Saturday Miscellany

First, in the world of political irony, Max Abrahms makes this salient point on Twitter:

We live in an Orwellian world where the vice president who oversaw the worst antisemitism of my lifetime and didn’t do shit about it is calling her opponent Hitler.

Second, Glenn Greenwald has his own take on the Trump is Hitler meme:

Maybe the "Trump-is-Hitler" thing could work if Trump were unknown. 

But.... He's been famous for 5 decades. Beloved by US elites. The star of a hit NBC prime-time show. Oprah suggested he should run for President. Hung out with rappers and billionaires. The Clintons went to his wedding. 

And -- just 3 years ago! - he was President for 4 years and nobody except MSNBC viewers remembers death camps, wars of conquest or other Hitlerian behavior. And it's been all tried before, including this same John Kelly crap. Has the stench of desperation.

Third, no Saturday would be complete without a Kamala word salad. In truth, everyone, including David Axelrod, is getting seriously tired of the incoherent ramblings of our vice president. Just in case, here’s one from her CNN Town Hall:

KAMALA: "We will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together. We will work together."

Fourth, a few words from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Just in case you didn't know that everything the Democrats are saying that Trump will do, they are doing themselves.

RFK Jr: “Vice President Harris said today in her speech that president Trump was gonna turn the US military against the American public.”

“What’s interesting to me is that the Biden/Harris administration did something 2 weeks ago that has never been done in American history, which is to send a directive to the Pentagon, changing a law to make it legal for the US military to use lethal force against American citizens on American soil.”

“Technically now it's legal for the US military under this directive to shoot and k*** Americans who engage in political protest because they disagree with policies in the White House.”

“This did not come from Donald Trump. It came from the Democratic party, and that's why I left the Democratic party.”

Fifth, Kevin Wallsten and Owen West take the measure of military recruitment. As you have no doubt heard, it is down, too far down for our good. 

The authors suggest that one reason is that veterans are advising their progeny against joining today’s military:

The veteran community has lost faith in the country’s national-security leadership. The military is a family business—80% of volunteers have a family member who served. 

Three years into a recruiting crisis, however, the Pentagon hasn’t specifically surveyed this core constituency to determine what’s going wrong.

Pew surveys in 2011 and again in 2019 found approximately 80% of veterans would advise young people to join the military. We recently commissioned a demographically representative YouGov survey of 2,100 veterans. Our data show the share of veterans recommending military service plunged 20 percentage points in five years, to just 62%.

Some part of it reflects the recent DEI initiatives:

Over the past three years, the Pentagon steadily erected a diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy. Diversity officers were installed throughout the ranks, systematically replacing Colin Powell’s “colorblind” philosophy with identity reporting up the chain of command. The Air Force issued a memorandum in 2022 setting specific race and sex quotas for officers. In 2023 President Biden stated diversity was necessary for “all successful military operations,” ordering DEI to be embedded throughout the ranks.

Sixth, in the world of mental health one Dr. Georgia Ede has proclaimed: Let them eat meat! It’s good for your brain. 

Dr. Ede wrote this:

Dr. Georgia Ede is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in nutritional and metabolic psychiatry.

…[D]espite the health halo that vegan diets have been given over the last few years, she claims that giving up meat could be detrimental for mental health.

‘The brain needs meat,’ she told KIRO News Radio.

‘We’re used to hearing that meat is dangerous for our total health, including our brain health, and plants are really the best way to nourish and protect our brains.’

‘But the truth of the matter is that it’s actually — that’s upside down and backward.’

Seventh, where is Wilhelm Reich when we need him? What would his theories say about a woman, as in, Nicole Kidman, who said she had had too many orgasms. 

It occurred when Kidman was acting in a new movie. Here is the hot story, from the New York Post:

Nicole Kidman admitted she was “so turned on” while filming her new erotic drama “Babygirl” that she had to temporarily hit the brakes on production.

In the kinky movie, Kidman plays a powerful businesswoman who risks her career and family life to have a passionate affair with her much younger intern, played by “Where the Crawdads Sing” actor Harris Dickinson, 28.

The 57-year-old Oscar winner said performing sexual scenes with Dickinson and Antonio Banderas, who plays her husband in the movie, sometimes became too much to handle.

“There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to orgasm any more,’” Kidman told The Sun.

Is this the ultimate in method acting?

Eighth, some words of wisdom from JD Vance:

If you're discarding a lifelong friendship because somebody votes for the other team, then you've made a terrible, terrible mistake and you should do something different….

Don't cast aside family members and lifelong friendships. Politics is not worth it. And I think we follow that principle. We'll heal the divide in this country.

Ninth, if Vance is right, that implies that far too many people are reconfiguring their social contacts based on politics. This disrupts the social fabric of their lives and apparently diminishes their mental health.

Who knew?

From Study Finds:

Presidential elections get plenty of people tense, but 2024 may be the most nerve-racking race of them all. More than 60% of Americans in a new poll say that their mental health has either been slightly, moderately, or significantly impacted by November’s election.

In fact, 46% say they have feelings of anxiety, 37% are stressed out, and 31% are experiencing fear when it comes to the 2024 presidential race. Election anxiety is impacting younger Americans in particular, the survey by Forbes Health found. 

Specifically, Gen Z (66%), millennials (64%), and Gen X (63%) were most likely to say that the election has had at least a slight negative impact on their mental health, compared to 56% of baby boomers.

Although the survey found the top emotions surrounding the 2024 election are anxiety, stress, and fear, not everyone is having a mental breakdown about the next president. In fact, 27% of participants are feeling optimistic, 22% feel excitement, 16% are happy, and 12% are actually feeling a sense of relief.

Tenth, some people do have too much money. Consider the evidence. Certain very wealthy tech bros are spending money to solve the non-problem of global warming by blocking out the sun:

Bloomberg reports:

A growing number of Silicon Valley founders and investors are backing research into blocking the sun by spraying reflective particles high in the atmosphere or making clouds brighter. The goal is to quickly cool the planet.

Who was it who said: Don’t mess with Mother Nature?

Eleventh, the mainstream media has scrupulously avoided mention of Doug Emhoff’s treatment of women. Fortunately for us, the tabloid press, aka The Daily Mail, is on the story:

Doug Emhoff's ex-girlfriend has spoken exclusively to DailyMail.com claiming that he slapped her in the face so hard she spun around at a 2012 celebrity event in France.

The woman, a successful New York attorney, is remaining anonymous, but decided to speak out after Emhoff, Kamala Harris's husband, denied the claims through a spokesman.

Emhoff's accuser, who DailyMail.com is naming only as 'Jane', initially declined to comment on the record. But Emhoff's denial, and his alleged hypocrisy by claiming to be a feminist in media interviews, finally became too much for her.

'What's frightening for a woman that's been on the other end of it, is watching this completely fabricated persona being portrayed,' Jane said.

'He's being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.'

Yes, indeed. Doug Emhoff is the great feminist hero, the model for modern manliness.

Twelfth, if you would like counseling or coaching, contact me via my email, Stuart Schneiderman@gmail.com

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.