Space4Time3Continuum2x

"A child, a moron, a failure, and a psychopath. Quite a little team you've put together."
"What do you want, Brunt?"
"I’m here to sign up."
DS9, 6.10

This user received the Editor of the Week award.

, October 20–October 26, 2024

On the campaign trail, 2024

Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 2024 crash

1:09:43: Purse lips, cue violins, read off teleprom .... look right, look left, dang, the teleprompter isn't prompting, keep pursing lips, keep pursing lips, read off teleprompter: and here comes the stream of lies. Banks collapsing, begging Venezuela for oil. We just recently heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will repedoing - ahh - will be reducing their oil production, so sad. We are a nation that is consumed by the left screen new deal. (The new deals on the right screen are better?)

Woohoo - picking up speed

From powerful light inside the body and disinfectant in the lungs (26:30-27:25) to shark attacks, boats so heavy they can't float, "nobody ever asked this question, and it must be because of my relationship to MIT, very smart", shark biting off a young lady's leg, and electrocution by battery (41:12–44:40). Getting lost while reading "The Snake" (29:51) for the umpteenth time: "'I saved you, cried the woman, and you're so tender and so nice. But you know that if I hadn't taken in, your skin would not look so good and you would've bitten me. But why you bit me? Why did you bite me? Please, please tell me. Why did you bite me? You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die.' 'Shut up, silly woman said the reptile with a grin. You knew damn well, I was a snake before I took you in.' And this is what is happening at our border."

Ted Kennedy was a friend of mine

(39:15–40:05) We have higher poll numbers now than we’ve ever had. Too big to rig. That’s what we want, too big to rig, too big to rig, too big to rig. That's what we want. I have higher numbers than we’ve ever had. We're leading this crooked thief of a president, and I would never have said that before. I didn’t speak glowingly. He’s a lousy president anyway, but I would never have said he’s a corrupt, very dumb person. He’s a low IQ individual, and he always was. This is an age. He's worse now than he was 10 years ago. But if you go back 30 years ago, he was considered the dumbest person in the US Senate. Ted Kennedy told me that himself, who was a friend of mine, which is shocking, shocking that he was a friend. He was of a slightly different persuasion Marjorie."

The show

Neal Gabler: "Trump is clever. Nevertheless, he is old, and his show is growing whiskers. He hasn't been able to reinvent himself. He is like the comedian who keeps telling the same jokes again and again or the rock band that has an old catalogue and no new songs. There may be a certain appeal to this ... but it's the appeal of nostalgia for longtime fans who wear MAGA hats and T-shirts. Among everyone else, the non-true-believers, you can feel his celebrity waning. And as he sits in the courtroom, alternately scowling and nodding off, you can feel that the celebrity aura isn't what it used to be either. He's diminished. He even looks smaller."

Say what, Shakespeare?

Soup's on — Hale and Hearty meets hail fellow well met. September 23 rally in Indiana, PA, 40:39–41:33:

He didn’t mean Iowa. I mean the whole thing. But I said, you know, if you were Winston Churchill and you make a mistake as to location, like I’m here with you. And if I say it’s great to be in the great state of Illinois, can happen. No matter how great your speech is, you could make the greatest speech in history and people will go, “That was a disaster.” Right? He did it all the time, but she’s worse than him. I’m telling you, watch. She’s not as smart as him. He’s not smart. He never was smart. He wasn’t smart 40 years ago. Always he was a hale and hearty guy, well-met. Did you ever hear Shakespeare? He was hale and hearty and well-met, but he wasn’t a smart person. But she is a very dumb person. And we can’t do that. We can’t do that. I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to be rude.

Hunter's supermoon tonight

David Rothkopf on X, 8:22 PM, Oct 15, 2024: "The past 24 hours seem to have been a dividing line in the Trump campaign...and in Trump. He went from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention. He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon." Space4Time3Continuum2x🖖 18:05, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Undecided

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

...

I wonder if, in the end, the undecideds aren’t the biggest pessimists of all. Here they could order the airline chicken, but, then again, hmm. “Isn’t that adding an extra step?” they ask themselves. “If it’s all going to be chewed up and swallowed, why not cut to the chase, and go with the platter of shit?”

Ah, though, that’s where the broken glass comes in.

David Sedaris, Undecided, October 20, 2008

Shit with bits of broken glass it is.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana, The Life of Reason.

On coping

It is unfair that Americans chose someone like Donald Trump over someone like Kamala Harris, and I fear the nation and the world will regret that decision. I’m going to be angry and frustrated. But I’m not going to spend all my waking hours stewing over the fact that Trump is going to be president. I’m going to follow the news ... but I won’t take his nonsense personally. I’m going to find a better politics-life balance and catch myself when I start obsessing over the latest outrage.

Eugene Robinson, How I’m coping with a Trump win, Washington Post, November 6, 2024