Birds of a feather …
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The Daily Show does us a favor by giving us a biographical sketch of weird JD Vance that reminds us of all his opportunistic changes of position.
The Daily Show‘s Desi Lydic had a conversation with Rebecca Traister (an excellent writer whom I used to read and link to before her publication New York magazine went behind a paywall) and Brittney Cooper, and they both had very interesting insights into the current race for the presidency and the gender and masculinity dynamics at play, with Republicans appealing to the manosphere in an especially icky way while Democrats have become able to comfortably speak about traditionally feminist issues. They also talk about how anger is being channeled by the Harris-Walz campaign in a joyful way.
Well worth watching.
The last three weeks have been a political whirlwind but the late night talk show that he hosts has been on hiatus during that time. They must have thought this was a good time to plan their break. It is the summer doldrums, the Republican convention had just ended, the Olympics were going to dominate the news for two weeks, and they would come back just before the Democratic convention
But things have been so crazy that when he returned on Monday, he had a lot of catching up to do and it was worth watching his summary to be reminded about how things have changed so dramatically.
Michael Kosta had a pretty funny summary of recent news items, including creepy Donald Trump saying that he draws bigger crowds than Martin Luther King Jr., and Elon Musk’s lawsuit against companies who have decided not to advertise on X.
In a detailed analysis, Oliver looks at RFK Jr.’s history and reveals a very unpleasant, dishonest man who has spread dangerous misinformation about AIDS, autism, vaccines, and other topics throughout the world. He says that he did good work on environmental issues earlier in his career that he has exploited to get the support by many young people who may not be aware of the dark anti-science turn he took later and how damaging his ideas became, and that he might be able to sway enough voters to swing the election on creepy Donald Trump’s favor.
Meanwhile, the RFK Jr. dead bear story keeps on giving. I had taken at face value his claim that a vehicle ahead of him had hit the bear and that he decided to collect the carcass as roadkill to skin and eat later, because he knew that you can get a legal permit in the state of New York to keep a bear that is roadkill. It seemed a little suspicious that he knew about this specific and esoteric law because how often does one encounter a bear by the side of the road that has just been killed by a vehicle? Or indeed, any dead animal at all? But he is a lawyer who likes to go falconing, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt for knowing weird trivia.
But then I read this article that aroused my suspicions.
On Wednesday a spokesperson, Stephanie Spear, told the Associated Press that Kennedy, a longtime falconer who also trains ravens, used roadkill to feed his birds.
She also said Kennedy once had a 21-cubic-foot refrigerator, used for roadkill, at his New York home.
Wait, he has a freezer dedicated to just roadkill? How much fresh roadkill does he encounter in his daily life? I can understand that people who spend a lot of time on the highways (truck drivers, highway patrol officers, highway maintenance people) can see a lot of roadkill. But ordinary people? I have seen dead animals by the side of the highway but not often. And you should never go near it because you do not know how long it has been rotting there.
But apparently this weird guy has a preternatural sense that enables him to be frequently in the vicinity of fresh roadkill.
Michael Kosta of The Daily Show explores the bizarre nature of the story about how RFK Jr. acknowledged responsibility for leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park ten years ago. Kosta breaks down the video of the conversation that RFK Jr. had with Roseanne Barr (that he presumably agreed to have recorded and released) where he told her about what he did. There is only one word to describe the whole episode: Weird.
Serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) made a weird assertion to a group of Black journalists that Kamala Harris had always claimed that she was Indian until recently when she suddenly became Black.
It should be noted that Harris attended Howard University, a flagship university of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and while there joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first (and possibly biggest) sorority of Black women. She has been a proud and visible member of it ever since. The idea that she is a Jenny-Come-Lately to being Black is being greeted with hoots of derision.
Alpha Kappa Alpha is a historic African American sorority, founded on the campus of Howard University, Harris’ alma mater. It was the first Black sorority of its kind, and is a part of the “Divine Nine,” a group of Black Pan-Hellenic organizations.
Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha and other groups in the Divine Nine have already rallied to support Harris’ bid for the presidency, networking and organizing to raise millions upon millions of dollars for her campaign. Harris is also a frequent presence at high-profile events, including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s biennial convention earlier this month.
The sorority has been a critical source of support and sisterhood not just for Harris, but for the 360,000 some women across the US and the world that make up its ranks. AKA members are political leaders, civil rights activists, literary icons and scientists, and the sorority’s cultural impact has deep, wide-reaching roots.
“When you become a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, you become a member for life,” Danette Anthony Reed, international president and CEO of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. told CNN.
Ronny Chieng discusses the search process as well as SSACFT’s weird comment about Harris’s ethnicity.
That cartoon reminded me of a discussion I had a long, long, time ago, when I was in graduate school, with a fellow student about voting. He said that each of us should vote based on our own narrow interests because that is the way that the democratic system works best. If each of us thought only of our own interests when voting, then the results would reflect the outcomes that the general population wants, whereas if we voted on the basis of what we think might be better for other people, then the results get skewed because we do not really know what other people actually want and are merely guessing, we only know for sure what we want.
I did not agree with him then but had to acknowledge that it was an interesting argument with a certain logic, the kind that geeky physicists would come up with.
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He attended the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. It started out poorly and did not get better.
During a contentious and chaotic panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday, Donald Trump parroted disinformation about immigration and abortion, questioned Kamala Harris’s race and accused a panel moderator, Rachel Scott – the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News – of being “rude” and presenting a “nasty question” when she asked him: “Why should Black voters trust you?”
Another report said:
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