixed by it, and agree with this assessment from The New Republic:
No one will come away unmoved by the book, and no one will be able to put it down. … There is no way of reading Alive without a heightened sense of one’s own life and its value.
The book is not only an extraordinary survival saga, but it has tremendously moving stories involving family, friendship, love, and sacrifice. It is a sort of reverse Lord of the Flies, where the cooperation among the survivors was extremely impressive, and it also contained deeply spiritual and religious elements despite its horrors.
Over the years I’ve read other books on the subject, including several written by the survivors. I’ve watched several documentaries as well. In 1993 an American movie came out on the subject, and although I was looking forward to it immensely I was sharply disappointed. It just didn’t ring true, plus it left out or truncated very important parts of the story, in particular involving the astounding trek by two of the young men who survived the initial crash.
So when I heard recently that there was a newer movie, made in 2023 in the Spanish language, and using previously-unknown Uruguayan and Argentinian actors, I was extremely eager to see it. I had to wait till I was in a certain mood, because the story is a grueling one even to watch, and from the trailer I could see it was very realistically as well as poetically done:
And so I watched the film, and I have mixed feelings about it. I would recommend it, although you need to be prepared for a harrowing journey. Compared to the previous movie it’s better. But compared to the book it simply doesn’t work for me. That surprised me, and I’ve been pondering why I found it ultimately very inferior to the book that some of the survivors thought was already inadequate.
For one thing, I think a book has the ability to give so much more background on the entire situation and the people in it, which deepens the story and its significance. Just to take one example, in the book you learn a great deal about a woman who was one of the initial survivors, Liliana Methol. But in the film she’s almost an afterthought and somewhat of a cipher. There just isn’t enough time to render each person in his or her fullness.
Plus, there are an enormous number of characters, and the actors (who look a great deal like the real life people they are representing) somewhat resemble each other, especially as the movie goes on and many become bearded and all become thinner (the actors were forced to lose weight as the film went on, for the sake of realism). It wasn’t that easy to tell them apart, and I knew a great deal about the characters already.
Films with big casts need to pay particular attention to this potential problem. I think that, for example, The Great Escape (a film favorite of mine although of a very different type), which also had a very big cast, dealt with the numbers more successfully because the protagonists were from different countries, and there were many stars in the cast and that helped the viewers remember who’s who. That movie was also about a half hour longer than Society of the Snow, and although both movies are long they both move along quite quickly because there’s so much to tell. But The Great Escape has more time in which to tell it.
In the book Alive, there’s a great deal of emphasis also on the stories of the families searching for their lost relatives; many did not give up hope, and their tales are especially moving and make the eventual reunions even more poignant and deeply felt. There was virtually none of that in the movie; you merely see reunions with parents and girlfriends which are generic because we don’t have much of the backstory.
There are many exchanges and scenes in the book that seem naturally cinematic, and some are left out of the movie. I don’t know why; it wouldn’t take much to have included them. Instead, there are repetitive scenes of the suffering endured by the survivors and their decline – as well as a tremendous emphasis on the most sensationalistic part of their story, the fact that in order to survive they very reluctantly decided they must eat the bodies of those who had died (and the living made a pact to allow the others to eat them if they died before rescue came), Any movie about this incident must deal with that fact, but I think that after a while this particular movie could have left out some of the redundancy and gone for some more of the background stories.
Most of all, I was surprised that the movie seemed to leave out or gloss over one of the most salient characteristics of the group, which is that they were Catholics and mostly believers, and that their specifically Catholic beliefs helped them endure. That is, many of them explicitly likened their eating the flesh of their dead companions to the Eucharist, although they were well aware of the differences. Instead, in the movie there was a vaguer spirituality that was emphasized. Even the part where, after the survivors returned to civilization and priests told them they would not be condemned by the Church for what they did in extremis – that entire aspect was left out. Instead, there was an almost-throwaway scene in a church at the beginning of the film, with a priest talking about the Host while some of the young men pass notes among them. Unless you already know the plot, you could easily miss its significance.
This omission and de-emphasis seems to me to be a deliberate lessening of the religious message and slant of the entire event, a trend toward the universal rather than the specific. But the specific can have a universal message, and I felt the omission keenly although I’m neither Catholic nor Christian.
The movie caused me to get out my old copy of Alive and start re-reading it. In the introduction, the author writes:
When I returned in October 1973 to show [the survivors] the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through.
I think that’s an honest assessment; it’s an impossible task. Nevertheless I think that Piers Paul Read came as close to accomplishing it as anyone could. For me, he certainly came closer than any movie could.
(1) New icky revelations about Graham Platner to go with the old icky revelations about Graham Platner:
Shortly after Graham Platner launched his bid for a Maine Senate seat last year, his wife Amy Gertner told aides that she had seen sexually explicit texts on his phone, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The disclosure, which occurred in late August, came when aides were conducting opposition research. Gertner said she had told the campaign aide about the texts to several women, to make sure they didn’t pose a risk to her husband’s campaign, the WSJ reported.
This occurred in 2025, and the couple had been married in 2024. The texts themselves remain uncharacterized except in the very general sense of being “sexually explicit,” but I wonder if they were the sort of thing that got Anthony Weiner in trouble. Then again, the times they have a-changed. But Platner seems like one of the more repulsive candidates around, and that’s saying something.
(2) Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan won’t be running for president in 2028. I doubt she would have been a strong candidate, and she probably read the writing on the wall about that.
(3) Speaking of Michigan and candidates, the frontrunner for the Democrats, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, has this to say: he “struggles” with the question of whether Israel has the right to exist as “a Jewish state.” More here:
Abdul El Sayed, a progressive Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, told an audience that he “struggles” to answer questions about whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.
My first reaction to people who question whether Israel has “a right to exist” is usually, “Go pound sand.” Israel is a nuclear power with one of the most advanced militaries, economies, and technological infrastructures in the world. And yet, for some reason, and it’s not difficult to guess what that reason is, people are constantly pondering whether a Jewish state should exist. They exist because they fought to exist.
But El Sayed’s reasoning exposes a confused and warped worldview.
“The question becomes,” he goes on, “how do you sustain democracy if you don’t have a Jewish majority? And then to say it’s Jewish by power, are there particular offices that have to be held by Jewish people? If so, what kind of Jewish people?”
First of all, El Sayed has it backward. Israel sustains a democracy because it’s a Jewish state.
I’ll tell you how you don’t “sustain a democracy”: by giving the Palestinians a state or any “right of return” to Israel proper. That would destroy any semblance of “liberal values,” tout de suite.
Ah, so Al-Sayed is a sort of concern troll, worried about the future of Israel as a democracy – the only one in the Middle East, by the way. A Jewish state that has plenty of Muslims and Christians with full rights – unlike all the Muslim states in the area who do not allow Jews in their territory.
(4) This charming event happened recently, in which an ICE protestor threatened an ICE agent and his family, in no uncertain terms:
ICE Newark rioter: “I HAVE YOUR FACE, MOTHERF***ER”
“Your WHOLE F***ING FAMILY is DEAD!”
“Your KIDS. Your WIFE. ALL DEAD!”
This is the type of TERRORISM Democrats WANT ICE agents to face by de-masking them.
It turns out that free speech has limits, and the protester/threatener was located and arrested by the feds:
The arrest came just hours after Blanche promised the protester, who was captured on video, would be found and arrested.
“That’s a federal crime,” Blanche said on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show” on Thursday. “Not only threatening the ICE officer — but think about how disgusting this individual is by threatening his wife and his children with death.
The guy doing the threatening was not wearing a mask, which helped authorities to identify him.
NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill just caved and is siding with the anti-ICE mob at Delaney Hall. She’s now actively blocking the expansion of ICE operations and setting up a “safe zone” for protesters.
Anila Ali, a Pakistan native turned fearless DC-based civil rights advocate, defiantly told The Post “nothing is deterring me” from marching in the annual event that celebrates the Jewish state – even after a Democratic socialist city councilwoman condemned Ali to hell for showing her support for Jews this week at a rally in front of Gracie Mansion.
The 58-year-old powerhouse founder of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council said she plans to march with a few dozen Muslim supporters, including an imam and children, despite a barrage of intimidation tactics from “nefarious forces” for daring to show solidarity with Israel.
Take your pick.of metaphors – either way, how the person sees it at the moment is more a reflection of that person’s attitude towards Trump, war, and Iran itself than any reality. Do you think Trump’s a bumbling fool? Then you probably think it’s a foolish and perhaps even evil war. Do you think Trump’s a wily old bastard with many tricks up his sleeve? Then you probably think the war has achieved a great deal towards defanging an active terrorist state bent on the destruction of the West, and you are willing to trust that Trump has no intention of undermining those gains and every intention of extending them, as well as the ability to do so.
If you’re a pacifist or isolationist and thought Trump was one too, you’re probably angry and feel betrayed. And of course, if you think Iran’s a great place and the leaders are heroes who had no evil intent and need nuclear weapons, you’re on their side.
But sooner or later, the inkblot turns into a recognizable picture. Sooner or later, the box is opened and you either observe a live cat or a dead cat. The basic question is: at what point will that happen? Some think it should have happened already. Others are willing to wait.
One of those willing to wait is Roger Kimball, who writes:
Trump held Iran’s head underwater for six weeks. He pulled it up and let it sputter while he offered the mullahs an off-ramp. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, responding to the press, is right. “The idea that somehow this President, given everything he’s already proven he’s willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd!”
Indeed. Trump is waiting impatiently while the Iranians prance and posture. The IRGC tried laying some mines in the Strait of Hormuz and: pow! The US took out the boats involved and destroyed a surface-to-air missile battery in Bandar Abbas that was targeting US warplanes. “These were defensive strikes,” a US spokesman said. “They do not indicate the ceasefire is over.”
What they do indicate is that Trump is serious about his terms.
Kimball also believes that the Iranian regime “may shatter” once “a few cracks appear.” I think “may” is doing a lot of work there. Of course it “may” shatter, but IMHO that will take more than “a few cracks.” A lot more.
Trump isn’t making a deal contingent on the regime shattering; he’s making it contingent on their cooperating on his key points. But is that even possible, and would capitulation be meaningful if they can’t be trusted? I think the answer is “no.” I think this particular regime will never yield on those points and even if they do is not to be trusted. And I think Trump, Rubio, and the rest of the American negotiators know that. That’s why the endgame is a conundrum.
Platner claims that Susan Collins voted to send him to Iraq; he says that explicitly in the video at the link. He also says the US “destroyed” Iraq, but when I last checked, Iraq was still a functioning country and doing at least somewhat better than it was before the war. As for Afghanistan – which he also says the US “destroyed,” it’s about the same as it was before the war, with the Taliban in charge.
But about Collins:
Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins made a mistake when she voted to “send him to Iraq.”
“We destroyed Iraq and we destroyed Afghanistan, and all the suffering, all the killing, all the dying, all the displacement — we, the United States, did that. And that I’m ashamed of.”
“The anger that I feel is for the people that sent me,” he said.
“The fact is, that was Platner’s decision to serve,” Collins told The Maine Wire on Thursday, adding, “He was not drafted.”
Additionally, the GOP senator cited Platner’s decision to work for the security company Blackwater, which was investigated by the U.S. government over allegations that it violated international law.
He signed up after the war began, and he re-upped. It was entirely voluntary.
His reply? She made me do it anyway:
Now all these years later, instead of acknowledging that she was wrong, she’s decided that she’s going to blame all of us who — in our late teens and early twenties — signed up to serve our country,” he continued. “That somehow it’s our fault that she and establishment politicians like her, wanted to abuse our willingness to serve, to go send us off to fight in stupid wars that did nothing but make some people very, very rich at the expense of American taxpayer dollars.”
Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school in 2003. He attended the Marine Corps School of Infantry, then deployed to Iraq in 2005. He served a total of eight years in the military, including three combat tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah. Asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, “I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway.”
After four years in the military, Platner enrolled at George Washington University, funded by the G.I. Bill. Shortly after starting school, he enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard and served an additional tour of duty in the war in Afghanistan. He returned to Washington in 2011, resuming classes at GWU and working as a bartender at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill. From 2011 to 2016 he alternated between living in DC and military deployments, before withdrawing from GWU and returning to Maine in 2016 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other military-related injuries.
In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, where he provided diplomatic security to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan.
