Sizzle50
4mo ago
Amy Klobuchar couldn’t name the President of Mexico over a year into his term. She sat on the Senate Commerce Committee at the time, and Mexico was our largest trading partner
(Nota bene Klobuchar doesn’t show any recognition when given López Obrador‘s name - she doesn’t go “Oh, AMLO, of course!” like anyone with passing familiarity to the leader would, but rather stares daggers at the host)
Given technocracy refers to rule by qualified experts, I’m puzzled why she of all candidates is meant to exemplify those traits?
Sizzle50
1yr ago
Funny, and I was intentionally leaning into grandiosity above, but I do think you're underselling things a bit. He actually had a rap persona 'Da Vek' that he wrote / freestyled his own oft political lyrics for in front of large audiences, it wasn't just occasional karaoke -
During his time as an undergrad at Harvard, Ramaswamy had a side-hustle as a libertarian-minded rap artist who went by the stage name “Da Vek" [...] In 2004, he got word that Harvard was doing an open call for student performers to be warm-up acts for Busta Rhymes, who that spring was to perform at the school’s Lavietes Pavilion. Ramaswamy took a shot. It was the first time he tried it. And it worked. According the the school’s paper, 3,000 students attended the event, which was advertised as the “hugest concert in Harvard history.”
The 'accomplished pianist' language comes directly from The New Yorker's profile of him, ymmv with how impressive you suppose that may actually be. Here's a longer video where he seems to be able to play reasonably complex pieces purely from memory - agreed that it doesn't seem like professional level, but surely on par with Clinton's famed saxophone skills at the very least?
(Obviously these are somewhat trivial asides, but I think they reflect a genuine innate multi-disciplinary talent indicative of high g)
As for his parents' financial circumstances, couldn't find much on their background but Vivek and his brother Shankar (a doctor who graduated from Harvard and Brown and also went on to found a billion+ dollar company) went to majority-black public schools in Dayton, Ohio until the violent incident upthread and Vivek talks about how he had to go with his dad to night classes for law school as a kid because his mom worked extra hours and they couldn't get a sitter. Seems like a relatively humble background, at least in comparison to his Ivy League peers, and the extreme upward mobility aspect is undeniable
Sizzle50
1yr ago
Tonight, mainstream audiences around the nation will be introduced to Vivek Ramaswamy - multi-disciplinary genius, serial entrepreneur, modern renaissance man, and nigh-messianic wünderkind who in this commenter’s humble opinion offers our beleaguered country’s best hope of national redemption
The story of Vivek is the story of the American Dream par excellence. A first generation American, Vivek was born to industrious immigrants who came to this land with nothing and went on to become a geriatric psychiatrist and engineer / patent attorney, respectively. Vivek’s giftedness shone through from the start, overcoming severe bullying - to the point of being hospitalized + needing surgery after being thrown down a flight of stairs - to become an accomplished pianist, nationally ranked tennis player, and class Valedictorian by time he left high school to attend Harvard via scholarship
Thriving among the nation’s intellectual elite, Vivek became President of Harvard’s Political Union (as a conservative!), won the Ivy’s prestigious Bowdoin prize for his senior thesis, and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology whilst working for top hedge funds in the biotech investment sector, all while moonlighting as as a rapper (Da Vek) and making club appearances as an amateur stand-up comedian while publishing scientific articles in the nation’s top papers and founding a 7-figure networking business. Upon graduating, Vivek made partner at a major hedge fund while simultaneously attending Yale Law School on a lark, having earned $15M by the time he graduated with his J.D. with a scholar’s grounding in the principles of Constitutional governance
Shortly after, Vivek founded a revolutionary biotech company that created a paradigm shift in pharmaceutical development. Developing an ingenious business model that leveraged market forces to determine the promise of various drug candidates (by spinning off a new company for each treatment and holding IPOs) he cut through the pharmaceutical bureaucracy to develop 5 FDA approved drugs (including life-saving treatments) in under a decade. His company, Roivant, is now worth over $9 Billion(!), with Vivek maintaining an approximately $650M stake
Vivek left his company following internal and external pressure to make a corporate statement in favor of the controversial - and in his view - socially corrosive #BLM movement, during a period in which nationwide race riots killed dozens, caused $2 billion in damages, and coincided with an enduring crime surge with an immediate ~30% homicide increase that represented the largest year-to-year murder spike in our nation’s history. Choosing to stand on principle rather than genuflect to the reigning hysteria, Vivek went on to write 3 best selling books in 18 months exposing the pernicious spread of radical left wing ideology throughout the corporate world. One such book shone a light on the ESG movement by which asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street leverage the assets of everyday Americans to force partisan political agendas across the nation’s corporate boardrooms. Not satisfied to merely expose this undercovered movement, Vivek started his own asset management firm, Strive, that serves as a counterbalance to the major institutional players and their attempts to politicize the very free market itself. (Strive currently approaches $1billion under management.) Simultaneously, he founded another company, Chapter, to help citizens navigate the federal bureaucracy with regard to Medicare, all while raising two young children with his loving and accomplished (surgeon!) wife
A fearless iconoclast, intellectual titan, and charismatic orator, Vivek has now taken on the audacious goal of becoming our country’s next President. Swearing off Super PACs and institutional backers, Vivek has self-funded an ambitious campaign, seizing upon earned media to make a name for himself despite virtually no ad expenditures by appearing on a litany of podcasts and programs across the political spectrum. This young and daring patriot - the first millennial to run for President - boldly aired his policy briefings as almost daily podcasts to give every day Americans insight into how the political process truly works. With a uniquely invigorating platform, full of heretofore unthinkable ideas, Vivek has thrown conventional political wisdom to the wind in the name of running a campaign centered on truth and national revival
Encouragingly, this dazzlingly bright young maverick has found his message resonating with the electorate, surging to third place in the all important race for the 2024 Republican nomination. Polling ahead of sitting senators, former governors, and even a former vice president, Vivek as a Hindu, dark-skinned political neophyte has already achieved the impossible and situated himself as the arguable heir apparent to the American nationalist movement
Tonight he makes his true debut on the national stage and makes his case to take on the political establishment, impose constitutional limits to a federal bureaucracy run amok, and restore a unifying sense of national purpose. Excited to watch - stream on Rumble at 9pm Eastern
https://rumble.com/v3ak5c2-fox-news-republican-presidential-primary-debate.html
Sizzle50
1yr ago
Not sure how you’re searching, but I’ve certainly mentioned him before on /r/TheMotte, e.g. here
He’s under-discussed, certainly. But it’s not accurate to say he’s never been mentioned
IIRC there were also discussions at some point of the indie documentary film The Trayvon Hoax which prominently features Crump (accusing him of witness tampering), a controversy regarding theaters backing out of airing it, and the resulting defamation suit against Mr. Crump by the filmmaker
Memorably, Trump appointed as Ambassador to the EU in 2018 a hotel businessman named Gordon Sondland who had donated $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee
Sondland ended up being a key figure in the Ukraine impeachment imbroglio, which is the only reason this was considered notable. I remember thinking at the time that i) $1M is not all that much money and becoming an ambassador seems readily achievable; and ii) that absolutely nobody seemed to care about this obvious bribe (again, the payment was to the Inaugural Committee, not even the campaign)
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