JD Vance’s Unstoppable Rise as Politics’ Most Hated Man—Here’s Why Everyone’s Talking About Him!

So this weekend, I found myself wondering: how does a guy like Vice-President J. Divan Vance manage to aim squarely for becoming the most fundamentally unlikable character in American politics? I mean, seriously—this man’s setting the bar so high for being detestable that it’s practically a new Olympic sport. While his boss is counting down to 2029, Vance’s wild ride through topics like homelessness and healthcare makes you question whether he’s out on a mission to rewrite the rules on how not to win hearts and minds. And let me tell you, his take on who deserves help and who doesn’t? It’s a maze of contradictions that calls for some serious unpacking. Buckle up—because if you thought political clarity was a thing, this weekend’s dispatch might just change your mind… or at least give you some sharp fuel for the fire.
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Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

It looks like vice-president J. Divan Vance has decided that the road to glory lies in his ability to become the most fundamentally unlikable human in American politics. Granted, he has a high bar to clear but, barring the patriotic intervention of certain coronary arteries, his boss is due to leave office in 2029. So, Vance is out there in the wild, making his own case. For example, here he is on the subject of America’s homeless population:

And I don’t know for the life of me what happened in this country where we decided that the compassionate thing was to let somebody fester on the streets … instead of get the treatment that they need. It’s very simple to me. And I don’t know why we accepted as parents and as grandparents and as people who just want to walk down the street in comfort why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets paid for with your tax dollars and you ought to be able to use them like any other citizen in this country.

Not that it will matter a damn to Vance and the twenty people who believe he can be president one day, but I can tell him when all that happened. It happened when the sainted Ronald Reagan deregulated mental health care.

On that same trip to Georgia, Vance decided to flex on sick people whose papers are not in order.

“The president made a promise—a sacred promise [Ed. Note: Excuse me for interrupting, but “a sacred promise” from a guy who stiffed gardeners and glaziers, the biggest deadbeat in the history of Atlantic City, doesn’t exactly carry a lot of weight ’round this here shebeen.] that the only people losing health care will be illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with. Because I happen to believe that Medicaid belongs to American workers and American families. I happen to believe that when you’re struggling in this country, we are generous people and we want to help you, but we want to help the people who have the legal right to be in the United States of America. So it’s not about kicking people off health care. It’s about kicking illegal aliens the hell out of the country.”

Undocumented people are not eligible for Medicaid in this country. Granted, some states helped such folks through the Affordable Care Act’s FREE MONEY! That was because these states were not run by soulless replicants like J. Divan Vance, who never will be president of the United States.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click

“Look Whatcha Done” – Magic Sam

Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives

Here, from 1947, is the weirdest entry ever in this series. It’s about the night watchman at Madame’s Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and it also appears to be the beginning of a forgotten Christopher Lee vehicle. History is so cool that it’s chilling.

I have been watching the work of this guy Adam Wren, who has imbibed deeply of the essential ethos at Tiger Beat on the Potomac. One way you know this is the way he leads off this story. From TBOTP:

Democrats seem to think they can talk their way out of the political wilderness. Listen closely and you can hear it through the din of their all-caps Trumpian X feeds, their hourslong “manosphere” podcast interviews and their more frequent swearing.

Oh, fuck off, Junior. The second—and most conclusive—way you know this is the source on which he has hung this story:

In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of forty-five words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.”

Good god, not these people again. For the single most impotent political movement in the history of politics, Third Way has a positive gift for finding suckers in the elite political media who believe them to be influential and, worse, important. Third Way equals the rancid sepulcher in which stirs the unquiet ghost of Joe Lieberman, a nest of ignorant scolds who believe the Clinton Years the golden era of American politics, the delusional fatheads whose political prescriptions are the equivalent of bleeding the Democratic Party with leeches. Here’s are their suggested terms, the elimination of which will bring the party back to the glory days of triangulations and Sister Souljah.

Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.

What’s another way to say “cultural appropriation,” or do these clowns not believe that it actually happens? What’s a better way to describe an existential threat, or does this passel of buffet-grazers not believe anything is? Maybe they could pry themselves away from their table at the Palm and jaunt on down to St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana and tell the people living in Cancer Alley that “environmental violence” is not being practiced on their children. I have never heard anyone use the term “birthing person,” but I have seen the “patriarchy” in action. What should we call it? What’s a better word for it. Clock’s ticking.

The group doesn’t base its list on any specific polling. And the authors don’t offer specific counter recommendations for these terms. [Ed. Note: Of course, not.] But they do outline the values their vision of the party includes. [Ed. Note: Keep the gravy train rolling.] “We will never abandon our values or stop doing things to protect those who need help, encouragement, trust, a second chance, acceptance, a fair shake, and the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness But as the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for those people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them,” the memo reads. “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”

As the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 truly shows us, anyone who votes against his self-interest because they can be frightened by the scary Woke Word Monster is a lost fcking cause. As, I fear, Adam Wren is.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From NBC News:

Archaeologists and divers retrieved a trove of ancient treasures Thursday from a 2,000-year-old sunken city off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. … The artifacts included a headless statue, a sphinx and a priest figure. The site may have been an extension of the ancient city of Canopus, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

“There’s a lot underwater, but what we’re able to bring up is limited. It’s only specific material according to strict criteria,” said Sherif Fathi, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister, speaking to the media on Thursday. “The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage,” Fathi said speaking to the media.“The artifacts that you see date back to successive periods, starting from the Ptolemaic era,” said Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

I like the idea of bringing up some artifacts and leaving some where they are. We know they’re down there. That’s enough for now.

Hey, BBC. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

A new species of dinosaur that had an “eye-catching sail” along its back has been named after sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur. The dinosaur, unearthed on the Isle of Wight, has been given the name Istiorachis macarthurae with the first word meaning “sail spine” and the second referring to Dame Ellen’s surname. The record-breaking round-the-world yachtswoman said it was a “huge honour”, adding: “The fact that the Istiorachis ‘sail’ could be likened to the sails I have spent so much of my life below was very touching.”

Not only a new dino, but a cool, sleek dino as well.

Dame Ellen, founder and patron of the East Cowes based charity the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, said: “It is certainly not an everyday occurrence to be asked if a newly discovered dinosaur could reference your name in its title. … It is both extraordinary and a huge honor that a creature living 125 million years ago could possibly be linked to my family name.”

It lived then to make Dame Helen—and us—happy now.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the victims of the unspeakable violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for everyone touched by the mass shootings in NYC and Reno, and everyone recovering from the flooding in Charleston, and in the Roanoke Valley, and in Wisconsin, and in Texas, and in North Carolina, and by earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and in Turkey and Russia, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and Nigeria, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Napa, and in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska, and in Missouri. And the folks caught in “historic floods” in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. And especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve. Thank you for your attention to this matter.