Here, Have Some Kamala Harris/Howard Stern Interview!
Because you asked nicely, or didn't, we have no idea what you asked.
Oh hey, did you hear Kamala Harris was on Howard Stern for like an hour yesterday? We haven’t heard it all yet, because who has that kind of time, besides the millions of people who listen to Howard Stern on the reg?
The New York Times has its top 13 hottest moments from the interview, one of which is that she eats Raisin Bran or Special K for breakfast. Hey, New York Times, whatever makes you hot.
Also, she told Stern that she and Dougie went to see U2 at the Sphere in Vegas and said if you go to the Sphere, it’s probably best to not be fucked up. “It’s a lot. There’s a lot of visual stimulation.”
She talked about what absolute garbage Trump is when it comes to dictators, because she’s gonna talk about that in every interview between now and November 5.
And so much more! Again, it was over an hour long.
And of course, Stern endorsed Harris officially, which might matter to the kinds of people who listen to him, which like Joe Rogan’s audience includes millions and millions of young men.
“I don’t even understand how this election is close,” Stern said to Harris, referencing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. “And yes, I’m voting for you, but I would also vote for that wall over there, rather than a guy who says he doesn’t support Ukraine … why do my fellow Americans want this kind of chaos overseas?”
Here’s a nice slice of their interview, talking about the threat Donald Trump poses to the entire world, and to journalists, and every other decent human alive:
And here’s a clip where in 90 seconds, Kamala Harris explained exactly what Trump and Republicans have done to hurt Americans, and American women in particular:
Stern ended his interview with these words: “I think you'd be a great president. You're compassionate. I love your experience as a prosecutor and I want to thank you. I love you as Vice President. I want to encourage anyone who thinks similarly to me to vote.”
You can watch the full hourlong interview here.
Victor Shi from the Harris campaign added these demographic details about Stern’s audience, which gives a clue as to why Harris was there this week, and Roy-Kenting all these other places like Colbert and the Call Her Daddy podcast and everyfuckingwhere else:
Howard Stern to Vice President Kamala Harris just now: “I am voting for you.” This matters because Howard Stern garners about 10 million listeners, with 73% of them being male, 27% female, and 85% white. This is a pretty big deal.
More on his show: 74% of his audience is between 25–54 years old; 34% of his audience are college graduates; 85% of his audience is white, and the average household income of his audience is $160,000. The most popular demo: Males ages 18-34 year olds.
She’s campaigning for everybody’s vote. And with recent polling showing, for instance, that a hell of a lot of Republican and independent Nikki Haley voters are either ready to vote for Harris or still not sure, and nine percent of Republicans in general telling the New York Times/Siena poll that they’re going to vote for Harris, it’s easy to see why.
Just under four weeks to go, time to bring this thing home.
OPEN THREAD.
[Hollywood Reporter / Victor Shi on Twitter / videos via Shannon Watts / Call To Activism]
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This escalator to the subway platform at my subway stop has always fascinated me. I love it the most when it’s empty.
https://substack.com/profile/155618292-ziggywiggy/note/c-72044692?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
So, often in public policy there are two competing philosophies to addressing a problem -- harm reduction and eradication. Harm reduction is absolutely necessary. You don't want people to suffer more than necessary while you're waiting on elimination policies to work. But eradication is far more preferable in the long run, if you can get there.
There are some policy areas, however, where the philosophies don't compete much because one approach overwhelms the other.
With drug use we have historically seen eradication dominate and harm reduction approaches demonized as a result. On the level of public policy, we decided for decades that we don't care if addicts hurt or die.
With natural disasters harm reduction overwhelms eradication. You can argue that since we can never fully eradicate natural disasters that the intense focus on harm reduction makes sense, but this misunderstands the eradication approach as a tyrannical all-or-nothing strategy that is really only familiar to us in the context of drug abuse policy. There is far more that we could do to avoid tragedies before they happen. You don't want to depopulate Tampa in a week because of Milton, but it is possible to ban new wood frame construction. Concrete dome houses, for instance, are incredibly resistant to hurricane wind damage and if you require all living spaces to be elevated (allow parking underneath if you like) flood damage is also largely avoided. (You'll have to relandscape and maybe replace a car, but the home will be fine.)
The problem with drug policy was that we don't care about other people if we see their suffering as resulting from their bad choices. The problem with disaster mitigation is that we don't see the bad choices that keep happening between the storms.
Building structures that don't need to be rebuilt after the normal and expected once-in-a-decade disasters might increase costs and affect local affordability, but skyrocketing insurance from recurring bailouts also affect costs and increase local affordability.
Bizarrely, we treat the first as the fault of elected officials and vote them out of office if they make reasonable long-term decisions for the benefit of the community, but the second we treat as the random result of an unpredictable Mother Nature.
At some point we need to face the costs of living in certain areas (the areas of New Orleans that are below sea level, much of Florida, waterless deserts in Arizona and California) and accept that if the market decides that building up to codes that prevent recurring costs is too expensive, then the land in an area can be left undeveloped or even have its existing buildings removed to return the area to its natural state.
Now that can happen after a season of multiple horrible hurricanes followed by an inability to get affordable insurance, and it probably will happen that way. But it would be so much better if we could plan for this in advance because the economic effects of planned limits on building are much easier on the human beings of an area than the economic effects of a sudden depopulation in the wake of hurricanes like Helene and Milton.