BURGMENTUM! America’s Next Vice President?

The question, I think, is what kind of balance should Trump seek? I think he needs, more than geographic or demographic balance, personality balance. Someone who is solid, reliable, non-dramatic, not susceptible to tabloid distractions, with a record of success in business and an air of obvious competence that will reassure the business community, Wall Street, and upper-income voters. In my view, more than any of the other VP contenders, Burgum has those qualities in spades.

So I have come around to the idea that, while Trump has other good options, selecting Doug Burgum as his vice presidential nominee could be a smart choice. One more thing: it also offers the prospect of Doug Burgum debating Kamala Harris, which could be a mismatch for the ages.

Or, perhaps: Ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard says Democrats, Biden-Harris administration put themselves in God’s place.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Why You’re Going to Be Hearing More about Hunter Biden Soon.

Democrats believe that they are the party serious about opposing the exploitation of women. Hunter Biden has schtupped prostitutes, impregnated a stripper, and then refused to pay child support. Joe Biden had to be shamed into acknowledging the existence of his seventh grandchild.

Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about the rule of law. Joe Biden spent decades enacting harsher penalties for drug use, possession, and dealing. Hunter Biden broke those laws many, many times and never suffered any legal consequence.

Finally, for decades, Joe Biden pitched himself as this old-fashioned family man, where “his word as a Biden” meant a solemn promise, a man of traditional values shaped by the working-class virtues of Scranton, Pa. It’s just random bad luck that his younger son turned into Caligula.

A lot of people think the myth of Narcissus is about a man who falls in love with himself — but the real “sin” in the myth is that Narcissus does not recognize himself. No one in government can address the deep skepticism and mistrust in the American public if they cannot see themselves and their past records clearly.

But hey, President Biden can’t even see the past inflation rate clearly.

Read the whole thing.

OPEN THREAD: Go for it.

YES, THEY’RE LETTING THE TRUTH DRIBBLE OUT NOW WHILE PEOPLE’S ATTENTION IS ELSEWHERE: We now know the likely truth about COVID, and how scientists lied.

COVID-19, which killed 1.1 million Americans and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions more, is a manmade virus that escaped from a Chinese lab partly funded by the US government.

Even today, you’re not supposed to say that — even though it’s the only plausible scenario.

No, “fact checkers” will rush in to claim that eminent scientists deny this. Which is because those scientists have too much invested — in money, in time, in their own beliefs — to admit the truth. . . .

Anyone who questioned this claim — including The Post — was censored online in 2020. The reason? A statement published in Lancet by 27 scientists calling it a “conspiracy theory.”
see also
NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials

We now know that statement was drafted by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, the company working on research in the Wuhan lab. He was just trying to cover his own complicity.

All signs point to a lab leak. The only reason we can’t say it conclusively is because China has been allowed to destroy all evidence.

Which is evidence in itself, of course.

WHY MODERN ART ISN’T RIGHT:

The strange new official portrait of Charles III is an occasion for conservatives to ask once more, “What’s wrong with modern art?” And is there any alternative to it, if this painting is the best that even a king can get?

Portraiture and monarchy have little place in today’s world—neither is extinct, though each has been largely deprived of function. The king reigns but does not rule. Portraits have prestige but are no longer necessary for memorializing or promoting anyone’s appearance. Democracy and photography have taken over the work of the old forms.

So the king’s portrait evokes dilution. Charles floats as a head on a hardly visible body, an indistinct figure subsumed by red haze. The color is simple and striking, as it must be to catch the desensitized eye. A royal portrait has to compete with every other meme and image today. Only the bizarre has a chance of standing out.

Charles is a neo-traditionalist in certain respects. He dislikes modern architecture and urban planning, for one thing, and has championed the creation of Poundbury, a town being built in Dorset along New Urbanist lines. But his portrait is placeless and modern, recalling a controversial 1997 depiction of his mother by Justin Mortimer.

That painting, commissioned by the Royal Society of the Arts, had Elizabeth II’s head completely detached from her body, against a blank yellow background. The artist may have been channeling his own detachment from his subject: “I don’t have anything in common with her apart from being English,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2011.

Alienation and crude technique, often coupled with shock or outright obscenity, are familiar characteristics of modern art. What once may have been jarring enough to be liberating has long become formulaic. But royal portraits are a stodgy enough medium that a work like Jonathan Yeo’s crimsoned King Charles can still provoke a few days’ headlines.

The classics of modernism can still stir a reaction as well. A friend recently wrote on Facebook about seeing a Jackson Pollock painting—perhaps better described as just Jackson Pollock paint—at a museum in Philadelphia. He asked the docent why Pollock’s splatters of color weren’t something that any visitor could drip on a canvas himself. He was told Pollock did it first, which might come as a surprise to parents of small children.

In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific RevolutionOrrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:

As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts.  Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered.  But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field.  Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge.  Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently.  The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible.  If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either.  And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.

And thus we we end up with the formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”

HIS RULE HAS NOT BEEN NOTABLY SUCCESSFUL:

NEO: Mitt Romney: Biden should have pardoned Trump.

Romney added:

… [H]ad I been President Biden, when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.

So Romney, when you voted to convict Trump after he’d been impeached on bogus charges, did you do it because you thought it made you the big guy or the little guy? My answer is “the little guy.” What’s yours?

Is there a worse case of Stockholm Syndrome in American politics than Romney, who was utterly destroyed by the DNC-MSM in 2012, and yet always comes crawling back to them, futility seeking redemption from a group of self-styled elites who hate him? Or as Steve wrote on Thursday, “This is where I’d like to grab Romney by the lapel of his suitcoat, pull his face so close to mine I could see my reflection in his Brylcreem, and shout, ‘THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE IS BEHIND ALL THIS, YOU PREENING NINNY.’ And then his security would come and beat me to a pulp, which is exactly why I try not to go to Washington except when I must.”

OPEN THREAD: Happy Friday.

CHRIS QUEEN: Brave Cops Target That Criminal Mastermind Scottie Scheffler. “Scottie Scheffler is the number-one golfer on the PGA tour. He’s the reigning Masters champion and the favorite to win this weekend’s PGA Championship. He’s a devout Christian, a devoted husband, and a new father. And thanks to the intrepid work of the Louisville, Ky., Police Department, whose officers totally didn’t overreact, he now faces four charges, including one felony.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Was Found Guilty of Grand Theft… Houses? “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have the curious case of the man who stole houses, instant karma for a Pokemon shoplifter, and Utah Man’s failed attempt at playing possum.”