BESSENT: It might not be next year. Might not be in 4 years. But down the road this fight for the Arctic is real. We would keep our NATO guarantees. And if there were an attack on Greenland from Russia, from some other area, we would get dragged in. So better now, peace through strength, make it part of the United States.... The Europeans project weakness. The U.S. projects strength....
January 18, 2026
"Mr. Trump does not attempt to hide his use of law enforcement powers for vengeance. He glories in it...."
"His usurpation of law enforcement power threatens us all.... His move to control investigation and prosecution from the White House portends an America where the state uses force to promote the political interests of its leaders, rather than uphold the laws passed by our representatives. One year into his second term, America risks losing a central feature of our democracy: that we are a country ruled by laws, not by one man.... The Justice Department was hardly perfect before Mr. Trump took the oath of office a year ago. Still, between Richard Nixon’s resignation in disgrace and Mr. Trump’s second term, the department under both political parties took steps to remain independent from the White House so that Americans could have confidence that federal law enforcement was nonpartisan. If the government investigated somebody — or decided not to — the reasonable assumption was that it was on the merits. That assumption is in tatters.... The Minnesota fraud is real, and the people who perpetrated it deserve to face charges.... But Mr. Trump’s interest in fraud is selective...."
Writes The Editorial Board of The New York Times, in "For Trump, Justice Means Vengeance."
"Now, JD, why don't you give us an update.... while you're talking, I'm just gonna sort of walk around in the background and look out windows...."
Says SNL Trump (at 2:00):The windows bit references this real-life Trump incident:
January 17, 2026
"One day, he is a man who loves his wife and has just bought a terrifically expensive mattress for their bed."
"The next he tells her, his eyes narrowing into a shape she had never seen before: 'I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life but I don’t.' He tells her she can have everything, including custody of the children. 'I don’t want it,' he says. 'I don’t want any of it.'"
Now, I clicked on that link because the headline bugged me. I keep seeing these sudden-collapse headlines. Articles are always offering to pinpoint the moment when things changed. There's one on the front page of The London Times right now: "The moment Landman’s teenage blonde changed American TV." It's annoying me. They think we're manipulable by our belief in the magic moment.
But I'm blogging because of the mattress, the "terrifically expensive mattress." I think I've blogged about that mattress: "[T]he most preposterously priced mattress, a king-size Grande Vivius, costs $539,000...." I've made a new tag, "mattress," and added it retrospectively, which is a much bigger task than you might think. There are so many posts about someone known as "mattress girl" and I've repeatedly blogged about the line "it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine."
But really, if you were the stay-at-home wife to a rich man, would the purchase of a terrifically expensive mattress make you think he is more likely to stay or less likely to stay? He might want to cushion your fall, to pacify and lull you. What is the meaning of a mattress?
AND: Maybe the mattress was the tipping point. That mattress was exactly what made him see that the life they'd formed together was her vision of the good, and he couldn't relate to it at all. She wanted grand material things and he didn't want any of it. You don't need me, you have the mattress.
Have you experienced this "Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right" or is the NYT pushing it at us to foment contempt for conservatives?
I'm reading "After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right/Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal" by Clyde McGrady.
I hadn't seen this term, and I read all sorts of things every day, so that makes me think this term isn't really a thing... though I've certainly noticed that people of the right are passing around a lot of videos of highly emotional left-wing white women.
But then I asked Meade, and he had heard the term and it seems to be catching on.
Needless to say, I don't like the term. I don't like expressions of contempt and I don't like commentators trading on the idea that women are over-emotional. I also don't like freaking out and yelling in public (or at home), but you can say just that, without contributing to sex-based hatred.
Despite that NYT headline, McGrady's column isn't really about the term AWFUL. It's more about the phenomenon of going after activist liberal white women:
"What's the original version of the adage 'Friends don't let friends [blank]'? Is it about drunk driving? is it 'vote Republican'? What's the first one and where did it go from there?"
Just a random A.I. prompt of mine. That came up this morning.
Yesterday's equivalent was: "What was that hippie poster that was mostly text and included something like and if we find each other it will be beautiful?"
On Thursday, my idle musings got me to: "What is the old waltz most associated with ice skating?"
Without A.I., things like this would float along, fermenting, festering, and maybe one day you'd happen to run into the answer and think aha! I've been wondering about that for the longest time. Now, you can get the answer immediately, and it doesn't amount to much other than that I've destroyed the groundwork for what might have been a delightful aha moment somewhere done the road.
"There is no evidence that Gladis and her pod are attacking humans or that they intend to harm people at all."
"In fact, wild orcas have never been seen treating people as prey. They do, however, have a thing for 'fads,' where they take up behaviour that has no obvious benefit. One famous example involved a female in the Pacific northwest who, in 1987, was seen wearing a dead salmon on her head. The trend spread. Other orcas across Puget Sound were soon spotted with their own 'salmon hats.' And then, as abruptly and as mysteriously as it started, the fashion fizzled out. Other orcas have been seen draping kelp over their backs or heads.... To scientists, the behaviour with the boat rudders looks similar. After wrenching one free, Gladis and her companions tend to bat it around for a while, then lose interest and swim off.... One [researcher] believes the orcas see the yachts, with their long detachable rudders, as 'giant toy dispensers.'"
From "Orcas blamed for yacht attacks are speaking their own language/Scientists studying killer whales linked to hundreds of encounters with boats near Gibraltar have discovered that the pod communicates using a unique dialect" (London Times).
From "Orcas blamed for yacht attacks are speaking their own language/Scientists studying killer whales linked to hundreds of encounters with boats near Gibraltar have discovered that the pod communicates using a unique dialect" (London Times).
"President Trump is, Joe Manchin believes, the 'most charming person in the world.'"
"'I wish that people could see that part of him,' the former Democratic senator told The Times. 'And I wish he could show more of that compassion. He’s a tremendous host and he talks to you and he listens to you and he engages with you. He might do whatever he wants, but he still engages.'"
Trump embraces the title "King." Either he's laughing in the face of the "No Kings" crowd or he's forgotten about them altogether.
That's at Truth Social.
What's the context? I had to look it up. I found "Trump threatens tariffs to force support for US control of Greenland/Trump's threat marked another escalation of his campaign to control the island, which is a territory of US ally Denmark" (USA Today), which reports on a health policy event at the White House yesterday, where Trump "trumpeted how the threat of tariffs forced other developed countries to accept higher drug prices so U.S. prices could come down."
Trump then added that he might use tariffs to get what he wants about Greenland. He said: "I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland because we need Greenland for national security."
And then he praised himself more generally, declaring: "I’m the tariff king and the tariff king has done a great job."
UPDATE: "Trump Announces 10 Percent Tariff on European Countries in Standoff Over Greenland/The president escalated his drive to take charge of the Danish territory, targeting Denmark and seven other nations aligned with it" (NYT):
Denmark, which oversees Greenland, will be hit with a 10 percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States beginning on Feb. 1, he wrote in a social media post, along with Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland. If they don’t relent, he added, the tariff rate will increase to 25 percent on June 1, “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
Yikes.
January 16, 2026
"Does he think westerners are softer? 'Much, much! And getting weaker and weaker. We say in China it’s hard for three generations of a family to be wealthy.'"
"'Because the third, they don’t even know what money means. It’s automatically in their accounts. So people become … a designer.' He laughs. 'China became strong because people work hard with no holidays. Not just eight hours, but ten, twelve hours. That’s how they bring their children to your British schools, Cambridge and Oxford.' The West, he says, cannot take tuition fees from China and then moan when it tries to restrict academic freedom or complain about Chinese spying 'because you’ve become the underdog. You cannot compete with China, so you blame it.'"
"It wasn’t long ago that casual contempt for white women was the domain of the left, at least that part of the left that took books like 'White Fragility' seriously."
"So it’s striking how easily conservatives, who’ve been stewing over insults to white people for at least five years, have singled out a group of white women as the enemy. But it also makes sense, because everyone hates an apostate. In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets. Fox News’s Will Cain described a 'weird kind of smugness' in the way 'some of these liberal white women interact with authority.' For MAGA, ICE’s eagerness to put women in their place might be a feature, not a bug."
Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women" (NYT).
Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women" (NYT).
There's a link on "casual contempt for white women." It goes to a 2020 BBC article about the mythic figure known as Karen — "What exactly is a 'Karen' and where did the meme come from?"Contempt toward women is pervasive throughout the world and throughout history, but it can also be a special left-or-right problem happening at particular times and in particular places. Social media keeps feeding me videos of women acting hyper-privileged and oblivious of the risk or screaming and losing her mind over practically nothing.
"Brendan Liaw was kind of joking when he agreed he was a professional stay-at-home son during his appearance on 'Jeopardy!' in May...."
"'I figured, why not have some fun with it?' he said. 'Better to be a "stay-at-home son" than "unemployed" or "schmuck" or "lazy guy."' He certainly wasn’t expecting to set off a media moment of stories and think pieces on so-called 'trad sons' — adult men who embrace the lifestyle of living with their parents."
"'I’m sort of the origin of all this discourse,' [Brendan] Liaw, 28, said. He was speaking from an apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.... After his 'Jeopardy!' appearance — during which he won almost $60,000 across four games — several media outlets, including Vanity Fair, People and the Wall Street Journal published stories about a rise in 'trad sons' or 'hub-sons.'"
From "Stay-at-home sons are here — and they’re not going anywhere
Why some young men are finding happiness in their parents’ homes" (WaPo)(gift link).
"'I’m sort of the origin of all this discourse,' [Brendan] Liaw, 28, said. He was speaking from an apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.... After his 'Jeopardy!' appearance — during which he won almost $60,000 across four games — several media outlets, including Vanity Fair, People and the Wall Street Journal published stories about a rise in 'trad sons' or 'hub-sons.'"
"I’m raging and sobbing simultaneously"/"This makes me weep. What are we?"
"I haven’t heave-sobbed like this in a long time. Dang, that hit HARD"/"Well this hit home. Minnesota girl here."
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