Oh, Those Trump-Supporting Republicans August 29, 2024 Thom Hartmann’s headline seemed way over the top . . . Some Republicans Imply Kamala Harris is 3/5th Human & Unfit for Presidency . . . until I read it . . . and the New York Times reporting to which it refers — Trump Elevates False, Fringe Attacks on Harris to Center of His Campaign. Heather Cox Richardson: The elephant in the room these days is that most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal presidential candidate. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself. It’s hard to look away from the reality that the Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term, at the very least by voting to convict Trump at his first impeachment trial. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” Republican senators nonetheless stood behind Trump. BONUS Jon Stewart on guns and crime. (Warning: strong language.) NERDY BONUS You might want to listen as a guest to yesterday’s NVIDIA earnings call. Unless you’ve never heard an earnings call and are curious to hear how they go, skip straight to the Q&A at 21:30 (the button top right). If you’re like me, you’ll understand none of it (and may not listen to the end) . . . but will get the broadest possible gist of how dramatically the world is and will be changing. There’s Hopper and Blackwell and I have never been able to grasp how electricity works, either — large language models make no sense to me — but not understanding electricity doesn’t make it any less central to our lives. The same will become increasingly true of A.I.