Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.
June 29, 2025
Sunrise — 5:06, 5:45, 5:47.
Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.
"Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, announced on Sunday that he would not seek re-election next year, a day after President Trump threatened to back a primary challenger against him..."
"... because Mr. Tillis had said he was opposed to the bill carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda.... The president’s allies celebrated Mr. Tillis’ announcement as more proof of Mr. Trump’s political strength. 'Don’t Cross Trump,' Jason Miller, who served as a top adviser for the president’s re-election campaign, wrote on social media. 'The voters gave him a mandate to implement a specific agenda, and they want everyone to get behind his efforts!'... Mr. Tillis in his statement blamed the lack of any middle ground in Congress on both political parties, pointing to the recent departures of Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, without naming them. 'When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer,' he said. 'But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize and even censure them.'"
The NYT reports.
The NYT reports.
"Several Native influencers, performers, and academics took to social media this week to criticize Beyoncé or decry the shirt’s language as anti-Indigenous."
"'Do you think Beyoncé will apologize (or acknowledge) the shirt?' indigenous.tv, an Indigenous news and culture Instagram account with more than 130,000 followers, asked in a post Thursday. Many of her critics, as well as fans, agree. A flood of social media posts called out the pop star for the historic framing on the shirt...."
From "Fans criticize Beyoncé for shirt calling Native Americans 'the enemies of peace'" (AP).
What shirt? It was a T-shirt depicting the Buffalo Soldiers that stated that "their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries."
From "Fans criticize Beyoncé for shirt calling Native Americans 'the enemies of peace'" (AP).
What shirt? It was a T-shirt depicting the Buffalo Soldiers that stated that "their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries."
ADDED: The only Indians mentioned by the shirt are "warring Indians," so by definition they are against peace. If there were some Indians who were pro-peace, the shirt has nothing to say about them. I'm not seeing the NRA complaining about "murderous gunmen" or Mexicans complaining about "Mexican revolutionaries."
"Morgan Wallen, baby!"/"From tailgates to patio parties the streets around Camp Randall were buzzing. Downtown Madison transformed into a party well before the gates opened."
"Bars were shoulder-to-shoulder, lines snaked outside of Jimmy John's, and parking spots went for as high as $100...."
Yes, the Morgan Wallen people were out in abundance yesterday, and there's a second concert tonight. This is my neighborhood, where I remember, long ago, listening to Pink Floyd wafting over from Camp Randall.
I hadn't realized it's been 28 years since there's been a concert in the football stadium. Nice. The crowd seems to have included lots of people from out of town. So many women in short shorts and cowboy boots. We talked to a couple who'd come in from Iowa for the big concert. Me, I'd never heard of Morgan Wallen, but what do I know? I found out he's the biggest star. I hope he and everyone else enjoy Madison.
If you watch the video, keep an eye out for the children selling lemonade. The reporter asks each of them what they'll do with the money, and you may be surprised at what they say.
"Fearful of Mamdani, with his calls for free buses, free child care, city-owned grocery stores, and a rent freeze, all paid for by tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, the city’s one percent..."
"... tried to map out how to respond. There may not be much they can do. All the money in the world didn’t save Cuomo from being smoked in the primary by someone who is just a few years away from a nascent career in rap music. If both Cuomo and Adams and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa run, as they all say they will, the anti-Mamdani vote will also be split. Adams has already signaled he is willing to go places Cuomo was not by calling Mamdani an antisemite and mocking his youthful campaign volunteers as outsiders who are gentrifying the neighborhoods of his working-class base. Unsure how to proceed in the general election, the city’s C-suites are bracing for a Mayor Mamdani...."
From "Zohran Mamdani on Why He Won/He beat Andrew Cuomo and the elite by upending how the city’s politics was supposed to work" (NY Magazine).
"There may not be much they can do"... because consider what they've already done. As Ezra Klein says in his new podcast episode, "Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics" (Podscribe): "Andrew Cuomo ran a [primary] campaign that was based on a tried and true strategy of buying attention. He had this gigantic super PAC with tens of millions of dollars purchasing all the advertising money can buy absolutely dominating airwaves with negative ads about Zoran Mamdan." We hear Cuomo's ad: "His own words, Zoran. Mamdani wants to defund the police. Zoran Mamdani is a 33-year-old dangerously inexperienced legislator who's passed just three bills. Zoran Mamdani, a risk New York can't afford. Paid for by Fix the City."
From "Zohran Mamdani on Why He Won/He beat Andrew Cuomo and the elite by upending how the city’s politics was supposed to work" (NY Magazine).
That didn't work in the primary.
June 28, 2025
Sunrise — 5:19, 5:42.
"People called her impulsive. Reckless. Even other rescuers — people who should’ve stood beside her — joined the mob.... The rescue world cannot keep cannibalizing its own."
Said a statement from KJ Farms Animal Rescue, quoted in "Mikayla Raines, Who Rescued Foxes and Other Animals, Is Dead at 30/She founded Save a Fox Rescue to care for foxes that had been abandoned or bred for their pelts on fur farms. She gained millions of social media followers along the way" (NYT).
We're told "Her husband, Ethan Frankcamp, said the cause of death was suicide."
We're told "Her husband, Ethan Frankcamp, said the cause of death was suicide."
"Mr. Mamdani’s father recalled that a teacher in Cape Town had once reported Zohran for a surprising answer to the question of what color he was."
"While the other children in the class said white, Black or colored (a term used in South Africa for people of mixed race), Zohran answered 'mustard.' 'I found it most touching,' his father recalled."
From "The Parents Who Helped Shape Zohran Mamdani’s Politics/Zohran Mamdani’s parents, a filmmaker and a professor, gave him the foundation for his run for mayor of New York. But their own political views may open him up to attacks" (NYT).
I didn't realize until I read this article that the "filmmaker mother" — big deal, I thought — made some highly regarded movies, "Mississippi Masala" and "Monsoon Wedding."
From "The Parents Who Helped Shape Zohran Mamdani’s Politics/Zohran Mamdani’s parents, a filmmaker and a professor, gave him the foundation for his run for mayor of New York. But their own political views may open him up to attacks" (NYT).
I didn't realize until I read this article that the "filmmaker mother" — big deal, I thought — made some highly regarded movies, "Mississippi Masala" and "Monsoon Wedding."
He wasn't complaining. He was cogently critiquing.
I'm reading "Donald Trump’s latest Nobel peace prize effort? DRC and Rwanda/Foreign ministers from the feuding east African nations joined the president on Friday after he complained last week that he would not receive an award" (London Times).
What a misreading! Trump is vindicated when he doesn't win the prize, especially as he racks up more achievements.
And headlines like that one also vindicate him, by the way.
What a misreading! Trump is vindicated when he doesn't win the prize, especially as he racks up more achievements.
And headlines like that one also vindicate him, by the way.
How about an article that's not about his imagined effort to win the prize but on his ostensible effort to end a war? Isn't "war" the right word? Or does the London Times regard wars between African countries as "feuding"?
As Trump described it:
One reason to say Trump didn't "obliterate" Iran's nuclear program is that the uranium is still there, even if under 200 meters of collapsed mountain.
They could mine that uranium. Is that what the "anti-obliterationists" might mean?
If that's their point, let them come out and say it clearly. Those arguing that "obliteration" did, indeed, occur would have to agree, right? Not that I think we might all just finally agree on the facts. People are so disagreeable these days.
If that's their point, let them come out and say it clearly. Those arguing that "obliteration" did, indeed, occur would have to agree, right? Not that I think we might all just finally agree on the facts. People are so disagreeable these days.
I can't bring myself to read "Obfuscating on Obliterating" the new Maureen Dowd column, but I did search the page for the word "uranium." It wasn't there. Is she obfuscating? I'm willing to bet that the column is about somebody else obfuscating.
I did my elaborate blog post on the word "obliterate" 3 days ago, and I'm not going to do that again. I did take the trouble to coin the word "anti-obliterationist" (The anti-obliterationists are annoying me).
And I considered doing a post about the word "obfuscate." I'm not going to do that, but looking for the word in my archive, I see that back in 2007, I wrote a post called "Words that sound dirty but aren't": "Here's a list.... Here's an even longer list. 'Obfuscate.' Man, I say that in class all the time (when talking about the Supreme Court)...."
"A stunning 51% of Hispanic, naturalized US citizens voted for Trump over Harris, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2024 election post-mortem."
"Trump, who on the campaign trail pledged to crackdown on illegal immigration and shore up the southern border, bested Harris among foreign-born Hispanics by 3 percentage points and performed 12 points better within the demographic than he did in 2020.... The Pew Research Center analysis... surveyed almost 9,000 voters in the weeks after the 2024 election.... The president carried 15% of Black voters (up from 8% in 2020), 40% of Asian voters (up from 30% in 2020) and maintained the same 55% support from white voters he received four years earlier...."
From "Trump won more than half of foreign-born Hispanics — still would have beaten Harris if every eligible person voted in 2024 election: analysis" (NY Post).
From "Trump won more than half of foreign-born Hispanics — still would have beaten Harris if every eligible person voted in 2024 election: analysis" (NY Post).
"'I thought it was a great photo opportunity.' But the shutter-worthy sight quickly turned tragic when one of the bison stepped into a small part of the basin..."
"... then tried hopping out. Within a matter of seconds, the beast began teetering at the edge of the Grand Prismatic Spring — the largest hot spring in the entire park — and then fell in."
"I was struck by conservative Instagrammer Arynne Wexler’s description of liberal women as 'androgynous pixie haircut unbathed Marxist freaks in polycules.'"
"Bravo on the clever turn of phrase, Miss Wexler. Impressive use of your Ivy League education to bash polycules.... Would Wexler prefer cheating as an alternative to polyamory? Wexler, per The Post, would delete her Instagram slurs about polyamorists, the WNBA ('welfare for tall lesbians') and other targets if only she could find a husband and kids.... Let’s stop othering and demonizing relationships that are based on consent, communication and affection. Fear, loathing and misinformation aren’t a route to happiness for anyone."
Natalie Davis, who runs the online publication Polyamory Today, writes in a letter to the Washington Post.
Natalie Davis, who runs the online publication Polyamory Today, writes in a letter to the Washington Post.
Davis is responding to the article "MAGA and the single girl/What do the young women of the modern right want? It’s complicated."
Wexler is just one person who's described in the article, which tells us: "She runs a popular Instagram account where she mocks Gen Z college degrees as 'pescatarian arts with a concentration on hating white people' and calls the WNBA 'welfare for tall lesbians' — but she’d delete her account tomorrow if she could trade it in for a husband and kids."
Don't get me started on my musings about what "pescatarian arts" is supposed to mean. Both Grok and Meade resisted the nonliteral interpretation....
"'Believe her,' Agnifilo beseeched the jurors in his closing arguments for Combs’s defense. 'When she says to you that domestic violence is the issue, I’m asking you to believe her.'"
"This has been a pillar of the defense’s strategy: that Combs has taken responsibility for domestic violence but is not guilty of the charges he faces."
From "Diddy and Cassie a ‘modern love story,’ defense says in closing arguments/Sean 'Diddy' Combs’s defense team called the sex-trafficking case against him 'badly, badly exaggerated' as the trial nears its conclusion" (WaPo).
From "Diddy and Cassie a ‘modern love story,’ defense says in closing arguments/Sean 'Diddy' Combs’s defense team called the sex-trafficking case against him 'badly, badly exaggerated' as the trial nears its conclusion" (WaPo).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
