Sunrise — 6:32, 6:41.

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Turnout in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

I'm just watching what rolls in on my search on X for "wisconsin turnout." It's being said that high turnout favors Schimel (the Trump-endorsed candidate), and I'm seeing a lot of Schimel-oriented gloating about turnout on my plainly neutral search.

Sample tweets: "The first turnout numbers in Wisconsin indicate we could see an incredible 35% increase in turnout over the 2023 State Supreme Court race. That's +650K raw votes"/"Large voter turnout in our Wisconsin small community"/"I was number 123 at 10:00 a.m. this morning and are very rural small town in Central Wisconsin population 400. my sister voted at 8:00 a.m. at the same place and she was 25 so pretty good turnout for our little area."

"In 1984, the play gave memorable shape to a growing understanding that the underworld of sleazy small business was merely a microcosm of the bigger, more polite variety"

"It suggested the way social Darwinism lay at the root of our economic system, with its zero-sum games and dominance pyramids. There’s a reason Mitch and Murray, the owners of the agency and creators of the contest, are never seen, like golden-parachuters or two-bit Godots.... [David Mamet's] ideas have become conventional in the process of being overtaken and one-upped by reality. The whole world, many feel, is now a consortium of thugocracies, some even sanctioned by popular acclaim. In that context, two-bit players are too puny to worry about, and greed at the scale of a Cadillac unremarkable."

Writes Jesse Green, in "'Glengarry Glen Ross' Review: Caveat Emptor, Suckers!/Kieran Culkin, Bill Burr and Bob Odenkirk star in a bumpy revival of David Mamet’s play about salesmen with nothing worth selling" (NYT).

Kid Rock describes his dinner with Bill Maher and Donald Trump (and Dana White).

Kid Rock reveals how the White House dinner with President Trump, Bill Maher, and Dana White went last night. pic.twitter.com/jvY6tfFqC4

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) April 1, 2025

"It could not have been better. Everyone was so surprised, so pleasant.... We talked about things we had in common — ending wokeness, securing the border.... It blew my mind. I was very proud.""

Kid says he was "shocked" that Maher — for all his big contributions to Democratic candidates — had never been to the White House. And Trump was "so gracious — he took us up to the private residence, we saw the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom."

What did Kid Rock wear?

😂 pic.twitter.com/gBcA9SLl1a

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2025

"This is America showing itself because it was never in you in the first place. So why am I upset that you're upending something..."

"... that was never in you in the first place? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upset. We definitely should be upset. But why are we-- we can't be upset at people that it was never in them in the first place to even care about somebody else."

Said a black woman, heard in episode 857 of "This American Life," "Museum of Now."

She is commenting on the removal of the 2-block-long, 50-foot-tall words, "Black Lives Matter," that had been set in concrete in a street near the White House.

Prompted by the question, "Is this more honest, actually, that they actually are ripping this up?," we hear her struggling in real time to understand why the de-installation of the motto wasn't upsetting her or wasn't upsetting her that much.

One might say the original installation was propaganda and pandering. Jackhammering it out of there said something accidental and authentic.

"Would the American public stand for [Trump using a tricky path to a third term]?"

"It would obviously be an attempt to technically circumvent the prohibitions of the 22nd Amendment. But you know that's what lawyers do all the time. Democrats and Republicans. You always try to find loopholes in in the law. Religious authorities do that. Secular authorities do that. Certainly,  constitutional lawyers do that all the time. For example, when the Supreme Court was about to write its decision saying you couldn't use race-specific affirmative action to give benefit to black applicants over white applicants, Larry Tribe issued a bunch of tweets and stuff figuring out how to circumvent that, how to get around that.... Would the American public stand for it if they felt that, yeah, we'd like Trump, yeah, we'd vote for him, we think he's probably the best president, but you know the framers of the 22nd amendment, when they said you can't be elected to the third term, I think they really meant you can't serve the third term but they didn't say it but they didn't say it um so it depends what is is and it depends what elect it is, and these are very very technical arguments but, hey, I'm a constitutional lawyer, I'm a law professor.... " 

"Museums, monuments, and public institutions should be spaces where these stories are held with care, not suppressed for political convenience."

"When we interrogate systems of power and challenge historical narratives that center whiteness and colonial dominance, we do not divide, we restore balance."

Said Nicholas Galanin, a sculptor of "Indigenous heritage" who produced a work called "The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole)" ("a wooden totem disappearing into floral wallpaper" (image here)).

From "Taking Aim at Smithsonian, Trump Wades Into Race and Biology/His executive order faulted an exhibit which 'promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct,' a widely held position in the scientific community'" (NYT).

What are you holding with care and not suppressing? What are you interrogating and centering?

Was sculpture disappearing into the floral wallpaper of academic jargon?

"Musk went on to hand out oversized novelty checks to two winners for a million dollars each... One of those just happened to be the chairman of the Wisconsin College Republicans."

I'm listening to the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Is Elon Musk Buying Today’s Election in Wisconsin?"

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Blue-eyed and porcelain-faced, and with an acting style that initially veered from earnest to wooden..."

"... Mr. Chamberlain was rarely a critical favorite as a younger man. People magazine once summed up his reputation as an actor: 'pretty — and passionless.' Over the years, and especially toward the end of his career, he more than amply corrected that impression by tackling Hamlet and other Shakespearean parts on the English stage and embraced characters with a dark, even cruel edge. As a sign of his range, he grew a beard and wielded a samurai sword for 'Shogun' (1980), and playing a hunky but tormented Catholic priest wrestling with illicit love in 'The Thorn Birds' (1983), one of the most-watched miniseries of all time."

From "Richard Chamberlain, TV heartthrob and ‘king of the miniseries,’ dies at 90/He starred on the popular 1960s medical drama 'Dr. Kildare' and later in the miniseries 'Shogun' and 'The Thorn Birds'" (WaPo)(free-access link).

I remember arguing with my sister about who was better, Dr. Kildare or Ben Casey. She was for Dr. Kildare. Ben Casey (Vince Edwards) died 30 years ago, and now Dr. Kildare has joined him in that great hospital in the sky.

"There’s this saying that Biden, and then Harris, both repeated... 'building a middle class from the bottom up and the middle out.' What the hell does that mean?"

"So the first thing is there’s this kind of consultant language that just needs to go away. That was always annoying to people. But when your opponent, Donald Trump, is clearly not on any consultant-speak, it just makes it more glaring that you seem like the typical politicians."

Said Ben Rhodes, who's recommending "authenticity." He's quoted in "Obama’s Not Going to Save Democrats, but This Might/Michelle Cottle and Ben Rhodes on what Democrats misunderstand about authenticity" (NYT).

"At one point, Le Pen whispered: 'Incredible.' She then abruptly left without warning, before her sentence had been handed down."

From "Marine Le Pen barred from running for French presidency in 2027/Far-right leader found guilty of embezzlement of European funds and immediately barred from running for office" (The Guardian).

What kind of "embezzlement" was this? Is it anything like what Elon Musk and DOGE are finding in the United States?

"I have a tendency to do things that scare me, just for the sake of it. I've done skydiving, parachuting; I rode a motorcycle across India aged 63."

"I've also driv[en] semi trucks for a living, hauling 53 foot containers across the country. One day, parked at a huge truck stop in Texas, I got it into my head that it wasn't fair that I, a burly man in his sixties, could no longer skip like I did when I was seven. I asked myself why the case might be, and of course it was one of self consciousness. Had I been with my wife or a friend we could certainly do it. We'd be two adults playing like kids for a lark. But do it alone?"

That's the top comment on "Is Skipping Really a Good Workout? It feels like play. Here’s what fitness experts say about using the activity as a training tool" (NYT).

"Argentinian President Javier Milei has ordered the release of documents related to Nazis who fled to Argentina after World War II."

"These documents have sparked discussions and claims on social media that Adolf Hitler escaped to Argentina and lived there until the mid-1960s. The claims suggest that Hitler may have been aided by the United States and its allies, and that he fathered two children during his time in Argentina. However, these assertions remain speculative and are subject to ongoing debate and scrutiny regarding their historical accuracy."

Says the summary of a trending topic — "Milei Releases Documents on Nazis in Argentina" — on X.

"I'm not worried about whether I would be protected or not at said institution. I'm, you know, Privileged White Woman..."

Tim Walz’s daughter announced that she was accepted into a graduate school but has decided not to attend, stating that as a “privileged white woman,” she does not want to support institutions that fail to protect student protesters. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/F995YVHPrl

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) March 30, 2025

Nothing more privileged than choosing to do nothing. She's just doing nothing for a year. But that's okay. She's "not really in a rush."

I wonder which institution "said institution" was. It would help in understanding how much of a sacrifice this is. In some cases, an ambitious person, who can afford to take a year off, could do things to bolster her credentials and gain access to a more prestigious school. Why, this public declining of an offer is itself a credential! Especially in some fields... so I have to wonder what she majored in, undergrad. Sociology? I looked it up. It was indeed sociology! And a minor in women’s gender and sexuality studies. 

So, great viral video. Great audition tape. 

I remember when feminism involved seeing woman as the victim, but now we see young women contemptuous of that viewpoint and not worried about whether I would be protected. 

"The American people would have been disenfranchised if the machine represented by the Kamala puppet had won."

Asserts Elon Musk:

Yes, it is utterly insane.

The American people would have been disenfranchised if the machine represented by the Kamala puppet had won.

Thankfully, we have President Trump. https://t.co/DMQQlKkP9a

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2025