Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments... except for the "frozen zone" in NYC and the Vance's henhouse. There are new posts for that, just below this one.

"Midtown residents, workers and tourists ran for their lives from homes and offices near a buckling building Tuesday..."

"... and now have no idea when they can return to the evacuated 'frozen zone' around the site. Nine buildings had to be suddenly cleared after 8 a.m. when crucial support columns began caving in the under-construction 37-story former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street near Second Avenue — and City Hall would not say when anyone might be able to return to the area...."

From "Massive ‘frozen zone’ around buckling Midtown NYC building leaves hundreds out on street — with no idea when they can return" (NY Post).

"The Vances’ henhouse is elevated — about two feet off the ground — and situated inside a shed that is protected from the elements...."

"The design is such that the owner does not have to walk through 'chicken droppings and chicken bedding' to tend to the birds. The keeper can access the hens via interior shed doors. The attached run is predator-proof... and includes a solid roof, which helps prevent avian flu from spreading to the flock, as it can be 'transmitted with migratory birds flying overhead'.... The [henhouse] has led to speculation that there may be political motivations behind the flock’s appearance. It’s a theory that resonates with Danny Bowers, who keeps 19 chickens on a suburban property in Utah County, Utah. Bowers, who uses they/them pronouns, points out that some conservatives have embraced the values espoused by 'trad wife' influencers, many of whom raise chickens."

I'm reading "The Vances added a chicken coop to the vice president’s residence. We had questions. Who will be raising the hens at the Naval Observatory? And why are the Vances taking on this project?" Thats a gift link, in case you want to get serious or laugh about henhousegate.

I love the sheer randomness of the pronoun preference of some guy in Utah who's got nothing to do with any of this other than that he too keeps chickens.

I'm going to assume that the reason for the chickens is to enrich the day-to-day life of the Vance's 3 — soon to be 4 — children.

It is an awfully posh henhouse. I can see why some people are envious... or trying to figure out if they should be envious:

In the garden.

Video by Meade.

 

"While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke..."

"... I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was 'nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.' If anything, he seems to be significantly worse...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "Lessons From the Graham Platner Disaster" (NYT).

That article she wrote and links to came out last October. It sets out to prop him up as he was falling long before the primary: "Platner is the oyster farmer and former Marine with a baritone voice and a Bernie Sanders endorsement who this fall came seemingly out of nowhere to capture progressive hearts nationwide. Recently, a barrage of ugly revelations made it look like perhaps all the hope invested in him had been misplaced...."

Hearts. Hope.

Here's Goldberg, back in October, explaining that Nazi tattoo:

As political as you want it to be.

I'm just answering the question posed in this New Yorker title: "How Political Is This Supreme Court?"

Read the article if you like. It contains material like "My argument is that the Court is neither entirely political nor that it is entirely apolitical. I think we have to be a little more nuanced in the way we go about this. First, how do we define political?..."

What is closest to your reaction?

I'm not the sort of person who needs to read that sort of thing.

Good. That sounds substantive and nuanced.

I'm distracted by the Althouse "nuance" tag.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"I actually don't think that was a loss. 4 goals? I didn't see 4 goals. It looked more like a tie to me, Gianni...."

STOP IT!!!🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/wMgMLFoFyO

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) July 7, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like... except the soccer game and Graham Platner. Scroll down to the previous posts to talk about the soccer game, including Trump's phone call, and scroll down one more to say whatever needs to be said about the oysterman.

"I can call anyone about anything."

He CALLED FIFA 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hp1DObdnFv

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) July 6, 2026

"A wave of prominent Democrats, from Platner’s most progressive allies to top Democratic leadership, are bailing on his Senate campaign..."

"... after POLITICO reported that a woman who dated him said he forced her to have sex with him.... On Monday night — just hours after the story published — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Platner to 'immediately withdraw'.... Some of his biggest backers — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — called on him to exit the race, as did Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Another staunch supporter and potential 2028 presidential hopeful, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, withdrew his endorsement.... Meanwhile, one of Platner’s most prominent Senate backers, Bernie Sanders, has yet to comment on the news...."

Politico reports.

Platner "represented masculinity" for the Democrats:

 

Graham Platner (D) on NPR one month ago: "I represent healthy masculinity"

This did not age well 😬 pic.twitter.com/T3bEvgvdm5

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2026

The #1 Person in Tic Tac.

Trump: "You know who the number one person on Tic Tac is by far? Trump. Me. Taylor Swift was number 11." pic.twitter.com/BriJNk4QeL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 6, 2026

"Every summer, my husband, my daughter, and I stay with my mother out East so my child can spend time outside the city in an area I remain attached to from my childhood."

"Without my mom’s generosity, we could not afford to be there. I realize that having access to all this when I haven’t made the right career choices, shorted the market at a moment of crisis, or robbed a bank to be able to afford my own Hamptons house is deeply fortunate. And yet, as I’m often reminded during a flare-up with my mother over how to properly cut a $13 Il Buco filone (apparently, I saw bread too 'wavily' and ruin the rest of the loaf for straight-slicers), Chekhov’s greatest dramas were multigenerational tragicomedies set in country homes."

Writes Lucy Boyle, in "'I’m Sorry You’re in This Beautiful House We Pay For!'/There’s a glut of middle-aged children living with their parents in the Hamptons for the summer" (New York Magazine).

I'm interested in this tale of petty woe not because I've ever stayed at any beach house owned by my parents — I have not — but because we — in the midst of our summer here in our year-round home — took the half-hour drive out to the American Players Theater last week and saw "Uncle Vanya."

The troubles in "Uncle Vanya" were nothing like what we're seeing with these "middle-aged children" in the Hamptons. They're irked by rules about using coasters, taking out the trash, and not stealing things. Boyle gets a psychotherapist to analyze the parents: "When the house is full of the grandkids and the grandkids’ and kids’ friends, they’re kind of in the background. One way they can become the foreground and say ‘I am here’ is to foreground their ownership and possession.'"

"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a 'roundtable discussion' at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice..."

"... only to get barraged with 'intrusive' questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.... 'What items are sold the most at your stores?'... 'Where is your profit margin the greatest?' sources said. The bodega reps declined to answer.... 'They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,' said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.... Mamdani’s plan to subsidize the grocery stores with taxpayer funds so they can offer rock-bottom prices on essential items threatens grocers who operate on 2% to 3% profit margins.... 'What is the main thing people come into your store for? What else do they buy while there?' 'It seems like a clumsy, one-sided fishing expedition,' a food policy expert who did not want to be identified told The Post.

From "Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets — but local business leaders aren’t buying it" (NY Post).

Su insisted that the city "wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell." And "That’s how serious we are about not undercutting them." The whole idea is about undercutting them. Now, the city seems to be trying to assure them that they won't undercut them too much. But the bodega owners don't trust the city. If there's a "2% to 3% profit margin" generally, but the city wants to know "Where is your profit margin the greatest?," it looks like the city wants its own operation to take advantage of the most profitable items. 

Sunrise.