September 6, 2019 6:15 AM
Morning Reads for Friday, September 6, 2019
- Prayers for all in the path/aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.
- Cruise ships taking aid to Bahamas.
- Another former Atlanta official pleads guilty.
- Faster, please.
- Funny. Folks are talking about this very same thing in South Georgia, too.
- Remember Neerja Bhanot. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/338496/
- Really. No-one is worse than Voldemort. (Except maybe Anne Rice, who thought it was okay for a 5”7’ (he’s lying) nut-job ego-maniac to play a tall, lithe and elegant French aristocrat. I really need to let this go.)
- Good economic news.
- I honestly don’t make this stuff up.
- So weird. On so many levels.
- Ted Cruz winz the internet.
- But we can still wear our PJs to Walmart, right? Just not accessorized with filled holsters?
About Author
Ginny
Get off my lawn.
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I was initially outraged beyond imagination at the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat. Interview with the Vampire is one of my all-time favorite novels, and I read it in eleventh grade.
But I think that Cruise did an amazing job in the film. I really do.
Who would you have cast instead, Ginny? As furious as I was when it was first announced, I don’t remember thinking of anyone who I could have seen as Lestat on film. (I honestly didn’t think the film could ever do the book justice.)
As always, you’re too kind. He’s still a weasel. 😉
To be honest, I’m not sure such a creature even exists anymore. I’m thinking a cross between Orlando Bloom/Leslie Howard/David Bowie with a dash of Harry Connick…?
I always thought Richard Grant or Daniel Day-Lewis (who were both in ‘The Age of Innocence’ the year before Interview came out) would have been good. Even Julian Sands’ as he looked as Franz Litz in ‘Impromptu’ (tall pale gaunt moody) would have been more of a French Vampire look.
I will see your Lestat and raise you one Jack Reacher.
‘Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland’
https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jonathan-m-metzl/dying-of-whiteness/9781541644984/
Author Jonathon M. Metzl explains his research revealing “a reality that liberal Americans were often slow to realize: Trump supporters were willing to put their own lives on the line in support of their political beliefs … make tradeoffs that negatively affect their lives and livelihoods in support of larger prejudices or ideals.”
The book is based on research of the material effects of various Republican policies in three GOP-run states, KS, MO, and TN, where the policies “gave certain white populations the sensation of winning, particularly by upending the gains of minorities and liberals” and “owning” those groups. More people died, and more people’s overall health suffered significantly, among both poor and middle-class whites, as well as the minorities they resent.
It’s people “literally dying of whiteness” as “anti-blackness, in a biological sense, then produces its own anti-whiteness. An illness of the mind, weaponized onto the body of the nation.”
A Guardian interview with the author focuses on the gun element of the book’s research, but the book is also about GOP healthcare policies and reducing education spending: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/08/racism-gun-control-dying-of-whiteness
From the interview: “When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative – this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture.” Guns are a signature issue in the research—-relaxing regulation for instance being correlated with increased white suicide. The author in the interview overall isn’t as anti-gun as might be construed by that quote.
Don’t know the author? I get that. I don’t know him either. Here’s an alternate source of information on suicides.
Suicide rates on the rise, with steep incline in rural US: study https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/460348-suicide-rates-on-the-rise-with-steep-incline-in-rural-us-study
Conservatives be advised it’s The Hill, main stream deep state fake news.
Charlie Cook’s people got with the Kaiser Family Foundation for a close look at 2020 swing voters. Some interesting reading.
https://www.kff.org/other/issue-brief/data-note-swing-voters/
Trump started a trade war with China. It’s caused US soybean exports to plummet and hurt farmers—the US is (was?) the world’s largest exporter, and China is (was?) its largest market. Soybean exports from Brazil, the world’s second largest producer, are increasing and filling the US void.
Gee, I wonder why the Amazon rain forest is being burned to create more arable land for Brazilian soybeans? The burning is a two-fer—increasing the release of carbon into the atmosphere while simultaneously reducing the eco-system’s capability to reduce atmospheric carbon?
Who knew markets would work so well for all of us? The economic genius that invented the phrase “prime the pump”, natch.
It’s another example of Trumpian damage with GOP complicity being much greater than initially apparent.
But hey, global warming is a Chinese hoax.
And if it’s not, human activity isn’t contributing to it.
And if we are, it’s not damaging.
And if there’s damage, there’s nothing we can do about it.
And if there’s something we can do about, there’s nothing we should do about it.
And if there’s something we should do about it, it shouldn’t be reducing atmospheric carbon.
And if there’s something we should do to reduce atmospheric carbon….. you get the point.
Atlanta has had an average 35 days per year 90 degrees or more over the past 52 years. There have as of Friday been 75 days with 90 degree or more highs and it seems we’ll have a few more weeks of hot weather. Trump said had never heard of a Category 5 hurricane before Dorian, which tantamount to there never having been one. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-doesnt-think-hes-ever-even-heard-of-a-category-five-hurricane-four-have-threatened-the-us-since-he-took-office/ar-AAGER8Y
Nevermind. It’s the weather.
The thing to consider when something is going to be done about global warming is the respect to accord GOP opinions, given the GOP response to it every step along the way there.
So what exactly are Trump administration priorities in negotiations with China? It’s evident from the response to Hong Kong protests that democratization isn’t in the mix. Currency manipulation? Intellectual property theft? Forced transfer of technology? Market access? State subsidies of industry? Espionage? Controlling state interest in US investment in China? Chinese military expansion in the South China Sea? Containing NK nuclear development?
It seems the current trade imbalance, more shorted-sighted that any of the foregoing concerns, is the primary priority. Not that the imbalance shouldn’t be a priority. Everything be most important. But priorities, if such even exist, are opaque to other than sycophants.
It’s better for Trump if there are none, because that way whatever concessions China makes will be claimed by Trump to be the primary priorities all along, so the reader can draw there on conclusion on Trump priorities.
Speaking of trade negotiations, what are the significant difference between USMCA and NAFTA? I anticipate not much. Damages to trade relations may exceed improvements in terms of trade. That damage is largely done, so unlike the conservative penchant for throwing good money after bad, I’ll support USMCA approval if it is more than nominally better than NAFTA.
Thoughts of approval brings something else to mind. Shouldn’t we wait unit after the 2020 election so that the American people can have more of a say in USMCA approval?