Quotes and Links

A week in review

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia September 5, 2024. | Reuters

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “Consider the following: In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Harris is up by 1.7 points nationally; but Biden was up 6.9 at this point in the campaign in 2020 and Hillary Clinton was up 6.0 in 2016. In Wisconsin, Harris is up 1 point, but Biden was up 3.5 points and Clinton 11.5 points at the same point in their campaigns there. Trump is up 0.2 points in Pennsylvania, but Biden was up 5.8 point and Clinton was up a whopping 9.2 points on this date. And in Michigan, Harris is up 2 points, while Biden was up 2.3 and Clinton was up 9 points at the same point. If the polling errors favoring Democrats in 2020 and 2016 persist, then Trump is probably still in the lead.” — The New York Post’s Julian Epstein

• “The Führer principle applied: Trump’s Arlington scandal invokes Hitler’s playbook” — Salon headline

• “All politicians, Harris included, are aware that the question of where they’re from is more about identity, or at least the identity we want to project, than geography. Home isn’t just a matter of where we say we’re from, it’s also about where others decide it makes the most sense for us to be from.” — MSNBC’s Robyn Autry, defending Kamala Harris for saying she’s from Oakland. Harris was born in an Oakland hospital but never lived there; she grew up in Berkeley.

• “But what it really comes down to is this: [Trump] just doesn’t get you or your life at all. I don’t think he could tell us what the difference is between a flat head and a Phillips head screwdriver, you know what I’m sayin’? You think he’s ever swung a hammer or used a power tool in his life? Oh, hell no.” — Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, speaking at a Harris campaign rally in Detroit

• “I would submit that abortion is about the economy too.” — Also Gretchen Whitmer, in an interview on MSNBC

• “The Dark Side of the Democratic Party’s Embrace of Football” — The Nation headline

• “If we can name a favorite candidate, it used to be Joe Biden but now he’s not participating in the election campaign. And he recommended to all his allies to support Ms. Harris, so that is what we are going to do.” — Vladimir Putin, speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum

• “I would actually have more respect for today’s bad reporters if they took bribes. The bulk of them suck for free.” — Matt Taibbi

• “Do you think that America has evolved, watching what we witnessed in 2016 in the world and the role sexism played then, have we evolved to have women in leadership roles in this country?” — MSNBC’s Huma Abedin

• “Is Usha Vance’s Hindu identity an asset or a liability to the Trump-Vance campaign?” — AP headline

• “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security” — Another AP headline; what Vance actually said was “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”

• “The normalization of voting by mail, the normalization of voting across a period of time so that you’re not all voting on the same day, and the absence of exit polls, right? When everybody’s voting from home or wherever, you can’t detect fraud by virtue of the fact that the count that came in from that precinct didn’t match what the exit pollers registered. And so, I don’t think we are wrong to imagine that we have lost the ability to check whether an election is fair and that that’s not an accident. That leaves the possibility open to cheat. And as you point out, [Democrats] cheat in every other way. Are we supposed to believe they won’t do that because their patriotism is so deep? I don’t see any patriotism to them at all.” — Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, in a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast

• “I’m returning to CNN in a brand new role as Chief Media Analyst. I’ll be appearing on TV, developing digital content, and once again helming the Reliable Sources newsletter.” — Brian Stelter

• “When you’re used to naked propaganda as the norm, even the most fleeting gesture at impartial fact-gathering feels like an attack.” — Wesley Yang, responding to Nate Silver’s observation that “The number of high-status posters who think the New York Times is out to get Kamala Harris is a bit disturbing.”

• “The Harris campaign wrote in an email that she ‘does not support an electric vehicle mandate.’ I asked if that meant she would veto or sign the bill she co-sponsored in 2019 w/ such a mandate for manufacturers. The campaign declined to comment.” — Alex Thompson, national political correspondent for Axios

• “Elon Musk and others urging people to have more kids are essentially calling for a Ponzi scheme, experts say” — Fortune headline

• “The people demanding that you import infinite immigrants to fund entitlements would like you to know that having kids is a Ponzi scheme.” — Auron MacIntyre

• “I would sell my soul for a reality TV show where James Carville is forced to share an apartment with Kamala’s zoomer staffers.” — National Review’s Becket Adams

• “We have dreams. We can see what is possible, unburdened by what has been.” — Kamala Harris, dropping her signature line during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh

• “Coward Tim Walz doesn’t have the courage to set the record straight even when given the opportunity on the national stage. Yes, his record does speak for itself, after 24 years of service he became a turncoat, hanging up his National Guard uniform for the last time in exchange for the extreme far left uniform he has worn for the last 20 years.” — Retired Command Sergeant Major Tom Behrends, who took the place of Tim Walz on a deployment to Iraq

• “Once Trump is defeated AGAIN, we are going to have to come to grips with the fact there are approaching 40 million people in this country who’ve been radicalized like ISIS. People who may never be normal again. That’s a problem.” — Lincoln Project Senior advisor Jeff Timmer

• “Kamala Harris’ Secret Power: She Is Whatever You Want Her to Be” — Politico headline

If you need to get past a paywall, use Archive Today or 12ft.io.

• Tablet: “There has been a stealth revolution in American voting laws and practices since 2016. Is mistrust being built into our system?”

• An Intelligencer piece about a controversy unfolding in the world of paleontology between two scientists who both claim to have found new evidence about one of the Earth’s biggest mysteries at Tanis, a paleontological site in North Dakota.

• “‘Moving in the Dark’: Hamas Documents Show Tunnel Battle Strategy,” from The New York Times.

• The New Yorker: “Why So Many People Are Going ‘No Contact’ With Their Parents”

• Another New Yorker story about an Austrian heiress who recruited fifty people from all walks of life to redistribute twenty-five million euros—if they could agree on how to spend it.

• “Frustrated With White House, Family of Detained American Reaches Out to Taliban,” from The Wall Street Journal.

• Another WSJ piece on how “America’s Space Force Is Preparing for the Risk of War.”

• Vulture: “For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?”