Pun Salad

My former CongressCritter, and continuing toothache, Carol Shea-Porter, was briefly on fire yesterday afternoon in the wake of Biden's pullout announcement. Her bright idea, expressed in multiple tweets was… well, here it is, just one example, with my snarky response:

Give it up, Carol. She wants to be unburdened by what has been. https://t.co/DMae9l6gyL

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) July 21, 2024

This struck me as nutty, even for Carol. But I suppose that's why I still follow her, for the entertainment.

Also of note:

• Nobody could disrespect Kamala more than I. But Elizabeth Nolan Brown comes pretty close: It's Been Easy To Forget How Bad Kamala Harris Is.

  Kamala Harris the horrible campaigner and Kamala Harris the cop can be easy to forget if you're only considering what Harris has done lately. Her tenure as vice president has been almost entirely unremarkable. The most distinguishing feature has been a series of bizarre but benign word salads. And political memory is short.

  So Harris isn't the best orator? Surely that's surmountable. Besides, the lack of distinguishing actions during her vice presidency could even be to her advantage. She's basically a blank slate, at least if you don't look back too far.

  But what if you do look back?

  The first thing you'll see is Harris' shambolic 2020 campaign for president. She wouldn't commit to policy positions. She couldn't defend her past actions. There were ongoing stories about her poor treatment of her staff. She entered the race as a top-tier candidate, with glowing press and some big-time backers, and dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses, polling at just 3 percent nationally. She wasn't even polling as a top-tier candidate in her home state of California.

  More at the link; I try to restrict myself to fair-use excerpts.

• Let's hope there aren't any bad dudes out there who see this as an opportunity. Maybe President Dotard should take the advice of the NR editorialists: Joe Biden Should Resign Presidency.

  Joe Biden did the right thing in ending the charade of asking the American public to believe that he was capable of serving another four years as president.

  This was preposterous, and the public, as the polling has consistently shown for a long time, didn’t believe it.

  Now, Biden has issued a statement dropping out of the race and has endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris.

  Biden should take the next logical step and resign the presidency. It’s possible to imagine a president not being able to campaign but still being capable of carrying out his official duties — say, if he had a serious physical impairment. And it is even possible to imagine a president who could serve for another six months but not another four and a half years. But such scenarios do not apply to Biden.

  Biden's withdrawal statement said his motive was "in the best interest of my party and the country".

  We'll ignore the significance of putting "party" before "country".

  Also, why "the country"? Why not "my country"?

  Ah well. The point is: if he really wants to do what's best for our country, he should transfer power to Kamala. That would still suck, but it would make the next few months less worrisome.

• Let's not let the GOP off the hook. Jack Butler read the Republican platform, and he's kind of cheesed off about GOP’s Latest Obamacare Surrender.

  Beneath the placid surface of this year’s largely successful Republican National Convention, some discontent has lurked. Occasionally, it has come into public view. Consider the new Republican Party platform. The platform heavily bears the imprint of Donald Trump, now firmly ensconced as the party’s leader, even down to its bullet points and serial capitalizations.

  But it’s a Trumpian platform in more than just style. The substance also reflects his vision for the party. Conservatives have already noticed its moderation on abortion and marriage versus past platforms. Less remarked upon is the lack of any mention of a government program that conservatives had opposed since the early years of the Obama presidency, before it was even passed: the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. The apparent absence of official opposition to Obamacare comes as the program continues to distort our health-care system and serve the Left in the culture war. It also raises the worrying possibility that Republican concern for limited government and traditional values will atrophy in tandem.

  Butler notices that Obamacare has never worked as promised, and it's getting worse.

Recently on the movie blog:

Pun Son and I were big fans of the movie Twister back in (whoa) 1996 when he was just a young 'un. So going to see this sorta-sequel was a must.

Showbiz note: For a "blockbuster", the 7:30pm Saturday show at Regal Cinema in Newington (NH) seemed pretty sparsely attended. Tickets were expensive, though; might be that people were at cheaper theaters.

The heroine is Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones); in a short opening scene, she's looking to get her research funded by doing a proof-of-concept of a method to defang tornadoes by releasing some gunk into their funnels. This leads her to take enormous risks which lead to the scary deaths of most of her team. She's left with a lot of guilt.

Five years later, she's on the staff of a weather channel in New York City, far from any likely tornado action. But she's enticed back into the game by Javi (Anthony Ramos), the surviving member of her team. He's well funded, always a sign of something sneaky going on. When she arrives, she catches the notice of Tyler (the ubiquitous Glen Powell), a slick, handsome cowboy type, making a sensationalistic TV series.

In a shocking plot twist, Tyler is not the bad guy.

What follows is a lot of dazzling special effects, and a reminder that, yes, tornadoes cause massive destruction and death. Will Kate finally get her chance to deflate a twister? Come on, you've seen more than three movies, right?

We had a lot of fun.