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The strange case of Kamala Harris

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed I don’t write much about Kamala Harris. Early on, though – August 2019 – I pointed out that she is remarkably unlikable:

Have you ever noticed how voters can forgive a candidate almost anything if they like that person? One of Hillary’s big problems, for example—one Obama correctly sensed in the 2008 race, when she was his main rival—is that she’s “unlikable.”

So is Kamala Harris, IMHO.

It didn’t take long to perceive this about Harris. But as time has gone on, I will also say that she’s gotten much more strange. I don’t know whether this represents an actual change, or whether it’s just an impression that grows stronger and stronger with greater exposure.

But this video caught my attention as a good example of that strangeness. In it, she seems to be following a script (as are the kids), but her affect in certain parts of it is so fake and her over-acting so unctuous that it gives me a bit of the ceepy-crawlies:

Harris seems uncomfortable in front of the camera, uncomfortable in front of people, uncomfortable in her job as VP. I’m not sure why, although I’ve read a lot of speculation. Does she feel pushed out, is she upset that poll numbers are so bad, does she realize she’s out of her depth, is she frightened? Or is she just a strange, strange person?

Comments

The strange case of Kamala Harris — 157 Comments

  5. They are child actors and there was a script. How bad is she when she can’t even follow a scripted event well?

  10. I vote strange, out of her depth, and frightened.

    AMartel:

    Well said.

    She’s a spectacular example of the Peter Principle:
    ________________________________________

    …people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “maximum level of incompetence”…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
    ________________________________________

    Biden is another spectacular example. Arguably the top tier of the Democratic Party, as well.

  11. To be on the Left requires a mix of qualities.
    Some cleverness in order to convince yourself to ignore obvious contradictions.
    A certain lack of the emotions typically present in more standard human beings in order to raise yourself up and demote others.

    You look at some other Dem politicians. Hillary’s casual lies about being under fire in the Balkans or being named after Sir Edmund. Politicians are weird … Repubs as well as Dems and of course all over the world and throughout history … but our current crop is exceptionally incompetent, unaware and odd.
    Maybe they’ve all been exposed to some brain altering drug that hasn’t made it out to us masses?

  12. Or maybe the conspiracy theorists are correct and they are possessed by demons.
    I mean, it’s a theory.

  13. Does she feel pushed out, is she upset that poll numbers are so bad, does she realize she’s out of her depth, is she frightened? Or is she just a strange, strange person?
    _______

    Conjunction, not disjunction.

  14. She’s the daughter of a Jamaican mulatto and and East Indian woman who were in the United States on student visas. The bulk of her upbringing was spent in Toronto, to where her mother decamped after her parents’ divorce.

    Regrettably, she’s the least intelligent person in her family of origin. Someone has to be in any family of four.

    Instead of landing a berth at a state school in Ontario or California (and, recall, she passed the bar exam in later years, so it’s a passable wager second tier schools were open to her at age 17), she enrolls at Howard University. Howard is both a research institution and an HBCU. She has no particular connection to the black American population other than some west African DNA). Howard had some embarrassing problems in her era. (The law dean’s attempts to upgrade that faculty led to his dismissal in 1986; at the time, the % of Howard graduates who passed the bar examination on their first attempt was in the single-digits).

    Her political career was launched in the most demeaning way imaginable, and everybody knows it.

    During her time as a prosecutor, she acquired a reputation for unscrupulous conduct.

    She remained unmarried until she was past 50, then landed a Jewish divorcé with adolescent children. It is true she wasn’t at age 22 as handsome (in comparison to contemporaries) as she is now; she still must have given quite a mess of men the brush off before and after her casting-couch auditions for Willie Brown.

    She herself has no children. Her sister has just one.

    When hustlers were offering her step-daughter a ‘modeling’ contract, none of the three adults whose vocation it is to counsel the girl succeeded in persuading her to turn it down. NB, Kamala knows how to present herself and learned during her young adult years; hasn’t been helpful to stepdaughter Ella, who looks like Emily Litella.

    She’s pure politician. Her sister and her solitary niece are, as she has been, politically-connected lawyers. Her mother and father were nothing like that.

    Very disconcerting character.

  15. Hillary’s casual lies about being under fire in the Balkans or being named after Sir Edmund.

    IIRC, the latter lie was uttered by her mother.

  16. It’s pretty blatant to hire actors and script these events. I have to wonder how long this has been going on and how often.

  17. I’m not sure about all of this.

    If you’re totally insincere AND you FAKE sincerity, doesn’t that make you…SINCERE?

    Looking at it another way, she was totally unpopular in the primaries (I’d say, she was first among equals, actually, but YMMV) and she was booted out speedily.

    Now she’s demonstrating—unabashedly—just why she was totally unpopular and was booted out. (To be fair, she’s been demonstrating this from day 1.)

    That’s gotta count for something.

    BTW, she could become president tomorrow and the SAME CABAL would STILL be making the decisions.

    Simply because it is IMPERATIVE that the SHOW MUST GO ON.

    File under: President “Harris”

  18. “the latter lie was uttered by her mother”
    That’s what Hillary says. She says that her mom read about Sir Edmund while pregnant.
    According to Snopes: “However, how likely was Dorothy Rodham, a Chicago housewife, to have seen an article about a New Zealand mountain climber? We performed a comprehensive search of several major American newspapers (including the Chicago Tribune) and found that none of them made any mention of Edmund Hillary whatsoever prior to June 1953 [when HRC was 6]”
    I think Snopes would have mentioned any acknowledgement Mom made corroborating her daughter’s story.
    Snopes goes into impressive detail:
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-vs-hillary/

  19. Out of her depth (although whether she knows it is an open question), and a naturally strange person.

  20. I suspect that the decision was made quite early on that Kamala would be on the ticket, so it would be pointless for her to continue to run in primaries, voters be damned.

  21. Harris and Biden both illustrate that even low-functioning sociopaths can rise in the Democratic Party to be premiere flak-catchers as long as they are subservient to those who really run the Party at any given time.

  22. That’s what Hillary says.

    It was my impression her mother said it publicly. I may be misremembering.

    I sometimes wonder how Hugh and Dorothy Rodham and how Virginia Dell Cassidy managed to raise such unscrupulous children. The three of them were zero for five.

  23. The boy child sitting second to the right of Krazy Kamala is a strong candidate for a Netflix production of “The Childhood of Mohandas Gandhi”.

  25. Art Deco,

    “It was my impression her mother said it publicly. I may be misremembering.”

    My remembrance is that Hillary said, publicly, her mother had told her that about her naming. But at my age memory can be a slippery thing.

  26. In the little bit that I could stomach before my lunch started coming up on me, it struck me that Kamela is drunk. The weird smile, her ever present cackle and the slurring from the back of her throat like she’s lost the control of her tongue are all a dead giveaway.

    If she talked like that to a cop during a traffic stop, she’d be blowing into a straw and walking a straight line.

  27. “I sometimes wonder how Hugh and Dorothy Rodham and how Virginia Dell Cassidy managed to raise such unscrupulous children. The three of them were zero for five.”

    Paternity may have had something to do with it in the case of young Blythe, aka Bill Clinton.

    His father had apparently married five times during a “career” as a heavy machinery salesman, [and I would think prior, as no 17-18 year old that I have heard of traveled around selling bulldozers] before dying at age 28, 3 months before young Bill was born.

    Apparently, Blythe died as a result of an auto accident. Wiki, my source for this, adds the detail that he survived the immediate effects of the accident to subsequently drown in 3 feet of ditch water while trying to claw his way out of the ditch into which he had been thrown by the blown tire wreck.

    Clinton’s mother seems to have had peculiar “luck” with her four recorded husbands. One, the bigamist father of Bill, drowned in a ditch. Another, an alcoholic, eventually expired from cancer. The third died of diabetes; says Wiki.

    Nine marriages listed between Billy’s father and mother.

    But if you can actually follow and make sense of the history of Blythe’s marriages and his various offspring, you have more patience and persistence than I do.

  28. Perhaps she’s a very high functioning autistic? She certainly doesn’t seem to be able to approximate the normal range of human emotions particularly well. We all are aware of her behavioral peculiarities, her laughing at inappropriate times and the like. Has she ever done the creepy smiling with eyes wide open thing the Hillary does?

  29. This sort of ultra-clueless fake behavior reminds me of Richard Nixon. The stand-up comics of that era based their Nixon impersonations on it.

  30. I’m surprised you didn’t reference the reports that the children here actually are paid actors.

    It’s kind of funny to me that Democrats spent all of last year touting their deep bench of talented young candidates and then ended up nominating an incompetent geriatric blowhard.

    Or perhaps not so funny when you examine the purported deep bench.

  31. IIRC, the latter lie was uttered by her mother.

    And then Hilary just repeated it for sixty years without ever noticing that the climb didn’t happen until she was six?

  32. She might realize she is over her head but are Leftists ever? They always think they are the smartest ones.
    I put it to bad acting and faking excitement.

  33. Or perhaps not so funny when you examine the purported deep bench.

    John Hickenlooper, John Delaney, Andrew Yang, and Michael Bloomberg had all prospered in the business world and Hickenlooper and Bloomberg were experience public sector executives as well. There was also Steve Bullock, who hasn’t the background in business of these others but has held an executive position and knows how to appeal to a red state electorate. There was also Tulsi Gabbard, who does not have the preparation for the presidency but is an independent thinker with some integrity. The Democratic electorate wasn’t interested in any of these people. They were interested in Amy Klobberherworkers, Poseur Pete, Liawatha, Red Bernie, and Sundown Joe. Street-level Democrats are a sorry lot.

  34. “And then Hilary just repeated it for sixty years without ever noticing that the climb didn’t happen until she was six?”
    According to Snopes, she never mentioned it “prior to her 1995 south Asian tour, and every appearance of it in news articles after that . . . referenced that one occasion.”

  35. And then Hilary just repeated it for sixty years without ever noticing that the climb didn’t happen until she was six?

    No, my recollection was that Mrs. Rodham herself said this in earshot of reporters.

  37. I think she is a sociopath. I do not think she is afraid of becoming the first female prez. Look at her prosecutorial record.
    She is Nero incarnate.

  39. Clinton’s mother seems to have had peculiar “luck”

    You think she killed them?

    Nine marriages listed between Billy’s father and mother.

    She contracted five marriages to four men. She was widowed three times. Her last husband outlived her. She divorced Roger Clinton in 1961, then reconciled with him the following year. If I were to blame her for anything, it would be an attraction to skeevy characters. Her third husband had at the time she married him done time for fraud; her second by all accounts was a drunk with a violent temper; and her first was married at least 3x over an 11 year period, quite possibly bigamously.

    It was not until 1993 that any of his three children learned about the other two, and his surviving sisters were insisting publicly that one of the three must be an imposter (the marriage certificate is on file in Jackson County, Mo., pace the Blythe sisters). Note, Bill Clinton’s brother Leon Ritzenthaler appears to have been a salt-of-the-Earth character – married, two children, veteran, self-employed. His sister Sharon Pettijohn married in 1958, bore three children, and remained married until her husband’s death in 2019; she has great grandchildren.

  41. I found it laughable that she seemed to assume that none of these teens had ever looked through a telescope. Can you imagine what her reaction would have been to my high school physics class using a laser and an oscilloscope to measure the speed of light?! And getting the right answer? She would have assumed we were space aliens!

  42. Art Deco on October 12, 2021 at 4:25 pm said:

    Clinton’s mother seems to have had peculiar “luck”

    You think she killed them?

    Well, one, i.e., Bill’s biological father, drowned in three feet of ditch water hundreds of miles away. So unless she has the supernatural powers of a justice administering Providence, I would not think she killed him.

    The drunk, seemed to have died as a result of a trajectory he embarked upon without her help, so, “No” to that as well.

    And unless she somehow caused or exacerbated the demise of the diabetic, I would say that it seems unlikely.

    So in answer to your question: “No”.

    That is not to say that the whole gaggle of them might not have been genetically toxic, if it makes any sense to use such terminology.

  43. Considering that the Democrat party is run by the Obamas and the Clintons, they could well have known, long before the primaries, that whoever the candidates might be, they would become President and Vice President. It took a long time and a lot of planning to rig the election, and they had to start the groundwork early.
    Since they knew who would “win” the election, they could pick whoever they wanted. They picked these two losers just to “throw it in our faces.”
    “I try to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.” ~Lilly Tomlin (and me)

  45. My guess is that she is extremely introverted. Smart enough to get through law school and the bar exam. But so terminally shy she needed Willie’s help and reassurance to move into public life. And she wasn’t cured of her introversion. It causes her to babble and cackle.

  47. “Does she feel pushed out, is she upset that poll numbers are so bad, does she realize she’s out of her depth, is she frightened? Or is she just a strange, strange person?”

    Embrace the power of and.

  48. Not buying the introvert explanation. I know lots of them, myself included. They’re quiet and reserved. Harris doesn’t appear shy, just weird. The autism spectrum is a more likely idea, I think.

  49. Her current mental state is the result of years of dealing with the knowledge that when people look at her, they picture Willi Brown’s junk between her lips.

  51. The drunk, seemed to have died as a result of a trajectory he embarked upon without her help, so, “No” to that as well.

    He died of a rare random strike cancer “carcinoma jugular foramen”.

  52. As my mom would say…she’s “as phoney as a three dollar bill”. I still think it strange that Joey Plugs picked her despite her horrible non-competitive performance in the Democrat primaries.

  53. I still think it strange that Joey Plugs picked her

    “Doctor” Jill might have had something to do with it– she would not want anyone in the VP slot who might outshine Joe (not that it would take much). Incidentally, has anyone ever seen Joe sniffing the VP’s hair?

  54. Kate,

    I’m very shy and public speaking terrifies me. There have been times where I’ve been incoherent or unable to speak.

  55. I still think it strange that Joey Plugs picked her

    Never mind who picked her. Who picked Joe?

  57. }}} “Doctor” Jill might have had something to do with it– she would not want anyone in the VP slot who might outshine Joe

    Unfortunately, there are slowly spinning black holes which outshine Joe

  58. Probably GIGO (and is personology really a field?), but here’s a study from St. John’s University making claims about Harris’s political personality. Apparently she is not an introvert.
    ________________________________________________

    In conclusion, the present study offers an empirically based personological framework for inferring the general tenor of a prospective Harris presidency. By dint of her dominant, ambitious, and outgoing qualities, Kamala Harris’s major personality strengths in a political role are her confident assertiveness and personal charisma. Her major personality-based shortcoming, rooted in a distinctive outgoing tendency, is likely to be a predisposition to occasional lapses in emotional restraint or self-discipline.

    –“The Political Personality of 2020 Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris “
    ________________________________________________

    Her charisma seems well-concealed these days.

  59. A successful politician’s foremost skill is the abiity to convincingly fake sincerity. Harris is incapable of communicating sincerity.

    A successful politician also knows how to lie skillfully. Which requires the cunning to intuitively grasp what portion of the truth is best left unmentioned in order to best deceive the listener. Harris doesn’t possess the required degree of cunning.

    I think it most likely that those in charge arranged for Biden to be nominated because he was seen to be the most controllable.

    Perhaps that was the case with Harris. But I can’t shake the suspicion that if so, they may have gravely underestimated how easily a President Harris could be controlled. Not because of her then revealing a sudden, strong willfulness but rather because the mentally unstable are not easily controlled.

  60. Yawrate, she doesn’t appear to me to be shy, or unable to speak. Insecure, perhaps, because she doesn’t know her subject material, which may be the source of the odd laugh. My very introverted daughter has learned that she can give presentations effectively when she has a subject matter she knows well and something she needs to say. But then, my daughter is a whole lot more intelligent than Harris. Perhaps Harris’s problem is simply being too lazy, or too incompetent, to fix information in her head in order to communicate it. So she talks drivel. So does her boss, now that I think of it. Maybe that’s why they chose her. She won’t outshine the leader, such as he is.

  61. At the very least Harris was brought up way too fast from the minor leagues.

    If she had had to forge her career without Willie Brown’s help and the political wind at her back in the Bay Area, she would have washed out long ago.

  62. What scares me the most is that I think Harris is more scared of Harris becoming president than I am of Harris becoming president…and I’m pretty scared of that…and getting more scared every time they roll her out there. Which likely scares her even that much more than it scares me. And the cycle continues.

  63. It’s stunning how much Kamala channels the character of Selena Meyer in the hilarious HBO satire Veep. It’s not hard to envision “Kamala in space” with the child actors as an episode of that show.

  64. A successful politician needs a close set of advisors/friends/relatives that they can trust. Kamala has her sister who advised her poorly in the past and (I’m assuming) staffers she really can’t trust. This video of her with the teens is more of a First Lady video rather than a VP video. And then the child actor leak makes this even more embarrassing.
    And who advised her to wear that Hillary-esque powder blue pant suit!

  65. WTP might have hit on the truth: Kamala knows she’s out of her depth and is worried about being raised to the presidency and failing spectacularly. She knows better than anyone how poorly she has performed in her life, and worries about being an obvious failure at the biggest job she could ever dream of having.

    Cap’n Rusty at 4:53 has it pretty well parsed, I would say: Obama and the Clintons picked her (and Joe), knowing full well they were going to be in charge so all they needed was a malleable idiot. If that’s an accurate assessment, they picked well. Of all the 16 or 17 Democrat candidates, she’s about the most malleable and prone to influence, especially from the Clintons and the Obamas.

  66. huxley,

    Not to quibble but neither Biden nor Harris rose to their maximum level of incompetence. They both were inserted into positions far above their maximum level of competence.

    JimNorCal,

    If not possessed, certainty acting as pawns…

    DanJ1,

    She may be drinking more heavily in response to the pressures in playing the part.

    Nonapod,

    A very high functioning autistic… now drinking her lunch?

    Bauxite,

    The certainty of controlling talented young candidates is decidedly more problematic than the likelihood of being able to control an incompetent geriatric blowhard.

    Art Deco,

    The desires of the Democratic electorate was a decidely minor consideration for those in charge.

    Cicero,

    A sociopathic, very high functioning autistic with a developing drinking problem?

    Ray+Van+Dune,

    Given the state of ‘education’ in the young’s indoctrination centers over the past decade, would it really shock you to discover that in fact, none of those child actors had ever looked through a telescope?

    Cap’n Rusty,

    Throwing them in our faces might well be the “icing on the cake” but the motivation in choosing them was and is far more poisonous.

    Steve in PA,

    Now that’s a visual image we didn’t need! Lord have mercy!

    Bill Serra,

    You’re not alone in wondering what the rationale was in choosing her. But count on it, it was not accidental, there must have been a highly persuasive rationale behind it. Perhaps, as a means of controlling her, she’s susceptible to blackmail. Or maybe it’s as prosaic as PA+Cat’s supposition.

    huxley,

    “Her major personality-based shortcoming, rooted in a distinctive outgoing tendency, is likely to be a predisposition to occasional lapses in emotional restraint or self-discipline.”

    Thank you for providing that possible evidence of mental instability. If she can’t handle being VP, which according to John Adams is “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived” how the hell could she handle the pressures of the Presidency?

  68. This fellow doesn’t see Harris the way most neo commenters on this post see her.

    [Hold my bowl (s’il vous plaît) while I BARF.]

    “The most exciting part was definitely meeting Vice President Harris. There’s nothing that can top that. Like honestly, she just sat us down. She’s super charismatic. She’s everything that I ever thought of her, plus more. She made me feel like one of her peers, and at the time, I felt super important. I was talking to her face to face.”

    — Trevor Bernadino, 13-year-old actor from Carmel, California; one of five teenagers featured in the video

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/kamala-harris-s-widely-mocked-nasa-video-featured-child-actors/ar-AAPo3ux?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

  69. I imagine Harris makes a good first impression if you’re looking for a candidate that checks all the right demographic boxes but that her strangeness becomes apparent after a few meetings. I think people around her knew that she didn’t have what it takes to be president, which is why her candidacy flamed out so quickly after she was considered to be one of the favorites.

    I think she was the first choice to be VP but then whoever was in charge had second thoughts after realizing she was a bit of a loon. They then began looking for other black women but they must of all had their own issues and so it was back to Harris as the default choice.

    Now those in charge must be wondering what they can do to get her out of the way because they realize that she is unelectable.

  70. Gregory+Harper (8:05 pm) writes, “Now those in charge must be wondering what they can do to get her out of the way because they realize that she is unelectable.”

    No one in that party is unelectable if enough of the right people working for that party do what has to be done.

  71. Greg+Harper,

    No one should ask the Clintons “what they can do to get her out of the way.”

  73. The desires of the Democratic electorate was a decidely minor consideration for those in charge.

    That’s nice, but the wirepullers still require a critical mass of votes for their preferred candidate.

  74. “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.”

    But all’s well that ends well.

    INT. OVAL OFFICE – DAY

    THE PRESIDENT

    My Fellow Spirochaetes….

    Trust in the Poz… Luke. Trust in the Poz.

    Rosebud!

  75. Sarah Palin was interviewed about the Harris whatever. Palin said it was painful to watch.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2rsRPSArDs

    Then 2:30 minutes in, the feed switches to Hillary being interviewed on the same subject. Hillary is concerned about our country, don’cha know, so she’ll never be totally out of politics though she says she doesn’t plan to run again. Still, it was a reminder we’ve got a perfectly good Dem warhorse on the sidelines.

    Hillary 2024! She’s tanned, rested and ready.

  77. @huxley:

    Don’t rest easy until she’s tanned, stuffed, and mounted.

    No… not that, You in the Back!

  78. Re: Oozing Charm

    Plato had a point about Poets. But no Republic, no Problem. Also thread winner.

    And lurking in the background there’s still that Dreadful Hungarian. How many more years can Soros have in him?

  79. I would like to see her evaluated for psychopathy.

    I said this about Harris early this year:

    Off-the-charts on ambition;
    Middling on intelligence;
    DOA on charisma.

    I think this is still accurate.

  80. Art Deco,

    “the wirepullers still require a critical mass of votes for their preferred candidate.”

    Has there ever, in all of history, been a shortage of fools and the unethical? Yet as 2016 proved, even a surfeit of fools can be insufficient. 2020 demonstrated that they had learned from 2016, it’s who counts the votes that counts, that’s all.

  81. Psychopathy is a given in the Ruling Class and their House _______. So it is and so it always has been and always shall be. All we can ever hope for is a Government of the Best Psychopaths. This is known in antiquarian circles as A Republic.

  82. Wells’ “War of the Worlds!” One of the great, literary opening narratives.

  84. @Rufus:

    It’s not Bulwer-Lytton, but it’ll do.

    I’m more a Call me Fishmeal guy, but since I’m on a roll:

    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

    There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

    It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.” <— Hmmm.

  85. Zaphod, Rufus:

    While I was on the road after I left San Francisco, I collected all the audio versions I could find of “The War of the Worlds” for my driving pleasure. There are a number, including the Welles version of course.

    The best update was the NPR 50th Anniversary version, which starts with Terry Gross introducing a program on vintage music from 1938, which gradually mutates into the Welles “WoW” story with Jason Robards as the Princeton Professor.

    David Ossman of Firesign Theatre did the rewrite and Philip Proctor, also of Firesign, gets a quick cameo as a doomed pilot in the first battle against the Martians.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeYnoutthU

  86. Geoffrey Britain, I realize that I was unclear – hell I would not be surprised to learn that none of those child actors could SPELL telescope! I was speaking as if she was addressing her stereotype of an American teen… who is based on her own self image and is therefor an idiot.

  87. @Huxley:

    Good tip, thanks.

    My first exposure to War of the Worlds was in primary school. Recovering Flower Xirson (Birthing Subtype) fifth grade teacher had a thing for the Jeff Wayne album.

  88. Obvious that laughter is one of a number of nervous reactions to stress and confusion.

    If you’ve ever seen “Zoo Story”, you’ll recall one of the losers stabs the other at the end. . Audience laughs from accumulated tension (released?). Strictly speaking, laughter is the last thing you’d expect to hear.

    Also functions as a verbal pause.

    So, basically, when KH laughs, we know she’s completely lost the thread, what she’s supposed to say, what she’s supposed to know, and doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s not humor.

  89. Whilst many present have at times gagged on my wilder flights of hyperbole…

    I think we can all agree that Kamala scores low on General Factor of Personality. Arguments about how she stacks up on the Big 5 dimensions I leave to others who can stomach her enough to study her more closely.

    She just sucks.

  90. My first exposure to “War of the Worlds” was seeing the 1953 version on television when I was 7 or 8 years old. Scared the crap out of me! I didn’t sleep for a week! The tops of the Chicago street lights at the time looked a lot like the eyeball things that popped up out of the Martian spacecraft. I was convinced they would get me in my sleep.

    And then I saw the 1956 version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on television and didn’t sleep for a month!

  92. huxley,

    I think I heard that NPR remake. I’ve also heard the original, Welles recording. I think a radio station in Chicago replayed it annually around Halloween when I was a boy.

    Radio can be a perfect medium for certain tales. Art Bell was brilliant at exploiting radio’s uniqueness.

  93. Yes, the opening of the War of the Worlds is hard to beat.
    A fellow named Jeff Wayne did quite a successful stage play on it maybe 10 years ago? They had Richard Burton narrate that opening.
    Glorious.
    Simply Glorious.

  94. I was interested in the link within M J R’s link to the story about child actor Trevor.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/harris-messaging-gurus-long-term-planning

    Vice President Kamala Harris has hired two veteran communications aides to help finesse messaging and long-term planning after a rocky first nine months in office for the second-in-command.

    Lorraine Voles, a crisis communications expert, and Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, worked for Harris during the presidential transition and have extensive experience crafting messages from the White House and the corporate world.

    Voles and Frankel “offered to be of assistance” to Harris and will focus on “organizational development, strategic communications, and long-term planning,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner.

    Among the services Voles advertises on her website, “crisis management” and “marketing and rebranding” earn top billing.

    We’re used to seeing similar video clips that are news items and therefore video that was recorded live. Obviously, this video is not that. It is heavily scripted, directed, coached, and rehearsed and very heavily edited. Probably 30 min. to a couple hours of video ended up in the recycle bin

    These characters Voles and Frankel no doubt have a perfected formula for making a client likeable and able to drive talking points home. Perhaps their problem is that they need a few or several different presentation styles to try out on their client in order to find one that the client can deliver believably.

    I’ve often thought that some of these politicians use drugs in subtle and clever ways to boost their performances. Half a tranquilizer?
    ______

    Voles and Frankel “offered to be of assistance” to Harris and will focus on “organizational development, strategic communications, and long-term planning,”

    Organizational development?? So Harris is so incompetent that she can’t organize things?

    Long-term planning? Hmm. Curious. The cynic in me suspects that Harris doesn’t even have any sort of political principles or agenda that interests her. Better have the coaches give her an agenda that sells well.

  96. Geoffrey Britain–

    Apropos of John Adams’ opinion of the insignificance of the vice presidency, you probably know the joke (variously attributed to Thomas Riley Marshall, Wilson’s VP, and Alben Barkley, Truman’s VP) about the man who had two sons: “One ran away and went to sea, the other was elected Vice President of the United States. Neither was ever heard from again.”

    And there’s John Nance Garner’s words to Lyndon Johnson in 1960 when JFK offered Johnson the VP spot on the ticket after the Democratic convention. LBJ called Garner, who had been one of FDR’s VPs and was also a fellow Texan, to ask him for advice. Garner reportedly told Johnson, “I’ll tell you, Lyndon, the Vice Presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” As one of Garner’s biographers has noted, Garner probably used the four-letter Anglo-Saxon word for urine. Garner also was heard to refer on other occasions to the vice presidency as “the spare tire of government.”

    I suppose “spare tire” is a relatively kind description of Harris; she’s already proved to be an albatross around Slow Joe’s aged neck.

  97. Radio can be a perfect medium for certain tales.

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    Too true!

    I’m too young to be a true old-time radio buff, but I learned to love the form from Firesign Theatre.

    Leonard Nimoy put together a troupe of friends and Star Trek players who did classic science-fiction, including “WoW,” as radio drama. Excellent throughout. I especially loved their “Time Machine.” Looks like they’ve kept their stuff off YouTube.

    One can find most of Welles’s “Mercury Theatre” work on YouTube however. I recommend his radio show, “The Lives of Harry Lime,” which are prequels to “The Third Man” film.

    https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Lives_of_Harry_Lime.php

  98. I like Ray Van Dune’s comment.

    I haven’t seen the pitch for the whole science/NASA promotion, but I would have thought that these kids were supposed to be bright science enthusiasts. Yet the video sounds like it is targeting average kids aged 4 to 6. It could be that Voles and Frankel strike again. Dumb everything down and hit simplified talking points over and over.

  99. @TommyJay:Organizational development?? So Harris is so incompetent that she can’t organize things?

    “Organizational development” is a subfield of Human Resources. I hadn’t heard it before a few years ago but it’s been around since the 50s. It’s about developing the structure of your organization, not about “organizing” things.

  100. Art Deco – One might have said the same thing about the 2016 Republican primaries. A very successful business woman, a young, charismatic Hispanic senator, several successful governors from (what were then) the swing states of Florida and Ohio, and yet the Republican primary electorate chose to focus on a reality tv star with no experience in public office and a partisan flame-throwing Senator whose stump speech sounded like a bad impression of a southern preacher.

    Where you stand depends on where you sit.

  101. Good point Frederick,
    From Wikipedia:

    Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify an organization’s performance and/or culture. The organizational changes are typically initiated by the group’s stakeholders. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation. More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management, and transformation of organizational norms and values. Key concepts of OD theory include: organizational climate (the mood or unique “personality” of an organization, which includes attitudes and beliefs that influence members’ collective behavior), organizational culture (the deeply-seated norms, values, and behaviors that members share) and organizational strategies (how an organization identifies problems, plans action, negotiates change and evaluates progress).

    I feel so much better now that I understand.

    Kamala’s VP office was a hostile disfunctional workplace and had to be fixed.

  102. Kamala Harris is VP because Joe Biden foolishly promised that his running mate would be (1) a woman (2) “of color” (which exclusively means “Black”), and not even the Dems could stomach the thought of Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams.

  103. Rufus.

    “Radio can be a perfect medium for certain tales.”

    In my youth, not too far away from yours, I’d listen to horror stories late at night on my crystal-set in bed under the covers. One particular story, about giant sea rats from a derelict ship crashing into a lonely light house, and the vain attempts of the lighthouse keeper to fight them off, kept me scared in bed at night for years.

  105. Art Deco – One might have said the same thing about the 2016 Republican primaries. A very successful business woman, a young, charismatic Hispanic senator, several successful governors from (what were then) the swing states of Florida and Ohio, and yet the Republican primary electorate chose to focus on a reality tv star with no experience in public office and a partisan flame-throwing Senator whose stump speech sounded like a bad impression of a southern preacher.

    I can never figure out if you’re scamming around or being obtuse.

    The ‘partisan flame throwing Senator’ is notable for having given up a lucrative law partnership in order to sit in Congress, notable for being among it’s most principled and consistent members, and notable for an intellect that impressed Alan Dershowitz.

    As for Trump, he was an accomplished businessman who ran a company with $9.5 bn in revenue and 22,000 employees. He also had other things to do with his time than get involved in politics. And he picked up a million $ bill on the sidewalk that Scott Walker and others left there because they were listening to their donors and not to voters.

    There’s a reason Jeb! was properly rejected. His brother is an open borders extremist and his father showed scant interest in immigration enforcement. Instead of distinguishing himself in this regard, he offered in 2013 this piece of literature (https://vdare.org/articles/john-derbyshire-concludes-jeb-bush-just-doesn-t-like-americans-very-much)

    As for Kasich, his conduct since 2016 demonstrates his unsuitability.

    The Republican establishment delenda est.

  106. I think she was the first choice to be VP but then whoever was in charge had second thoughts after realizing she was a bit of a loon. They then began looking for other black women but they must of all had their own issues and so it was back to Harris as the default choice.

    There’s never been a black woman in a governor’s chair. The closest to such would be the two women who’ve been Mayor of DC, one of whom was in 2020 76 years old. Three black women have been cabinet secretaries in Democratic administrations. One of them was 83 years old in 2020, another was 73 years old, and another (Loretta Lynch) is tainted. The only black woman to have served in the U.S. Senate would be Carol Mostly Fraud of Illinois.

  107. Here’s how I learned about War of the Worlds. My brother and I had the Classic Comic version – really creepy and scary.

    And my mother told me about the Orson Welles broadcast when I was very young. She had heard it when it was first on the radio. Her version of the story was that lots of people had been listening to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (very popular) and only tuned in to the Welles program after the initial disclaimer, and that’s why they got fooled.

    I never checked on that aspect of the story until just this minute. It turns out my mother was telling the truth.

  111. Re: War of the Worlds…

    neo:

    I heard about WoW from teachers and older family members, but in the bad old days you couldn’t dial something like that up on the internet or buy it on Amazon.

    I yearned to hear the Welles version. However, I didn’t get my chance until college when another student had a vinyl copy. A few decades later a friend gave me his copy when he was stripping his possessions to move to Hawaii.

    Not to short H.G.’s version, which I’ve listened to in an audiobook from the library.

    Speaking of which, in 1940 Orson Welles and H.G. Wells were interviewed together on radio and got along well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdghSMTXsU

    It seems my literary heroes of that era often surprise me with high, almost delicate voices when I find a rare recording of them.

  112. Zaphod:

    I get the impression a crop of really high-quality YouTube channels has emerged in only the past 2-3 years.

    Have you noticed this or was I just oblivious in the past?

  113. @ Neo > “I never checked on that aspect of the story until just this minute. It turns out my mother was telling the truth.”

    The “missed opening” was always the way I heard it. How could you doubt your MOM?

  114. @ Frederick > “It’s about developing the structure of your organization, not about “organizing” things.”

    Coincidentally, I was visiting with a friend last night who is a VP of that very thing in her company, which advises other (BIG) companies on their own organization.
    Had never heard of it before by that name, but the concept is old.
    If you can’t get your own business working right, you can’t do big business in any field.

  115. @ TommyJay > “I like Ray Van Dune’s comment. [ditto]

    I haven’t seen the pitch for the whole science/NASA promotion, but I would have thought that these kids were supposed to be bright science enthusiasts. Yet the video sounds like it is targeting average kids aged 4 to 6. It could be that Voles and Frankel strike again. Dumb everything down and hit simplified talking points over and over.”

    It’s actually a bit unfair to criticize Harris for the script, which she didn’t obviously didn’t write, although she clearly didn’t have the smarts to reject it either.

    Her team allegedly has “extensive experience crafting messages from the White House and the corporate world” — which may explain why the Democrats are so bad at messaging these days. (Speaking of the Peter Principle ….)

    I don’t fault her office for doing a prerecorded piece; that’s how most “infomercials” are handled; however, they appeared to be passing it off as spontaneous conversation with random students, and should have simply called it what it was.

    The rehearsals must have been excruciating for the kids, which just proves they are better actors than she is, especially young Trevor.

    (New VP slogan: “Let’s go, Trevor!)

  116. @ Rufus > “And then I saw the 1956 version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on television and didn’t sleep for a month!”

    I did not see or hear the older WoW programs, but I remember this one.
    ONLY a month?!?!

  117. @Huxley:

    I can’t rightly say. I came relatively late to YouTube ca. 2017. There are indeed some incredibly good niche channels. I think (e.g.) The 8-bit Guy and Explaining Computers have been around since ca. 2010. Less good for the more based red pilled stuff as demonetization, channel membership throttling, censorship, and outright channel banning full on these days.

    But for spiraling in on what you didn’t even dream you needed to know about your hobbies and interests — their Algo is God.

  118. They said the comedy was dead.
    But they apparently had no knowledge of the meteoric Kamala Harris.

    More proof that there’s still hope:
    “The Biden Crime Family hide their $ in the Caymans & BVI”:
    https://twitter.com/BenjaminT0001/status/1447716380262817794
    “The president wants to make fundamental change in our economy” (AKA “Psaki never disappoints”):
    https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1447992522962255875
    And from the lovely folks who brought us “Horse Paste”, it’s time to go after Eric Clapton for “wrongthink” (and—even worse—“wrongtalk”):
    https://twitter.com/AnonimAktivista/status/1447643259023634435
    https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1447351715171344384

  119. Thank you, Neo, for watching this for us. I made it thru 37 seconds. She (and those fake kids) just make me gag.

  120. Art Deco – I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate. I agree with you that the Democrats you pointed out would be much more bearable than Biden, Bernie, or Mayor Pete. Your average center-left person, would probably make the same comment you did, though, just substituting Kasich and Jeb! for Tulsi and the Starbucks CEO. It’s worth remembering that.

    (FWIW, I voted for Cruz in the primary in 2016 because at the time he was the only one who had a realistic shot at beating Trump. I really enjoy his commentary and respect his legal knowledge. I never missed his podcast during the first Trump impeachment. I have problems with him in other areas, though. His pseudo-preacher schtick from the 2016 presidential campaign was gauche. His government shutdown over Obamacare was an exercise in futility worthy of the South Park underpants gnomes. I don’t doubt his intellect or skill, but I think poor political instincts lead him astray too often.)

  121. or is she just a strange, strange person?

    Semen* poisoning from hundreds of partners?

    * it’s full of hormones.

  122. geoffb,

    Transistor radios were low enough in price when I was a kid that they were fairly common, but a lot of folks still had tube sets, as well as tube TVs. My mother’s father was one of those guys that every neighborhood had who you could take your TV or radio to and he would do basic repairs. He had tube testers, even an oscilloscope!

    He taught me to build a working, tube and crystal radio set from spare parts he had and told me if I wired it to my mattress springs at home they’d act as an antenna and I’d get better reception.

    What fun! Like you, I spent many an evening and night lying in bed listening to fuzzy radio broadcasts. On most Sundays I could pick up Dr. Demento’s broadcast. And my radio had a shortwave band where I sometimes picked up Irish or English broadcasts, occasionally France or Italy and other European countries.

    Kids today have no idea of the fun they miss out on by not having toys and appliances that can be tinkered with.

  124. I honestly don’t believe that she has any core principals. It has always seemed to me like her only goal is to advance her career and to do that she will be what ever she thinks she needs to be to please the most people or garner the most sympathy. Remember the “I was that little girl” comment to Joe Biden, about school busing, during the debates. Nobody believed that that and she seemed so odd when she said it that you got the impression that she didn’t believe it either.

    I think that when you have no touchstone of principals that says this is who I am and what I represent. You will always come across as inauthentic. And when you are fake people usually recognize it and distrust you.

  125. She strikes me as insecure and as someone who has failed upward. She’s maybe just smart enough to know she’s dumb. But she’s going for it anyway … cackle, cackle.

  126. I see the hand of Barack Obama in these appointments. He always was a nasty, trash talking punk, who enjoyed nothing more than sticking a finger in the eye of the normies while reading whatever script was put in front of him by the people really running the show.

    To get an idea of where eager, ruling elite puppets like Obama, Kamala and others come from, an article on the Swiss Policy Research website pointed to the old nazi Klaus Schwab’s WEF’s nearly three decade old “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” program.

    “… the WEF has been running, since 1993, a program called “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”, rebranded, in 2004, as “Young Global Leaders”. This program aims at identifying, selecting and promoting future global leaders in both business and politics. Indeed, quite a few “Young Global Leaders” have later managed to become Presidents, Prime Ministers, or CEOs…”.

    https://swprs.org/the-wef-and-the-pandemic/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

    It makes for some interesting reading.

    About the only bright spot left is the fact that when people are hired or appointed for ideology rather than core competence, the organizations they inhabit get destroyed by incompetent ideologues, since telling the truth can torpedo a career.

    That is why those attempting to consolidate power are acting like they about to be found out.

    As the great political philosopher Adam Corolla once said, “smart people won’t stand for being abused by their government”.

    I can’t think of a better example of a lack of smart people than the brain trust behind Kamala’s cloyingly embarrassing performance art thinking this was the least bit compelling or convincing.

    OTOH, they don’t expect to lose another important election again. The ‘new global leaders’ do what they are told, and are richly rewarded for their efforts.

  127. “…they don’t expect to lose another important election again….”

    Which is precisely the reason why “COVID forever!” is so necessary (at least until they can “legislate” their permanent victory, and thus make the claim that elections are a total unnecessary expense and, for the good of the nation, really should be abolished…)

    Along with their nation-destroying economic policy and their citizen-destroying legislation.

    Here’s the latest:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/republicans-warn-bidens-irs-600-disclosure-plan-could-lead-surveillance-state

    (“…could lead…”?? That’s the whole point.)

  128. Kamala is a moron and she is genuinely stupid.

    In the past she was able to hide this fact, but she no longer can. The entire planet, including her demonkrat puppet masters are now fully aware of this. Even for the moron she is, she must find it incredibly embarrassing that her own supporters realize she literally is a stupid person.

    She realizes her stupidity and lack of intellect are on full display and the result is she is unable to carry on the charade that sort of worked for her in the past.
    She got to where she is due to the powerful and wealthy good pals she met and slept with in the Bay Area and they pushed her into the US Senate.

    From there, all it took was her gender and skin color to be selected as the VP.

    In a nutshell, her willingness to sleep and associate with the “right” people, her gender and race dragged her to her present position. She knows this and now everybody knows this.

    She is really a clone of Hillary Clinton, who similarly rode the coattails of powerful political figures (i.e., Bill Clinton) to the near top of political power, without having one accomplishment credited to her name.

    Once again, the real blame in pushing the unaccomplished, the frauds to the top falls upon the voters.
    The rich and powerful will support anybody that will benefit them; they do not care if in doing so, it harms the average citizen or is destructive to the USA. They have enough $$$$ to get out of Dodge if the shite really hits the fan.

    But as we have all seen, it is impossible to overlook the power of propaganda. It can sway enough citizens / voters to believe anything and to ultimately have them do anything.
    Unfortunately the demonkrats and their media billionaire tycoons have cornered the market in propaganda; the result being our present hate-America-first president and his Obama-commie puppet masters ruling the roost.

  129. Richard Aubrey —

    I was IN “Zoo Story” — I played the stiff on the park bench — and I assure you that the college audience was dead quiet at the end.

  130. Zaphod, huxley, etc. —

    Halloween night when I was 14 or 15 one of the FM radio stations in Anchorage played the whole Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds album and it creeped me right the hell out.

    I then forgot about it for decades and thought I had dreamed it or was misremembering something else until it was mentioned in some blog ten years ago or so, and I dug around and found out it was a real thing. Still raises the hair on the back of my neck.

  132. }}} IIRC, the latter lie was uttered by her mother.

    And then Hilary just repeated it for sixty years without ever noticing that the climb didn’t happen until she was six?

    Yeah, that was my take, too. I can grasp Hillary never realizing it, but no friend or other (surely she had a few for a while at different times before she snaked them and made them not-friends) ever noted it, and called it to her attention…?

    It’s kind of like Elizabeth Warren and her “Amerindian” lineage.

    They don’t care if it’s a lie, as long as they can make points off of it.

    The PostModern Left (and anyone who is an Alinsky protégé, like Hillary, certainly is a PostModern Liberal) does not care one whit about truth, facts, or anything else. Scruples don’t count. Power is all that matters.

  133. OBloodyHell —

    Alternately, if the lie originated during Hilary’s trip to south Asia, then it was a ploy to manufacture a connection to the locals and she never dreamed anyone would check up on it. Like sniper fire in Bosnia.

  134. JohnTyler,

    I agree (somewhat?) on Harris, but not on Hillary. I’m pretty confident Hillary is fairly well read and conversant in history, politics, literature. Wasn’t she a Goldwater Republican in her youth? Everything I’ve read about her in academics is that she was the annoying type of student who had to know everything and excel at everything, and I think she did know everything and excel at everything! Tracy Flick from the movie, “Election?”

    Harris may or may not have a decent IQ, but, as you write, she has hardly been challenged in academics or her career since the age of 18. Those of us who are curious often start down a path of certain books; biographies, philosophies, histories.. in our mid-to late teens, in an attempt to figure the world out. I think Harris (and Barack and Michelle) missed all that stuff. Because their extrinsic characteristics permitted them to move up and on they didn’t have to learn all that stuff.

    Doesn’t mean you can’t. Some folks do. There are also a lot of folks like Amanda Milius, who grow up in comparative comfort and don’t really have to spend hours a day for years reading and studying in order to make it in the world, but she has. George Bush II is someone born into comfort who doesn’t appear to have taken the time to do a deep dive into history and philosophy. JFK did.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamala and/or Barack have high IQs (I would be surprised if Michelle does), but a lack of being challenged, or personally challenging oneself, has made Kamala vapid.

  135. }}} Art Deco,

    The desires of the Democratic electorate was a decidely minor consideration for those in charge.

    There was already a lawsuit about this a few years back, regarding Bernie vs. Hillary.

    The corporation known as the “Democratic Party” has no — repeat NO — obligation to pay any attention to the desire of the electorate.

    Yes, you heard that right: The “Democratic” Party is not democratic in any way.

    https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/

    }}} @MJR

    Trevor is proving his acting chops.

    You mean by uttering those lines and not laughing his youthful ass off? He needs an Oscar for best performance in a short film. Or at least an Emmy.

    }} That’s nice, but the wirepullers still require a critical mass of votes for their preferred candidate.

    No, Art, they don’t. See the above. 😉

  136. On the subject of politicians and intelligence:

    I’ve mentioned this here before. It is odd to me that Hillary, Kamala, Barack, Michelle, Joe Biden… don’t appear to have a mastery of a foreign language or a musical instrument. Bush II speaks Spanish fairly well. Bill Clinton plays saxophone adequately.

    Foreign language requirements (and, often music) are the Calculus of the humanities. Just as Calc trips up many a budding Undergrad Engineer or Computer Scientist, foreign languages can be the bane of Poli Sci and History majors. All of the above listed surely had at least 2 years of a foreign language, and likely 4 between High School and College. Kamala graduated High School in Montreal! Yet, as far as I know, none of them are close to fluent in anything other than English. You can’t fake your way through learning a foreign language. It takes years of continual practice and effort. You can fake your way through Spanish 101, but not Spanish 401.

    Music mastery is similar, and typically kids who go into humanities have had some; played in a school band, etc.

    Jimmy Carter earned a BS and worked on a nuclear sub. I’m sure he could do Trig and Calculus. Kamala Harris lived and went to school in Montreal but only seems to have a rudimentary handle on French.

    It’s just really odd to me. My only guess is they are all incurious at a certain level.

  137. Your average center-left person, would probably make the same comment you did, though, just substituting Kasich and Jeb!

    Only if they know nothing. People had distinct reasons for rejecting Kasich and Jeb! (and Rubio) based on their histories and personal qualities. Note, Jeb! was the preferred candidates of donors, who are the only people Mitch McConnell cares about. He took their money and made a bonfire of it. You might ask yourself what the Bush family did to destroy its brand so thoroughly. Some of the Republican voters who used to be easy meat for the Bushes switch to John Kasich, who has in the last six years demonstrated that his loyalty is to the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus, not to Republican voters. It doesn’t occur to you that maybe those voters had a hunch.

    As for the rest of your remarks, they’re what one expects of someone on the payroll somewhere.

  138. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamala and/or Barack have high IQs (I would be surprised if Michelle does), but a lack of being challenged, or personally challenging oneself, has made Kamala vapid.

    All three of them had sufficient intelligence to pass the bar exam. That will do for an elected official. (Only KH was a working lawyer for any length of time).

    I think calculus is a necessity for any sort of engineer. You can get through humanities and social research programs without foreign language facility. Very few people, btw, obtain degrees in foreign languages and literatures. You have 1.9 million baccalaureate degrees issued each year, of which perhaps 650,000 are in academics or the arts. Maybe 7,500 are in Spanish and 2,000 in French, with under 1,000 for every other sort of living language and for classics as well.

    What’s odd about KH and BO is that they lived for quite a run of years in loci where foreign languages are spoken and did so when their minds were supple enough to pick it up readily. There used to be a Youtube video of Obama offering a 40 second speech in the Malay traders’ dialect which is a lingua franca in Indonesia. His mother devoted 25 years of her life to the country, living their on and off. His sister is a native who spent much of her upbringing there. He lived there for four years. He can barely manage 40 seconds of remarks, and it’s quite clear from listening to it that his pronunciation of what he’s reading is generic American. His Malay is worse than my schoolboy French.

  139. Has anyone else noticed the low profile of Dr. Jill lately? She seems to have dialed it back a bit, perhaps at the behest of Joe’s advisors?

    I wonder who would win an embarrassment-immunity contest between Jill and Kamala? Might be like measuring the results of a drag race between two Galapagos tortoises.

  140. Art Deco,

    Michelle and Kamala failed passing the bar on their first try. At least we know they’re smarter than JFK, Jr. Before states made a law degree mandatory to sit for the Bar (I believe Louisiana still does not, Napoleonic Code), many enterprising folks passed the Bar without having attended law school.

    I didn’t write anything about majoring in a foreign language, I wrote about foreign language study as a requirement for a degree in the Humanities.

  141. I wish I was on a payroll somewhere! (If you know anyone paying for inane combox fill, let me know.) 🙂

  142. Rufus,

    Transistor radios only became affordable when I was in my teens. I had one around age 13 which would have been ’60-’61. I used “crystal-set” as a term but don’t know if that was exactly what I had. It used no batteries, the sound was through one of those little earpieces. It was red plastic about 1 inch in diameter and 3 inches long shaped like a rocket with a rod that came out the nose and was screwed in or out to tune the station.

  144. I wrote about foreign language study as a requirement for a degree in the Humanities.

    It isn’t. A roughly normal requirement would be six distribution credits.

  148. geoffb,

    This is an interesting page regarding crystal sets: http://www.hobbytech.com/Practical%20Tips%20for%20Crystal%20Radios.htm

    I intend to go back later and digest it better when I have more time, but I think the author is describing the type of radio you had, one without a battery or AC power source. I have a friend who used to build such radios, but don’t fully understand how they work.

    Speaking of transistor radios, yesterday I watched the Astros humiliate my White Sox and eliminate them from the MLB playoffs. The White Sox don’t make it to post season play often, and the first time they did during my school days* I spent may hours cutting out the interior of a few hundred pages in a large book to conceal a portable, transistor radio to listen to the games during school. My teacher eventually figured out what was going on and my radio and book were confiscated. My parents were not happy that I had destroyed a book. I assume the teacher gave the radio back to my parents. I don’t recall seeing it again.

    *I just searched on their record to try to place the year this took place. They weren’t in the playoffs during my entire, grammar school tenure! (Nor High School!) Now I remember. It was the opening day game. Likely 1975 or 1976.

  149. RFT–

    You want playoff heartbreak, try being a Phillies fan. Some years back, before the Red Sox ended their WS drought in 2004, the NYT ran an opinion piece on the woes of the Boston faithful. The article included a remark to the effect that the only baseball fans who really understand the diehard loyalty of Red Sox Nation are Cubs and Phillies fans. It’s been 13 years since 2008, but hope springs eternal at Citizens Bank Park.

    Meanwhile I’m waiting for another NL team to go full William-Tecumseh-Sherman on Atlanta.

  150. }}} Yes, the opening of the War of the Worlds is hard to beat.
    A fellow named Jeff Wayne did quite a successful stage play on it maybe 10 years ago? They had Richard Burton narrate that opening.
    Glorious.
    Simply Glorious.

    LOLZ. More than ten, dude. More like 30 (the 30th Anniversary edition is available). Yer datin’ yerself. 😛

    The actual stage play is not available in the USA, apparently it would give us ideas, or something… kinda like Song of the South…?

    It IS available on a DVD and/or BR, but only in Euro-region formatting, so you need to have a player which can handle it (one person suggested, if you had a PS4, you could play it on that while leaving your main DVD/BR set for region 1 [USA] formatted disks).

    https://www.amazon.com/Waynes-Musical-Version-Krieg-Welten/dp/B00H8KRWGK

    The MUSIC however, IS available on audio CD, Streaming, MP3, and for the absurdists, *vinyl*

    https://www.amazon.com/War-Worlds-JEFF-WAYNE/dp/B077BL1383/

    Note to all, it is a MUSICAL version of War of the Worlds, and it is, indeed, pretty good… despite the apparent absurdity of it.

    Burton, of course, has one of these magnificent stage voices — different from, but equally remarkably notable, as Gregory Peck’s, or Orson Welles’**. Comparable also to Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.

    As for Jeff Wayne:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wayne

    ================
    If you want to know what Orson Welles would sound like doing the same kind of thing as Richard Burton does here, hunt down the CD version of Alan Parsons’ Projects’ “Tales of Mystery And Imagination”, which has a connecting voice part of Welles doing some of Poe’s prose, tying the different songs together.

    This was recorded in the original studio, but was not included in the original vinyl release at that time. It was added in when it was released on CD years later.
    https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Mystery-Imagination-Alan-Parsons/dp/B000001FN3
    (There’s also a deluxe edition)

  151. Art Deco: Foreign language requirements.

    These are incorporated into their distribution credits and you can place out of them with your achievement test scores, AP scores &c. (All the schools named are selective research universities, btw).

  153. Maybe Kamala is vapid because she holds us all in disdain. She may truly believe she is way smarter than just about everyone. So she exaggerates her laughter and facial expressions in the same way as some idiots try to be heard by deaf people.

    Kamala is ceaselessly fascinating!

  154. Not buying the introvert explanation. I know lots of them, myself included. They’re quiet and reserved.

    How very American to think that.

    Introverts need not be shy. I’m both extremely introverted — I get tired around people, can go for weeks without speaking to a non-family member and prefer books to people. Yet I am also the exact opposite of shy — I have no issues speaking in public and am considerably more self-confident than most people. (Not loudly self-confident, I am an introvert.)

    Given that she passed the bar exam, Kamala Harris isn’t stupid. But she’s not particularly wise, at least in the areas politicians need to be. She seems to need other people to steer her.

    I go for an underlying lack of confidence.

  155. Bryan Lovely

    During a fencing class, I met a guy who was taking it for dramatic purposes. You have to be able to do everything from ballroom dancing to fencing to riding. He was Peter and I guess I was pleased to be asked to attend. College audience laughed with, it is my guess, relieved tension and suprise.

    That was so rewarding that I keep thinking I ought to see if that Godot guy ever showed up, but, man, it seems like a drag.

    Then, bless his heart these sixty years, he got me to attend Charles Laughton’s cutting of John Brown’s Body. Wish I could find it someplace.

  156. Maybe Kamala is vapid because she holds us all in disdain.

    Have a gander at the employment history of her sister, her brother-in-law, her niece, and her niece’s husband. Strong odor of Eau de Nomenklatura around all of them.

  157. Any dentist in a small, one-man/one-woman office will, while treating a patient acting in a similar manner, request not only the assistant, but the hygienist and the front desk person to remain in the operatory while the patient is undergoing treatment to reduce the risk potential.
    In addition, prior to any treatment (including taking an X-ray or giving local anesthesia), the dentist will repeat, in detail, what the intended treatment is for that day and ask the patient if they understand (or sign a statement to that effect), again just to reduce risk potential.

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