On September 9, 1828, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born. Known most commonly in the English-speaking world as Leo Tolstoy, he became the celebrated author of the novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace, as well as the novellas and short stories such as “Family Happiness,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” and “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
His political and religious ideas heavily influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tolstoy died in 1910.
Vice President Kamala Harris is a flip-flopper.
She changes her “policies” to fit … whatever the climate is.
It may be her most endearing trait.
Her latest? Plastic straws. She says they may remain legal.
Whoah.
But why?
Christian Britschgi explains at Reason.com: “People’s frustration with paper alternatives to plastic straws eventually saw support for straw bans subside. By 2020, the policy had become synonymous with liberal overreach. Conservatives and freedom-lovers rallied behind plastic straw use,” Mr. Britschgi wrote on Friday. “The Trump campaign even started selling Trump-branded plastic straws and singled out Harris’ support for straw bans in attack ads.”
So it’s no mystery why “Harris’ campaign handlers are reversing her past support for plastic straw bans.”
But isn’t this “a lot less consequential than Harris’ other policy switcheroos”? Britschgi thinks NO. “Harris’ history with plastic straw bans is a useful window into her evolution as a candidate.”
Paul Jacob has written about this sort of issue:
See also:
“How to Know” — January 5, 2019
I am fascinated by the idea that our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
Werner Herzog, Herzog on Herzog (2002).
On September 8, 1264, Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland, promulgated the Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din jurisdiction over Jewish matters.
On the same date in 1883, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final “golden spike” completing the Northern Pacific Railway in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana.
The political party that demands that every last street person, hobo, convict and illegal alien have it made easy to vote has also worked mightily, behind the scenes, to make sure that at least one candidate not appear on ballots. The maniest-many should vote, but not more than two should be voted for! “For months, Democratic National Committee-backed lawsuits were focused on preventing independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from appearing on ballots in multiple states,” begins Jeff Louderback’s Saturday article for The Epoch Times.
But the party’s tactics changed “on Aug. 23 when Kennedy announced he would suspend his campaign in battleground states and urge his supporters to vote for former President Donald Trump in those states.”
On August 26, in “RFKj+T,” Paul Jacob had explained why Kennedy had switched to backing Trump. Today Louderback explains the ramifications for the Democratic Party of that switch.
Kennedy’s idea of taking his name off the ballot in ten key, marginal states — voting populations that could go either way — has left the Democratic Party with a new stance: try to keep Kennedy on the ballots they had previously fought to keep him off of.
The new tactic has met with mixed success. “Wisconsin is currently the only state rejecting Kennedy’s withdrawal effort,” Louderback reports. “On Aug. 27, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5 – 1 to keep Kennedy’s name on the state’s ballot. Kennedy filed a lawsuit challenging the ruling on Sept. 3.”
And so “democratic” politics goes on.
Right now we have a country with no president, and we’ve moved on. And what’s Taylor Swift doing?
Eric Weinstein speaking to Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast, September 4, 2024.