Sunrise — 7:01, 7:08, 7:08, 7:09.

It's Christmas Eve. What are you up to?

"As their seventh month at sea begins, the sailors will get a rare treat of prime rib and lobster tails on Christmas Day."

"But neither the Navy nor the Pentagon has said when this deployment will end, nor whether there is another carrier being readied to take their place. At stake is whether Mr. Hegseth further extends the deployment to keep his military options open. If so, that decision will probably increase costs down the road by delaying crucial maintenance for the Ford and putting strain on the crew's morale."

From "Long Carrier Deployment Projects U.S. Strength, and Carries Costs/The U.S.S. Ford has been deployed for six months, now in the Caribbean as part of President Trump’s pressure campaign on Venezuela. Maintenance woes and strains on sailors will likely mount" (NYT).

The article quotes Senator Mark Kelly, who was deployed beyond 6 months during the 1991 Gulf War: "It kind of wears on you. And you start to see accidents start to happen — not just pilots crashing planes, necessarily, but accidents on the flight deck.... All kinds of stuff starts to happen when you’re out there for an extended period of time."

"The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose."

Said Marco Rubio, quoted in "'Witch hunt': Ex-EU commissioner Breton denounces U.S. visa ban targeting ‘censorship'" (CNBC). 

The Trump administration imposed visa bans on Thierry Breton, a former European Union commissioner behind the Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, accusing them of censoring U.S. social media platforms.... The DSA forces tech giants like Google and Meta to police illegal content more aggressively, or face hefty fines.... 

Breton... wrote on X: “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?” He added: “As a reminder: 90% of the European Parliament — our democratically elected body — and all 27 Member States unanimously voted the DSA. To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is."

I can't find anything by Breton explaining his idea of "where" censorship really is. Try to persuade us, Thierry. Give us a chance to argue with you. If you've got a good idea put it up for sale in the marketplace of ideas. Prove us wrong.

ADDED: Breton seems to be giving priority to whatever the majority decides to do. We Americans have traditionally put individual rights above majoritarian choice. I suspect that when he says "Censorship isn’t where you think it is," he means it's never censorship when it's done democratically. Believe that, and you don't believe in individual rights. 

"Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer."

Wrote Ben Sasse, quoted in "Republican former senator Ben Sasse says he has terminal cancer/The 53-year-old — who was one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump during his first term — said in a lengthy social media post he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and suggested he doesn’t have long to live" (WaPo).

"Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die. Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence... I’m not going down without a fight. One subpart of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more.... Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape."

Have you ever zealously embraced gallows humor in the presence of a person who is dying? Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"? 

"Aside from the gold, Mr. Trump has hung more than 20 portraits in the Oval Office. In addition to Mr. Washington’s above the fireplace..."

"... portraits of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, James Monroe and Franklin D. Roosevelt are also on the walls. Mr. Trump has ruminated about the fate of Mr. Harrison, who died shortly after he was inaugurated, to people who have visited the Oval Office. He has said that the portraits of his predecessors are there to remind him of how quickly fate can change. Most other presidents had just a few portraits or scenery paintings in the Oval...."

From "'He’s a Maximalist': Inside Trump’s Gilded Oval Office/The New York Times recreated the president’s office in 3-D, using hundreds of photos taken in October" (NYT)(gift link, for all the photos 

1. The NYT calls the photos "3-D," but they're not 3-D. They are 360°. I think the correct term is "360° panoramas."

2. This article is respectful toward Trump, an effort at objectivity, though of course the comments over there are anti-Trump — "Fool’s gold, in every sense," etc.

3. The "maximalist" characterization comes from Karoline Leavitt: "Why all the gold? 'He’s a maximalist,' Ms. Leavitt said, citing Mr. Trump’s background in real estate and hospitality. 'So he loves showing people who come in, the renovations, his office, his gift shop.'"

4. The "gift shop" isn't a shop. As the link on the phrase shows, it's a gift room, a small room off the Oval Office that Presidents have used for different purposes, that Trump uses to house a supply of hats and other items to hand out as gifts. And yes, this is the room where Bill Clinton consorted with Monica Lewinsky. 

5. I'm delighted to see the name William Henry Harrison. I was just talking about him yesterday. Off blog. I've been slowly making my way through this biography of John Quincy Adams (commission earned). I'd finally made it to Chapter 35: 

IN THE YEARS AFTER ADAMS LOST HIS BID TO BE REELECTED president, the slave states and their allies had controlled the White House, as they did the Congress and the Supreme Court.... Finally, in 1840, the Whigs had broken through, in the person not of Clay, the perennial candidate, but of William Henry Harrison. Adams was inclined to dismiss Harrison as a genial buffoon, an 'Indian fighter' like Jackson who had been puffed up into presidential material by the popular fancy for war heroes.... 

Then, on April 4, one month after taking the oath of office, Harrison died of pneumonia caused by a cold he had contracted at his inaugural. He was succeeded by John Tyler [who]... had been included as vice president in order to shore up party support in the slave states.

6. And here's the part that I clipped out and texted to Meade and to my son Chris (who reads bios of Presidents and had sent me this book):

It had never crossed anyone’s mind that he would exercise power of any sort; no president had ever died in office. No one even knew how to address the successor; the Constitution was unclear on whether the vice president would succeed to the presidency or merely assume its functions. Adams was outraged that Tyler considered himself the president and insisted on being addressed as such.

I had never seen that idea before, the notion that when a President dies, the VP does not become the President. How dare Tyler expect to be called Mr. President! 

7. But back to the present day and to Trump with that picture of William Henry Harrison hanging alongside all the far greater Presidents. Trump keeps Harrison on the wall as a memento mori. We know that because he talks about it to people. He "has ruminated" aloud about the President who's known for dropping dead. We tend not to think of Trump as a person given to rumination — about anything, certainly not death.

8. Now, looking at those pictures of the Oval Office, maximally ornamented in gold, I think perhaps he sees the place as something like a tomb. Perhaps he envisions a chamber in the soon-to-come Trump library that looks something like this:

Sunrise — 6:55, 7:24, 7:28, 7:32, 7:42.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.

I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.

But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."

"It begins in 1976. Epstein is a teacher at the Dalton School in Manhattan, and he gets invited to a reception at an art gallery, and he goes kind of grudgingly...."

"And at the reception, he bumps into the parent of one of his students who is impressed with his math chops. And the parent suggests that maybe he is wasting his time being a teacher and instead should consider a career in Wall Street. And the parent then introduces Epstein to a guy named Ace Greenberg.... a top executive at Bear Stearns, which is this scrappy Wall Street investment bank. And one of the ways in which it's scrappy is that it is not going to hire Ivy League MBAs. It is looking for what Ace Greenberg likes to call PSDs, which stands for poor, smart, and deeply desirous of being rich. And Epstein goes in to meet Greenberg for a job interview, and Epstein fits the bill. Greenberg is bowled over by the guy's charisma and charm and apparent math prowess and offers him a job. So he arrives at Bear Stearns and he quickly becomes the protege to some of the firm's top executives. One is Greenberg, the guy who hired him, who is so taken with Epstein that he introduces him to his own 20-year-old daughter and they start dating, which affords Epstein something akin to protected status at the firm...."

From today's excellent episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Origins of Jeffrey Epstein."

So: a scrappy executive enamored of the idea that there are PSDs out there — that's the explanation....

"What we have is Karoline Leavitt's soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn't there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing?"

"Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don't tend to be shy. I realize we've emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record."

Wrote Bari Weiss, in an internal memo justifying her action, noting the failure to "present the administration's argument."

Quoted in "Scoop: Weiss told top '60 Minutes' producers that delayed segment had problems" (Axios).

Also at Axios: "Yanked '60 Minutes' episode aired in Canada." 

It's easy to find the whole segment on line, but I'm not going to link to it.

Here's the NYT article about the controversy: "Turmoil at CBS News After Bari Weiss Pulls a ‘60 Minutes’ Segment/Several veteran correspondents questioned how Ms. Weiss, the new CBS News editor in chief, had handled the segment, after she defended her decision on a call with the newsroom." Excerpt:

Sunrise — 7:23.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I love the way an audiobook brings me one step closer to a story, removing the middleman of paper or a screen. I’m not just hovering over the action, I’m in it. Channeling it."

Writes Elisabeth Egan, in "Why I Stopped Reading and Embraced Audiobooks/On the joys of having stories in my ears — and yes, listening counts" (NYT).

This is a genuinely new point in what is for me a very old question/"question." (What's the question? Do audiobooks "count"? What does that even mean?) Egan also makes many of the familiar points about audiobooks: You can do other things while listening — chores, crafts, exercise — and it's good for people with vision troubles, great for drifting off to sleep, etc. etc.

But I love this idea that the audiobook is more intimate, bringing you closer to the material. Is that even true?! I think she's saying something about the experience of hearing in contrast to seeing. When seeing, you are looking at a physical object outside of your head. Or so it seems. The words are out there, on the page, your eyes allow you to sense them. But sound feels like it has entered your head, almost like your own thoughts, especially if you're using earphones. And yet both hearing and seeing happen in your brain, through a nerve located deep inside the organ that is part of your head — your optic nerve in the back of your eye or your auditory nerve in your inner ear. 

So the intimacy of hearing as opposed to seeing is a subjective feeling, don't you agree? But then the question becomes whether we prefer this intimacy when reading? I suspect that by using vision to consume a book, you maintain a more sharply critical mind. The page is out there. It's the other. We're suspicious. Or admiring. The audiobook reaches us differently. It's automatically already inside us, stirring us like music, like the murmurings of a loved one.

First Ladies read a Christmas story.

It's not a competition. We cherish diversity of expression. It's all a matter of taste...

 

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ADDED: Sorry, I didn't see the slur on Melania's name until I put this up. I am offering the contrast among the ladies in a neutral spirit. Anyone who assumes Michelle's reading is superior to Melania's is simply being very conventional.

AND: Here's the full reading by Melania:

"My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason..."

"... that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready."

Said Bari Weiss, quoted in "'60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.' Sharyn Alfonsi, a '60 Minutes' correspondent, criticized the network’s decision to remove her reporting from Sunday’s edition of the show" (NYT).

ADDED: Oh, for the golden age of "60 Minutes":

 

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"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform."

Said JD Vance, quoted in an NPR article by the Associate Press with the mean-spirited headline "Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry at Turning Point USA's convention."

"Greenland is not for sale and will not be for sale, so you can forget about your plans for Greenland to become part of the USA."

"Nothing about us without us, and Greenland’s future is solely up to us. A majority does not want to become Americans, we do not want to be taken over by another country...."

Said Aaja Chemnitz, "a Greenlandic politician serving in the Danish Parliament," quoted in "Trump appoints Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland/The Danish territory has long been in the president’s sights. Trump said the Republican governor “understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security" (WaPo).

From the text of the article: "Trump has said repeatedly that the United States will 'get' Greenland, casting it as a national security objective for the U.S. His administration also covets Greenland for its untapped rare earth metals, an industry dominated by China globally. In April, The Washington Post reported that the White House was preparing an estimate of what it would cost the federal government to control Greenland as a territory."

"How big is Greenland?" — that question came up in a novel I'm reading. A child asks the question of her father who was telling her a story about the Greenlandic ice sheet melting and flooding the world and had said "Imagine, a slab of ice the size of Greenland!" The father "had no idea," only that Greenland "was notorious for being smaller than it looked on a Mercator projection, but he felt sure it was large, given that its melting would cause global sea levels to rise by something like seven meters."

The WaPo article offers an answer to the question: Greenland is "around three times the size of Texas."

"His daughter Lana... recalls flying to Austin to visit Nelson and failing to recognize him until her son shouted, 'That’s Grandpa!'"

"The last time she’d seen him, in Nashville, he had short hair and wore country-club clothes. Now he had long hair and a beard and wore a T-shirt, a bandanna, and an earring. 'He went from jazz musician to hippie,' she said. In Texas, Nelson cut back on the drinking. His face thinned out. His features sharpened. He ran five miles a day through the Hill Country, practiced martial arts, kept smoking weed—it tamped the rage down, he said—and read spiritual tracts and 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' People who killed the mood didn’t stay in his orbit for long. 'Somewhere along the way, I realized that you have to imagine what you want and then get out of the way and let it happen,' he told me."

From "How Willie Nelson Sees America/On the road with the musician, his band, and his family" (The New Yorker).