At the Sunflower Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Louisiana man dies during underwater proposal in Tanzania."

The NY Post reports — with the video of the man swimming up to the bedroom window and holding a marry-me note up to it and showing a ring.

“I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you,” the note read. “BUT . . . everything I love about you I love more EVERY DAY! Will you please be my WIFE? Marry me??”

That's the note. You see him swim away, and — as the woman tells the story on Facebook — he "never emerged from those depths."

It's not clear how the man died.

"'To learn something new,' the wise explorer John Burroughs noted, 'take the path that you took yesterday.' A knowing friend in New York sent me that line..."

"... when he heard that I’d spent 26 years in the same anonymous suburb in western Japan, most of that time traveling no farther than my size 8 feet can carry me.... I never dreamed that I’d come to find delight in everything that is everyday and seemingly without interest in my faraway neighborhood, nothing special.... It’s the end of things, Japan has taught me, that gives them their savor and their beauty. And it’s the fact that my wife — and I — are always changing, even as we’re shedding leaves and hair, that confers an urgency on my feelings toward her.... Every year, autumn sings the same tune, but to a different audience. My first year in Japan, I wrote a book about my enraptured discovery of a love, a life and a culture that I hoped would be mine forever. My publishers brought out my celebration of springtime romance in autumn. Now, 28 years on, I’m more enamored of the fall, if only because it has spring inside it, and memories, and the acute awareness that almost nothing lasts forever. Every day in autumn — a cyclical sense of things reminds us — brings us a little bit closer to the spring."

From "The Beauty of the Ordinary/We treasure autumn days as reminders of everything we must not take for granted" by Pico Iyer (in the NYT). If you hesitate to click through, know that there's a fantastic gently animated illustration of a fallen leaf (by Angie Wang). Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, England and is of Indian ancestry. He's written novels and books about his extensive travels. But since 1992, he's lived in Nara, Japan. From his Wikipedia page:

Having grown up a part of — and apart from — English, American and Indian cultures, he became one of the first writers to take the international airport itself as his subject, along with the associated jet lag, displacement and cultural minglings.... Most of his books have been about trying to see from within some society or way of life — revolutionary Cuba, Sufism, Buddhist Kyoto, even global disorientation — but from the larger perspective an outsider can sometimes bring....

"Now, this rising generation of autistic adults is joining others in the movement to change autism discussions that, they say, have historically been 'about us, without us.'"

"More and more, they are influencing policies, leading protests against misleading anti-vaccine messages and the marketing of quack treatments, pushing for fair representation in media coverage, movies and TV shows, such as 'Sesame Street,' and helping to reshape language and outdated opinions about what autism really means. (For example, many self-advocates ask to be called 'autistic people' rather than 'people with autism' because the latter implies a disability.) More and more autistic people, such as 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg, are taking pride in their identities. This month, she called autism her 'superpower.'... [Self-advocates object to teaching] autistic people to mimic neurotypical behaviors that are not natural to them. [Jillian Parramore, an autistic person in California] said providers would come into her preschool class to teach her how to 'walk and talk and breathe like a human — one that they understood to be human.' Parramore, who did not fully speak until she was 10, said trainers would also force her to practice facial expressions in the mirror to convey emotions, saying, 'show me happy, show me sad, show me angry.' 'To this day, I get really freaked out when I see a mirror in public because I immediately want to go through the facial expressions,' she said. 'I’ve even learned to put on lipstick without a mirror because it’s too much for me.'"

From "How a ‘Sesame Street’ Muppet became embroiled in a controversy over autism/Autistic self-advocates are changing discussions that, they say, have historically been 'about us, without us'" (WaPo). Despite the headline, the article is not mostly about "Sesame Street." The comments at the link are fantastic, with some very articulate autistic people dominating. Example:

"They'll rue the day they made fun of these bad boys. Woe to those who make fun of the cargo shorts and then suddenly need some snacks, a multitool, a first-aid kit, or a Johnny Cash CD. Yeah, I've got all that stuff in here and more."

Said Brent Barden, quoted in "Family Gonna Be Sorry When They Want Some Trail Mix From Dad's Cargo Shorts They Just Made Fun Of" (in The Babylon Bee, which apparently has heard of my disparagement of it and decided to try to appeal to me by using my well-known "men in shorts" issue).

ADDED: "Yeah, I've got all that stuff in here and more." Care to rewrite that, Babylon Bee? It's a father, humorously addressing children, and you've unwittingly got him sort of threatening them with his genitalia! And that's right after he's talking about them getting into his pants to find something to eat. So ham-handed!

OH? You've got ham hands? Can I have a ham-hand sandwich, Dad?

HEY: A guy once did make a ham-hand sandwich of sorts...



WELL: That video sure made me laugh a lot. I'm ready to watch all videos by I Did a Thing. You know, there's no arguing with taste, especially in humor... and in bread gloves.

ALSO: "Mad respect for a man willing to strap a laundry basket to his back, put flippers on his hands, and get in a bathtub just to reenact a sea turtle getting a straw stuck in his nose and then slowly dying."

Trump goes big on the offense in the Ukraine story.

An hour ago:

This is the real and only story! pic.twitter.com/4z8eOcm6PA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2019

And (here and here):

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son, or they won’t get a very large amount of U.S. money, so they fabricate a.........story about me and a perfectly fine and routine conversation I had with the new President of the Ukraine. Nothing was said that was in any way wrong, but Biden’s demand, on the other hand, was a complete and total disaster. The Fake News knows this but doesn’t want to report!

Then, 18 minutes ago:

Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone “bust” on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it the Ukraine Witch Hunt, while at the same time trying to protect Sleepy Joe Biden. Will fail again!

"The coverage suggests Giuliani reached out to new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team this summer solely because he wanted to get dirt..."

"... on possible Trump 2020 challenger Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in that country. Politics or law could have been part of Giuliani’s motive, and neither would be illegal. But there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department. Giuliani didn’t initiate it.... So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy. Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it? According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years....."

Write John Solomon in "Missing piece to the Ukraine puzzle: State Department's overture to Rudy Giuliani" (at The Hill). I'm just seeing this now, after writing 2 posts quoting an article Solomon wrote last April (and prompted by the commenter minnesotafarmguy).

I've only quoted a part of "Missing piece..." — please read the whole thing. This story is complicated!

"In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees..."

"... sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. 'I said, "You’re not getting the billion." I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: "I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,"' Biden recalled telling Poroshenko. 'Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,' Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat."

From "Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived," an article in The Hill from last April.

That's something I quoted in my previous post, but I wanted to repeat it very conspicuously and say very clearly that I think the current Ukraine story is an effort to pressure Biden to get out of the way so this issue will die. Biden's candidacy puts Obama at risk!

ADDED: I googled Biden's threat quote and see it in several places in the last day. First, at Red State, "Stop The Tape! How Has Joe Biden’s Scandal Suddenly Become President Trump’s Scandal?":

While speaking to a group of foreign policy strategists, Biden boasted about threatening to hold back $1 billion in U.S. aid...  The Hill’s John Solomon reported in April that rather than pressuring Poroshenko for six hours, Biden had been pressuring him for “several months in late 2015 and early 2016.”...

[It is] reasonable to ask questions of Joe Biden starting with why did he try to get Shokin fired while he was investigating Burisma? Does he think it was appropriate for Hunter and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while [Joe Biden] served as point man for Ukraine policy? Did Biden know about the Burisma probe? (Of course he did.) And does he believe it was ethical of him to use his position to have the prosecutor fired?...

In National Review, there's this from Jim Geraghty — "What to Make of the Trump–Whistleblower Kerfuffle":

"Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents..."

"... implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia...."

From a 2-and-a-half-year-old article in Politico — "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire/Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton" — which was linked to last night by Instapundit.

ADDED: I created a new tag just now — "Trump and Ukraine" — and then I searched the archive to see where it might need to be added. That got me back to some things that I'd lost track of. I'll put these in reverse chronological order. After you read the first 3, you'll see that everything we're getting excited about these past few days was already basically there in the news last April/May. For me, this reinforces the suspicion I aired yesterday, that the real motivation for surfacing this story now is to push Biden out.

From May 11, 2019:

"Facing withering attacks accusing him of seeking foreign assistance for President Trump’s re-election campaign, Rudolph W. Giuliani announced on Friday night that he had canceled a trip to Kiev in which he planned to push the incoming Ukrainian government to press ahead with investigations that he hoped would benefit Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, explained that he felt like he was being 'set up,' and he blamed Democrats for trying to 'spin' the trip. 'They say I was meddling in the election — ridiculous — but that’s their spin,' he said."

The NYT reports.

From May 10, 2019:

“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do. There’s nothing illegal about it," said Giuliani. "Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking [Ukraine] to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."

From "Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump" (NYT).

What is Ukraine currently investigating that Giuliani wants to encourage? According to the NYT, it's "the origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election" and "the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch."

The investigations had been opened by Ukrainian prosecutors serving during the term of the country’s current president, Petro O. Poroshenko. He lost his re-election bid last month to Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer....

"Trudeau speaks with the bashfulness of a man who expects sympathy from a country that adores him as a father does his little boy."

"That’s fitting for the scion of a Quebecois dynasty and son of former prime minister, the late Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau. He didn’t do better because he didn’t 'know better,' and he didn’t know better because no one ever taught him. Justin Trudeau sounds a bit like the adult version of the notorious affluenza teen who drunkenly drove a Ford F-350 into more than 14 people and killed four, then had a psychologist testify that his permissive upbringing in a world of wealth had left him ignorant of the ramifications of his actions. You see, your Honor, he was never told 'no.' That Trudeau is a relatively liberal politician living in a relatively liberal country — one that markets itself as a haven of multiculturalism and tolerance and, in many ways, actually is — likely amplified the problem. He never learned a lesson because he was always getting gold stars for doing relatively liberal things...."

From "Justin Trudeau says his privilege made him do it" by Molly Roberts (in WaPo).

Roberts's main point is that even if privilege explains why you did something, it's not a reason to let you off the hook. Obviously, the "affluenza teen" (Ethan Couch) deserved to be held responsible for his crime, whether his "affluenza" explanation evoked sympathy for him or not. I believe the "affluenza" explanation made us think less of Couch.

But Couch stumbled into his notoriety. He didn't ask to be judged especially virtuous. He dulled himself with alcohol and had an accident, then did what he thought might work to minimize the consequences. He succeeded in winning a light sentence, and he's moved on to obscurity.

Trudeau sought and received elevation to the highest position in his country. How much did that involve presenting himself as an especially virtuous person? He's asking for continuing trust and admiration. His misdeeds didn't kill anybody, and they happened about 20 years ago. What, if anything, does he deserve now? I'd say it's an occasion for everyone to reflect on our tendency to see virtue in a nice-looking young person from a privileged family. We should not be so hurt and surprised that such a human being is not as wonderful as we indulgently allowed ourselves to feel.

One thing I like about Trump is that he never inspired such feelings and he rose to power without the force of the delusion that he was a special, golden, good boy.

At the No-Swimming Café...

... the sign says "no swimming," but you can perhaps find a way to swim metaphorically... as you talk about whatever you want.

Jordan Peterson has checked into rehab for his addiction to anti-anxiety medication.

The New York Post reports, drawing mainly from this video from Peterson's daughter:



"The situation is really sad. He looks like a lost puppy."

The Invocation.

"I am called to invoke the power of the true inebriated creator of the universe, drunken tolerator of all the lesser and more recent gods. May the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats."

He ends not with "amen" but "ramen."

"It turns out that creativity is actually among the least desirable traits in a partner for both males and females..."

"... at least according to a new study from researchers at the University of Swansea in the UK. The study, the largest test of its kind ever conducted, concluded that, on average, people are far more interested in kindness, beauty, and financial security in their potential mates.... The students were asked to gauge which of eight attributes they prioritized in a potential partner: kindness, humor, chastity, religiosity, physical attractiveness, financial prospects, a desire for children, and creativity.... For 'Eastern' and 'Western' participants alike, creativity was among the three least desirable traits. (The other two were chastity and religiosity.) Across the board, kindness was by far the most commonly picked option of the bunch. Men more highly favored physical attractiveness, while woman prized financial security...."

From Artnet News, which prompts me to click to the "related" article "New Study Reveals Artists Share Common Traits With Psychopaths/There may be a reason some artists are especially bold."

“Emotional disinhibition, in the form of psychopathic boldness, is actually integral to some creative personalities and functionally related to the creative process,” according to the study. “A creative field might not just shape a person into a more arrogant or dishonest personality, it might be actively selecting them, not for the sake of having disagreeable traits, but because such traits meaningfully co-vary with creativity itself.”

Got that? Now, please, go meaningfully co-vary with somebody before it's too late.

Possibly the most embarrassingly air-headed WaPo headline ever. Maybe we should just look away...

But here it is: "Frederick Douglass photos smashed stereotypes. Could Elizabeth Warren selfies do the same?"

Smashed stereotypes... God help us. This is an idea for a column that should have been considered for 5 to 10 seconds and laid to rest.

Some text, to give you the idea:

The two are separated by race, gender and more than 100 years of history that forged an America that would probably be unrecognizable to Douglass. Still, experts say, their use of photography collapses the distance: Douglass sat for scores of pictures to normalize the idea of black excellence and equality, and Warren’s thousands of selfies with supporters could do the same for a female president.

This is like some nitwit celeb saying that Hollywood is reminiscent of a slave plantation.

Morning in Madison.

"They called him 'Dr. Kevorkian.' A 22-page federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday painted a depraved picture of how Buck earned his grim sobriquet."

"Ten men told investigators that Buck had paid them to use drugs and dress up in skimpy underwear for his own sexual pleasure. Several of the men claimed they lost consciousness after Buck served them a drink, and some said they woke up to the sight of him injecting drugs into their arms against their will, according to the complaint.... Buck was arrested at his West Hollywood home Tuesday night, less than a week after a man fled his home fearing he was suffering a methamphetamine overdose... Buck tried to prevent him from getting medical attention, authorities said.... Investigators initially ruled [the 2017 death of a man named Gemmel Moore] to be accidental, but... [i]n a journal found among Moore’s possessions, the 26-year-old Texas man [had written] 'I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that... Ed Buck is the one to thank, he gave me my first injection of chrystal meth.'... One man... told investigators that he had never used methamphetamine before he heard that Buck was 'well-known for compensating male prostitutes with drugs and money,' according to the complaint. The victim agreed to take a 'small amount' of drugs at Buck’s behest but said Buck then emptied an entire syringe into his arm.... One man... said he injected himself with what Buck told him was methamphetamine....The drug rendered him immobile, the man told investigators, and he laid on the floor of Buck’s apartment for 6 to 7 hours. Buck grew frustrated and at one point wanted him to leave, the man said, but he couldn’t move.... Buck 'obtained a power saw from a closet, turned it on and approached' the man, the complaint says."

From "Democratic donor Ed Buck paid at least 10 men to use drugs for his own pleasure, prosecutors say" (L.A. Times).

There's some discussion in the article that Buck got away with these alleged activities because he was a big donor to the Democratic Party in a city dominated by Democrats, but I note that he was also a wealthy man paying for prostitutes (and sharing drugs in the process). How much attention is generally paid to rich people in L.A. who use prostitutes and drugs? Do the deaths make such a huge difference? Thousands die from overdosing on drugs every year in California. How much attention does L.A. generally pay to reports from prostitutes who say that part of what they agreed to do was to use drugs but the dosage turned out to be larger than what they agreed to?

Pete Buttigieg attacks LGBT media.

Prompted by my son John at Facebook, I'm reading "Buttigieg: 'I can't even read the LGBT media anymore'" (at NBC):

During a radio interview on Wednesday, SiriusXM host Clay Cane of “The Clay Cane Show” asked Buttigieg, who would be the first openly gay president if elected, about criticisms in “LGBT circles” that “more masculine-presenting men have more access,” posing the question, “How different would it be if you were quote unquote ‘more effeminate?’”

“It’s tough for me to know, right, because I just am what I am, and you know, there’s going to be a lot of that,” Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, responded. “That’s why I can’t even read the LGBT media anymore, because it’s all, ‘he's too gay,’ ‘not gay enough,’ ‘wrong kind of gay.’”

“All I know is life became a lot easier when I just started allowing myself to be myself, and I’ll let other people write up whether I’m ‘too this’ or ‘too that,’” he continued.

ADDED: That really was a fantastic question from Clay Cane. And, really, there is a larger question here. Masculinity and femininity are always being monitored and reacted to. That's always going on when we look at the various candidates, whether we admit it or not. It's impossible to know what really works best — i.e., who has the most "access" — but it's obviously not that the most masculine man or the most feminine woman has the greatest advantage. It's more of a mystery. Remember this scientific inquiry into the mystery?

This headline makes me laugh: "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?"

If you were genuinely worried about climate change — as opposed to fake worried or trying-to-look-like-a-good-person worried — you would go through with it. And I'm saying this as someone who was genuinely worried about global warming in 1984 when I chose to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I believed what I read and that included the idea that the southern United States was going to be unbearable in 10 years. I thought I was getting the jump on the inevitable migration. And now here I am, old and still observing the climate from my remote northern outpost, reading, "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?" at FiveThirtyEight.

Excerpt:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that the “Yooper” is a place you should move now....

The Yooper is a place?! To call the U.P. "The Yooper" just underscores your aversion to going anywhere near there. (A "Yooper" is a person who lives in the place they call the U.P.)

But despite the occasional trend story about coastal millennials moving to places that seem better positioned to ride out the ravages of climate change, there’s no real evidence that the Upper Peninsula is attracting new residents due to its climate prospects.....

That’s partly because real estate investing works at a different pace than climate change does.... The maps that show the Upper Peninsula winning against other parts of the country are forecasts of the year 2100. “But why does it matter that [the value of the land] will go up in 100 years?” [said a professor of economics]....

When people talk about the best place to move to avoid climate risks, he thinks they’re usually thinking about places that are currently too cold becoming, well, more like California and other parts of the country in which Americans are willing to take economic losses in order to enjoy today....

Live for today. Isn't that why we're having this climate change in the first place? These people who are "worried about climate change" are really basically just worried about today, and worrying about climate change is something that is done to try to look good today. And you'll be looking your best looking good looking worried in someplace that's warm today.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight has fixed its "Yooper" gaffe. The passage quoted above is replaced by:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that it is a place you should move now....

They haven't hidden the gaffe, so I give them credit for taking the hit openly:

CORRECTION (Sept. 20, 2019, 11:00 a.m.): A previous version of this article used the word “Yooper” to refer to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was an incorrect use of the word. The U.P. is the place. The Yoopers are the people.

"I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary campaign, and it’s clearly not my time."

Says Bill De Blasio, quoted in "Bill de Blasio Drops Out of Democratic Presidential Contest/Mr. de Blasio, the New York City mayor whose campaign was seen as a long shot and often described as quixotic, never gained traction." (NYT).

His candidacy never made any sense at all. The only thing I could ever come up with is that he was the tallest, and tall guys have an advantage. Other than that — nothing.

ADDED: Trump has fun with it:

Oh no, really big political news, perhaps the biggest story in years! Part time Mayor of New York City, @BilldeBlasio, who was polling at a solid ZERO but had tremendous room for growth, has shocking dropped out of the Presidential race. NYC is devastated, he’s coming home!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2019

"A potentially explosive complaint by a whistle-blower in the intelligence community said to involve President Trump emerged... While the allegation remains shrouded in mystery..."

"... it involves at least one instance of Mr. Trump making an unspecified commitment to a foreign leader and includes other actions.... At least part of the allegation deals with Ukraine, two people familiar with it said.... Though it is not clear how Ukraine fits into the allegation, questions have already emerged about Mr. Trump’s dealings with its government. In late July, he told the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that Ukraine could improve its reputation and its 'interaction' with the United States by investigating corruption, according to a Ukrainian government summary of the call. Some of Mr. Trump’s close allies were also urging the Ukrainian government to investigate matters that could hurt the president’s political rivals, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family...."

I'm trying to read this very confusing shrouded-in-mystery report in the New York Times, "Whistle-Blower Complaint Sets Off a Battle Involving Trump/The complaint, from a member of the intelligence community, remained opaque but involved at least one of the president’s communications with a foreign leader."

Is there some idea that this is the issue that will be used in the future against Biden and that it ought to come out now?

ADDED: Trump's tweeted reaction:

The Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News Media partners, headed up again by Little Adam Schiff, and batting Zero for 21 against me, are at it again! They think I may have had a “dicey” conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a “highly partisan” whistleblowers.. ....statement. Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation, that they would not have also come forward. Do you know the reason why they did not? Because there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!

"There is a road, no simple highway..."

"John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s fired national security adviser, harshly criticized Trump’s foreign policy on Wednesday at a private lunch..."

"... saying that inviting the Taliban to Camp David sent a 'terrible signal' and that it was 'disrespectful' to the victims of 9/11 because the Taliban had harbored al Qaeda. Bolton also said that any negotiations with North Korea and Iran were 'doomed to failure,' according to two attendees.... 'He ripped Trump, without using his name, several times,' said one attendee... Bolton also said more than once that Trump’s failure to respond to the Iranian attack on an American drone earlier this summer set the stage for the Islamic Republic’s aggression in recent months...."

Politico.

Canada jolted.

ADDED: Why are people referring to that makeup as "brownface"? It's as dark as any blackface I've seen. I know, he says it was an Aladdin costume, but doesn't that make it worse? He was overdarkening for the character he purported to play.

Fox News headline: "CNN's Don Lemon knocks Trump while praising Justin Trudeau's apology over brownface photo."

"I shouldn't have done that. I should have known better, but I didn't and I'm really sorry," Trudeau told reporters. "I take responsibility for my decision to do that. I shouldn't have done that. I should've known better. It was something that I didn't think was racist at the time but now I recognize that it was something racist to do and I'm deeply sorry."...

"Wow, a leader apologizing. It seems odd, doesn't it?" Lemon reacted. "Because we have one who doesn't.... I do have to say this before we go: think about it however you want to think about it. When someone apologizes- wow!... We don't often see that here, especially in a world leader who is saying 'I should've known better and I'm sorry.' You can feel about it however you want, but that, to me, that does mean a lot."

As if Don Lemon would honor an apology from Trump! Trump doesn't apologize because it wouldn't work. It would backfire. Trudeau seems to be apologizing because it's the only approach he can come up with. The question is whether apologies are going to be accepted, and who believes they'll be accepted equally, regardless of which side you're on vis a vis the the apologizer? It's like calls for civility. In present-day American political discourse, they're always about getting the other side to tone it down. That's why my tag for the discussion of civility is "civility bullshit." I feel the same way about calls for apologies (within present-day American political discourse). They're always bullshit.

"[I]n women, the same areas that tend to become active when viewing sexual imagery that neuroscientists have deemed pleasing also became active in response to photos of vomiting or feces."

"What scientists tend to regard as 'arousal' on brain scans could also be its opposite, or perhaps some combination of each."

From "What Can Brain Scans Tell Us About Sex?" (NYT)(noting a study that reported that "what happens in the brains of female study subjects when they look at sexual imagery is pretty much the same as what happens in the brains of their male counterparts").

Trump ruins everything!

From "California’s Luxury Dining Circuit: Delicious and Dull/The French Laundry, the Restaurant at Meadowood and SingleThread have much in common: amazing precision, sky-high prices and a sedating sort of predictability" (NYT):

The macaroni and cheese in the golden egg, served as part of the tasting menu at the French Laundry, was absurdly delicious. The short noodles, cut by hand, had a tender spring. They were bound in a light, melting cloud of Parmesan. The result was simple, built on the retro American dishes that the chef, Thomas Keller, once wittily reimagined as high culture and maxed out to total extravagance....

[T]he dishes, and the ways they were delivered, reminded me of what’s possible when both the kitchen and the wait staff are operating at the highest level: sustained indulgence in an atmosphere of total comfort. The servers brought the gold-rimmed dish sets out and placed them down in unison. After lifting the egg tops and revealing the macaroni, they rained down a messy shower of black truffles, half on the food and half on the table, filling the air with perfume.

It was a stunning production. But the oversize golden egg on a series of gold plates did seem archaic — and not just because the French Laundry has used this presentation, for various dishes, for years. In the Trump era, gold seems a bit too eager to assert its value.....

The second-highest-rated comment:

This might be the most depressing article I have read recently. The image of these uber wealthy couples sitting in silence waiting for course after course of beautifully crafted art posing as food only reinforces my belief that all the money in the world cannot buy class. Am I right about that, Donald?

If this is the most depressing article you've read recently, you ought to be thanking the President of the United States. I'm sure the NYT would serve bad news stories about Trump if they had them. Their reporters would bring that news out on gray-rimmed dish sets and place them down in unison each morning and rain down a messy shower of dark opinions filling your breakfast-table air with stench. But the supplier isn't cooperating, so your hunger for the depressing will be met with the news that some expensive restaurants are too boringly perfect. And the day before, the NYT served, "Women Poop...." What a world of starvation for badness!

Your little internet friend...

POV: Me trying to explain “Internet Friends” to my Southern Mom pic.twitter.com/MHTyrkQ5tm

— eco sister (@hiitaylorblake) September 17, 2019

"A 2004 survey of over 30,000 respondents by BabyCenter found that 38% of new mothers received a push present, and 55% of pregnant mothers wanted one..."

"... though fewer thought it was actually expected. About 40% of both groups said the baby itself was already a present and did not wish an additional reward. The popularity of push presents has been attributed in part to media coverage of celebrities receiving them. Examples include a 10 carat diamond ring given to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe by her husband Rodger after the 2011 birth of their son, a Bentley given to reality TV star Peggy Tanous of The Real Housewives of Orange County by her husband Micah after the 2007 birth of their daughter, and a diamond and sapphire necklace given to singer Mariah Carey by her husband Nick Cannon after the 2011 birth of their twins. The trend has generated a backlash...."

That's at "Push Present" (Wikipedia). I had to Google that after reading somebody on Twitter who said, "My wife just brought up a 'push present.' I had to google to find out what hell that is. This is our fourth kid. She can't start this now." The too-late-to-start-now argument is interesting. It made me think of another too-late-to-start-now argument: Every time it's your birthday, it marks the anniversary of what your mother did for you, going through pregnancy and childbirth, so you should be giving her a present.

By the way "push present" assumes the mother goes through labor and vaginal delivery, so it's the wrong term.  Whatever the woman goes through is a big deal, and she deserves to be honored for her contribution to the continuation of humanity, but often it's a Caesarean section, and naming the present after the "push" might feel quite wrong at a sensitive time. Plus, "push" sounds pushy and calls attention to the idea that the new mother might not want to do what she's just put herself in the position of needing to do.

ADDED: Here's a 2015 NYT article, "First Comes Baby, Then Comes Push Present?":

“They’re a very big thing in L.A.,” said Justin Lacob, 35, a new father who lives in Los Angeles. Although his wife didn’t expect a present, he said, “I’ve heard women complain about what they received.”...

Any gift for a new mother should have special meaning. “When she looks at it, it should remind her of the experience, of crossing over into motherhood,” said the New York City childbirth educator Patricia Rangel, who is curating a list of shopping ideas for her business website. (Ms. Rangel suggests an affordable piece of simple jewelry centered on the new baby, such as a birthstone, an engraved name or a charm in the shape of a peanut.)...

A peanut.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should...

I hate all these people. pic.twitter.com/7TvnK4YqT6

— GayP*triot (@AmericanHomocon) September 18, 2019

I want to be in the meeting where this idea was proposed pic.twitter.com/Bf5KpQF716

— Tariq Rauf (@tariqrauf) September 18, 2019

Who is Alex Trebek?

#Jeopardy taped their Tournament of Champions this week.

SPOILER ALERT:
.
.
.
.
Alex Trebek is an unstoppable machine of game show hosting. Not this time, cancer.

— James Holzhauer (@James_Holzhauer) September 19, 2019

"The Weight."

Lakeshore goldenrod.

This WaPo column has the title "Why baby boomers’ grandchildren will hate them" even though the word "hate" does not appear in the text.

Here's the text (by Stephen Stromberg).

A new Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll gauged how U.S. teenagers feel about climate change. Nearly all — 86 percent — believe in the near-unanimous conclusions of the scientific community. Fifty-seven percent of teens say climate change makes them feel afraid. Fifty-two percent feel angry. Forty-three percent feel helpless. Only 29 percent feel optimistic. Anger, fear, helplessness: These are the sorts of feelings so many of the nation’s recent leaders — and those who elected them — will increasingly elicit."...

[C]limate change, the greatest self-imposed long-term threat facing humanity, offers... clarity. Today’s youths will curse their forebears for failing to accept the truth.

"Curse" is as close as it gets to "hate."

Top-rated comment: "No! I'm sorry, but it is not 'baby boomers,' it is Republicans." It's a prediction about the future. When the children of today grow up, what will they say? The Democrats were fine but we hate the Republicans? If climate change turns out to be what the children of today are being told that's already making them feel angry, afraid, and helpless, they're going to say that no one did enough. The Democrats won't be off the hook just because they expressed more belief in the coming disaster and used the issue to excoriate their perennial political opponents. That will look like a sick joke!

"What do you confess to the plants in your life?"

Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

What do you confess to the plants in your life? pic.twitter.com/tEs3Vm8oU4

— Union Seminary (@UnionSeminary) September 17, 2019

"Trump Names Robert O’Brien, Hostage Mediator, as National Security Adviser."

The NYT reports.

Mr. Trump announced the selection [of the State Department’s chief hostage negotiator] shortly after saying he would also “substantially increase Sanctions” on Iran following weekend attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia that officials in Washington and the region have blamed on the Tehran government.

[O'Brien,] a longtime lawyer... impressed [Trump] with his work to extricate Americans detained by countries like North Korea and Turkey....

"The Arizona Democratic Party is planning to hold a vote this week to determine whether Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) should be censured."

Censure her? Why would they censure her?! The Hill reports:

Those seeking to censure Sinema point to her vote to confirm David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of the Interior, as well as her vote to confirm William Barr as Attorney General, the news outlet notes. Additionally, progressives in the Arizona Democratic Party cite Sinema’s resistance to joining fellow Democrats in trying to reinstate net neutrality rules...

Dan O’Neal, the state coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, told the news outlet that the censure is an effort to push Sinema back toward the left. “Here’s the thing: We really support Kyrsten Sinema... [b]ut the way she is voting is really disappointing. We want Democrats to vote like Democrats and not Republicans.”

Those aren't reasons to censure someone! There's no accusation that she's done something wrong, only that her political position is at odds with the rest of her party.

Why are Democrats having such a hard time just being normal? Trump is so abnormal that it would seem that he can be defeated by simple, boring normality. But that's not exciting enough, apparently, and Democrats have decided to go even further beyond the norm.

Why does Arizona have a Democratic Senator? Isn't it because she is a bit more like a Republican? From her Wikipedia page:

During the 2018 campaign Sinema refused to debate her competitor in the Democratic primary, Deedra Abboud, an attorney and community activist.... While Abboud said she would vote against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Sinema "said she wanted to delve deeper into Kavanaugh's writings and interview him personally before deciding"...

Journalist Jonathan Martin wrote in The New York Times in September 2018 that Sinema was running "one of the most moderate-sounding and cautious Senate campaigns this year, keeping the media at arms-length and avoiding controversial issues", and said her campaign was generally reluctant to bring up President Donald Trump....

"I WAS TOLD THIS NEVER HAPPENS: Self-defense via 'assault weapon'? Three masked teens open fire on Georgia homeowner — and don’t live to regret it."

Glenn Reynolds blogs this CNN story (via Ed Morrissey).

The barebones story from CNN:

The masked teens -- a 15-year-old and two 16-year-olds -- approached three residents around 4 a.m. Monday at the front yard of a home just outside Conyers and tried to rob them.... One of the would-be robbers took out a gun and fired shots at them before one of the residents returned fire, authorities said.

"The victims of the attempted robbery were all uninjured, but the three attempted robbery suspects were all shot during the exchange of gunfire and succumbed to their injuries, one on scene and two at a local hospital after being transported," the sheriff's department said in a news release....

"I heard a guy yelling for help. 'Help me, help me, I'm dying, I'm dying, help me, help me," [a neighbor] Brian Jenkins told the station. Another neighbor ran out to help after he heard what sounded like five shots from a handgun, he said.

"Then I heard somebody have an assault rifle," [a neighbor] Carlos Watson told WSB. "And it was a slew of shots that came out."...

Here at Meadhouse, we were just talking about the argument that no one needs an AR-15 to hunt — a subject I have nothing to say about — and what if anything the 2d Amendment has to do with hunting (as opposed to self-defense). This subject arose after I saw an SUV (here in Madison) with 2 bumper stickers: "Hike. Bike. Vote." and "Hunt. Fish. Vote." I'm not sure what political side that might be intended to support, but I like the individual sport and the individual politics of voting. Live your life, perform your civic duty, and be a good citizen of the community that results as all the other individuals do the same. That's what I thought, in my beautiful city, where the majority votes left-wing, as I drove home from seeing the sun rise....

"'I’m thinking, Only way I’m going to get rescued is self rescue... I knew where I was located there was no way they were going to be able to find me."

"In what one doctor has called an 'incredible story,' [Neil] Parker crawled for two days, hauling his broken leg [and using his broken wrist] over about two miles of rugged terrain, before he was spotted Tuesday local time by a rescue helicopter and airlifted to a nearby hospital. 'I’ve never heard of any such survival effort with two broken limbs,' Nicola Ward, an orthopedic surgeon who is treating Parker at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Queensland, said.... Without a personal locator beacon, Parker said his cellphone was his only means of contacting someone for help. But as he put away the phone after checking for service, he accidentally dropped it into the creek. That’s when Parker decided that he had to move if he was going to be found...."

From "A hiker’s leg ‘clean snapped in half.’ He crawled for two days to survive" (WaPo).

"Mr. Nadler has said repeatedly that his committee is engaged in an impeachment investigation — or, if you prefer, an impeachment inquiry."

"He insists the 'nomenclature' does not matter. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and her leadership team clearly disagree. They assiduously avoid the 'I' word, painting the committee’s work as garden-variety oversight. As a result, even Democratic lawmakers don’t seem to know whether they are engaged in an impeachment inquiry. Representative Pramila Jayapal has said 'yes.' Representative Jim Himes has said 'no.' Last week, Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, said 'no' — then backtracked, claimed he’d misheard the question and offered a non-answer instead...."

From "When Is Impeachment Not Impeachment?/When the speaker of the House thinks it is politically foolhardy" by the NYT The Editorial Board

Summer's end.

"There are many Lakota who praise the memorial.... But others argue that a mountain-size sculpture is a singularly ill-chosen tribute. When Crazy Horse was alive..."

"... he was known for his humility, which is considered a key virtue in Lakota culture. He never dressed elaborately or allowed his picture to be taken. (He is said to have responded, 'Would you steal my shadow, too?') Before he died, he asked his family to bury him in an unmarked grave. There’s also the problem of the location. The Black Hills are known, in the Lakota language, as He Sapa or Paha Sapa—names that are sometimes translated as 'the heart of everything that is.'... Nick Tilsen, an Oglala who runs an activism collective in Rapid City, told me that Crazy Horse was 'a man who fought his entire life' to protect the Black Hills. 'To literally blow up a mountain on these sacred lands feels like a massive insult to what he actually stood for,' he said. In 2001, the Lakota activist Russell Means likened the project to 'carving up the mountain of Zion.' Charmaine White Face, a spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council, called the memorial a disgrace. 'Many, many of us, especially those of us who are more traditional, totally abhor it,' she told me. 'It’s a sacrilege. It’s wrong.'"

From "Who Speaks for Crazy Horse?/The world’s largest monument is decades in the making and more than a little controversial" by Brooke Jarvis (in The New Yorker).

This is an excellent article about the twisted commercialism of the gigantic unfinished Crazy Horse monument, which is run by the Ziolkowski family and seems to work for tourists as some kind of antidote to Mount Rushmore.

I wanted to give this post the tag "humility," but I only have "humiliation" and "modesty." "Humiliation" is plainly wrong, but is "modesty" okay? Wikipedia's article "Modesty" says "This article is about body modesty. For the concept of modesty in a broader sense, see humility," so I'm going to go with the tag "modesty," and please understand that I mean it in the broader sense that Wikipedia treats at "Humility":

Humility is an outward expression of an appropriate inner, or self regard, and is contrasted with humiliation which is an imposition, often external, of shame upon a person. Humility may be misappropriated as ability to suffer humiliation through self-denouncements which in itself remains focused on self rather than low self-focus.

Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue which centers on low self-preoccupation, or unwillingness to put oneself forward, so it is in many religious and philosophical traditions, it contrasts with narcissism, hubris and other forms of pride and is an idealistic and rare intrinsic construct that has an extrinsic side.

"They will do whatever they can to demean you, to libel you. They try to blacklist, coerce, cancel or destroy anyone who gets in their way."

"Look at what they are doing today to Justice Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh. Did you see the New York Times? Did you see what they are doing? Did you see what Democrats -- they're calling for his resignation. They are calling for his impeachment. And the woman involved said she did not know anything, but they still -- the New York Times had to put out a major apology and change their story. The woman said, I do not remember that. And they still want him to be impeached. And I just put out a statement -- and he is a great man, by the way. A great talent. A great, brilliant man, Brett Kavanaugh. I just put out a statement on social media that said -- I do not think they will do it, but they should, for the good of the nation. I called for the resignation of everybody at the New York Times involved in the Kavanaugh smear story. And while you are at it, the Russian witch hunt hoax, which is just as phony a story. They've taken the Old Gray Lady -- you know, the New York Times, for years, the Old Gray Lady, so prestigious. They have taken the Old Gray Lady and broken her down, destroyed her virtue, and ruined her reputation. She can never recover and will never return to greatness under current management. The Times is dead. Long live the New York Times. Long live the New York Times. I do want it to live, but they have to change their ways" (RCP).

"I can’t believe you’re here, wow. You’ve got balls, girl"/"Remember when your picture was on Wheaties boxes back when people could still look at you when they eat?"

"Let’s face it. No one wants to be here. The person who went to the greatest lengths to not show up tonight was Bruce Jenner"/"You goddamn hypocrite. You’re, like, against gay marriage. You voted for Trump. You’re like the Auntie Tom of the trans community."

Things said about Caitlin Jenner at the Alec Baldwin roast, quoted in "Caitlyn Jenner Was Savagely Mocked at the ‘Roast of Alec Baldwin’… And Then Again Afterwards" (Decider).

Here's Jenner's response:

If you’re one of @Caitlyn_Jenner’s haters, this set is going to be tough for you. #BaldwinRoastpic.twitter.com/JUhUWh3AFI

— Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) September 16, 2019

"If I can find the courage to be who I am, then you can too. If you have a problem with that, then you can suck my dick — if you can find it!!!."

"Duka and Koski's beliefs about same-sex marriage may seem old-fashioned, or even offensive to some. But..."

"... the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive. They are for everyone. After all, while our own ideas may be popular today, they may not be tomorrow. Indeed, '[w]e can have intellectual individualism' and 'rich cultural diversities … only at the price' of allowing others to express beliefs that we may find offensive or irrational. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). This 'freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much … [t]he test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.' Id."

From Brush & Nib Studios, LC v. City of Phoenix, quoted at "Freedom of Speech Protects Calligraphers' Right Not to Create Custom Same-Sex Wedding Invitations/So holds the Arizona Supreme Court" (Volokh Conspiracy).

Barnette was about compelling school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The children had a religious objection but the case was not decided on the basis of a special religious exclusion. Justice Jackson famously wrote:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Democrats are too busy "impeaching" President Trump to worry about "impeaching" Brett Kavanaugh.

"'Get real': Senior Democrats shut down Kavanaugh impeachment push/Democratic leaders are panning new demands by the left to oust the Supreme Court justice" (Politico).

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler similarly dismissed the idea of an impeachment inquiry, arguing in a radio interview Monday that the committee is “concentrating our resources on determining whether to impeach the president.” The New York Democrat said it’s one thing for progressives to call for impeachment but for him “it’s a consequential action, which we have to be able to justify.”...

Nadler told The New York Times just before Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote in October that he planned to thoroughly investigate the allegations, including subpoenaing White House and FBI records and interviewing the accusers.... But since regaining control of the House in January, Democrats have done little to revisit the issue...

"Meanwhile, as a kind of grimly ironic accompaniment to his scriptural musings, Buttigieg’s hometown, South Bend, has just discovered..."

"... that its longtime abortion provider, the late Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, kept a substantial collection of fetal remains on his property: 2,246 'products of conception,' to be exact, carefully preserved. The version of pro-choice politics that has been generally successful in this country allows Americans to support abortion rights within limits, while still regarding figures like Dr. Klopfer as murderous or monstrous. But the more maximalist and mystical your claims about when personhood begins (or doesn’t), the more strained that distinction gets. The unapologetic grisliness of a Klopfer, or a Kermit Gosnell before him, haunts a Buttigiegian abortion politics more than it does a 'safe, legal, rare' triangulation, because it establishes the most visceral of contrasts — between the mysticism required to believe that the right to life begins at birth and the cold and obvious reality that what our laws call a nonperson can still become a corpse."

From "The Abortion Mysticism of Pete Buttigieg/How the party of science decided that personhood begins at birth" by Ross Douthat (NYT).

The article linked at "products of conception" is "More Than 2,200 Preserved Fetuses Found at Property of Dead Doctor, Officials Say/There was no evidence that medical procedures were performed at the Illinois property where the remains were found, the authorities said" (NYT). It doesn't use the words "products of conception" or "corpse" or anything like "murder" or "monster." It says "preserved fetuses" and "medically preserved fetal remains." I can't find anything in that article to support "unapologetic grisliness of a Klopfer" other than that Klopfer is dead and dead men are unapologetic.

Most of Douthat's column is about Buttigieg's discussion of the Bible in connection with his pro-choice position. Buttigieg observes that the Bible isn't clear on the subject — there are verses suggesting that life begins with the first breath — and that supports giving the decision to the individual pregnant woman. That's the same thing the Supreme Court said in Roe v. Wade.

"So far this morning, you’ve mentioned Frank Zappa, Ric Ocasek and the Talking Heads. I’m sure there are lots of musical threads that attach the three. But..."

"... there’s something else, too: Baltimore childhoods. Frank Zappa and Ric Ocasek were both born in Baltimore and David Byrne moved to town when he was in elementary school. I grew up just outside the city and live here now. It’s a challenging and frustrating place on a lot of levels but it’s also a town that celebrates creativity and inspires a lot of loyalty."

A reader writes.

I wrote about Talking Heads in the context of saying goodbye to Ric Ocasek, who always reminded me a bit of David Byrne. Maybe it was the Baltimore connection! I often think of Frank Zappa, but until now, I don't think his connection to Baltimore ever figured in my musings. I wrote about him yesterday as I contemplated the NYT story about Brett Kavanaugh:

And I'd like to know... When can people get naked at parties and waggle their genitalia at each other?... I'm inclined to believe that people at private parties can get naked. We were just talking about Woodstock, that revered historical event where young people got naked. In the words of Frank Zappa:

There will come a time when everybody who is lonely
Will be free to sing and dance and love
There will come a time when every evil that we know
Will be an evil that we can rise above
Who cares if you're so poor you can't afford
To buy a pair of mod-a-go-go stretch elastic pants?
There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance

Another song for this morning: "What's New in Baltimore?"

Hey! What's new in Baltimore?
I don't know!
Hey! What's new in Baltimore?
Better go back and find out

By the way, did you see that the NYT, promoting its Kavanaugh article, tweeted "Having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun…"? and then deleted the tweet and apologized because nobody they cared about identified with the notion. I hope you don't think that what I wrote indicates that I am the kind of person the NYT was tweeting about. The Kavanaugh article doesn't say a penis was thrust in anyone's face! It says "thrust his penis at her" — just "her," not "her face." So that's another thing wrong with the deleted tweet. It worsened the allegation — having the penis thrust at the face — which makes the allegation sound much less like dancing and more like an outright sexual assault. In making that aggressive move — that journalistic thrust in the face — the tweet undermined itself. We might think that getting naked and dancing at a party is harmless fun, but we won't think that way about a penis thrust at a face.

At the Sunflower Sunset Café...

... I invite comments on all topics.

And please consider the the Althouse Portal to Amazon, where you can buy various things. I've been enjoying Jilz Crackerz, but I can't explain the exorbitant price.

I have now seen the height of American racial politics...

Caption this pic.twitter.com/Mnle2wrpLK

— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) September 16, 2019

... and it is ineffable, inexpressible, unutterable, unspeakable... but not nameless. We do know the name. The name is "CornPop."

Loops... larger than Earth...

Loops of superheated plasma far larger than the Earth dance across the surface of the Sun. Amazing images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. https://t.co/jpmzlNkqHB pic.twitter.com/6SySxM8eV6

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) September 16, 2019

"I always felt it is a high honor to be associated with the name of Christ ~ this classic iconic man who lived and died for the poor, the hungry and the broken."

Writes Dion, commenting on this video of "Center of My Life" ("I'll tell you a story about my lord Jesus/He is the only one... Through the years and all the changes/You've been my friend/Never a stranger..."



I ran across that after I played "Teen Angel" (for this post) and YouTube thought I'd want to watch this video of Dion singing "Runaround Sue"...



... which I enjoyed so much — I love the audience reaction to the music! — that I clicked through to see other videos on Dion's playlist and found "Center of My Life." I love Dion (and have since the days when "Runaround Sue" was #1 on the record charts, and I saw him do a great show here in Madison around 1990 (really, the most enjoyable show ever)), but I didn't know about his Christian period.

By the way, Sue — according to that song — ran around "with every single guy in town." Every single guy! Not until today did I take that literally and try to picture the effort and the insanity of getting together with every single guy. Even in a small town...

"A lot of people only know my dad as an angry guy, but he’s more than some lunatic who loses his temper. He also loses Emmys. And Oscars. And custody of his firstborn child."

"Seriously, Dad, I’m so proud of you. You’re a wonderful father and an amazing actor, and I’m thrilled to be here to see you celebrated tonight. After all the years of giving verbal abuse, it’s finally time you received some. So before I leave, I’d just like to say something you’ve never said to me: good night."

Said Ireland Baldwin, quoted in "Ireland Baldwin’s roast of dad Alec Baldwin was even more brutal on TV" (WaPo).



The WaPo article links to a 2007 WaPo article about Baldwin's phone message to his daughter when she was 11:

"You are a rude, thoughtless little pig."

"You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being," he says, apparently upset that she did not answer her phone for a planned call.

"I don't give a damn that you're 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you're a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn't care about what you do as far as I'm concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone."

Here's the audio, in case you need it. I've heard that listening to recorded words is good for your brain, so give it a try.

"Google Earth uncovers car in pond — and skeleton of driver missing for 22 years."

Reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Here's the Google Earth image:

"A US woman has undergone surgery after removing and swallowing her engagement ring in her sleep."

"Jenna Evans, 29, said she and her fiancé Bobby had been on a speeding train and she was forced to swallow the ring to protect it from 'bad guys.' She woke at her home in California to realise the episode had been a dream, but saw her diamond ring was missing... An X-ray scan identified the 2.4-carat ring in her stomach, and doctors agreed it would be unwise 'to let nature take its course.' Ms Evans, a San Diego resident, later had a procedure to remove the ring but said she was asked to sign release forms in case of her death. 'Then I cried a lot because I would be so mad if I died,' she said. 'I waited a long time for that damn engagement ring and I will marry Bobby Howell.'"

BBC.

ADDED: Young love, death, and a ring — I got to thinking of "Teen Angel":

Tulsi outTrumps Trump.

.@realDonaldTrump

Trump awaits instructions from his Saudi masters. Having our country act as Saudi Arabia's bitch is not "America First." https://t.co/kJOCpqwaQS

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) September 16, 2019

"They failed on the Mueller Report, they failed on Robert Mueller’s testimony, they failed on everything else, so now the Democrats are trying to build a case that I enrich myself by being President."

"Good idea, except I will, and have always expected to, lose BILLIONS of DOLLARS.. ....for the privilege of being your President - and doing the best job that has been done in many decades. I am far beyond somebody paying for a hotel room for the evening, or filling up a gas tank at an airport I do not own. These Radical Left Democrats are CRAZY! Obama Netflix?"

Trump tweets.

Trump assumes you understand what "Obama Netflix" means, but I see in the sidebar that "Obama Netflix" is trending, and when I click on it I see lots of tweets acting like Trump's just talking crazy, putting words together randomly. There's stuff like "It’s sort of amazing that he vomits up the words 'OBAMA NETFLIX!' directly after accusing Democrats of being crazy" from Jon Favreau.

Jon Favreau, I know the name and associate it mainly with this unforgettable photograph:



How much did Obama make from his Netflix deal?

No dollar figures have been reported but, in Hollywood, Netflix is not known for a lack of generosity in pursuit of big names who might bring in fresh subscribers. Producer Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy”) was handed $100 million to sign up; producer Ryan Murphy (“Glee,” “American Horror Story”) took home $300 million.

Those who are mocking Trump's "crazy" 2-word question "Obama Netflix?" may regret heightening its visibility. It's going to make some of us want to know the actual dollar amount. Didn't Obama say he wanted to be "the most transparent President" ever? Ha ha. No. That was Trump.

And, by the way, isn't it true that Trump is losing lots of money by being President? He may be wrong about what he's observed about his country over the years and his notions of what ought to be done about it, but isn't he giving? Lots of people don't want what he's giving, but he is giving, I think. That's the heart-rending tragedy... if he's wrong. But he thinks he's right.

Joe Biden's oddball "record player" sentence is helping him, because it's distracting us from the rest of what he said.

From the transcript (in response to the question "What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?):

I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title I schools, triple the amount of money we spend from 15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise, the equal raise to getting out -- the $60,000 level. Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need -- we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It's crazy. The teachers are -- I'm married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have -- make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School. We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It's not want they don't want to help. They don't -- they don't know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television -- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the -- the -- make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school -- a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

First, that word salad ought to cast doubt on the theory that the number of words a pre-schooler hears is what matters. Imagine playing CDs of Biden speeches to your baby to give him a boost in life. I'm thinking quality matters, not just quantity. And doesn't calm quiet benefit the child too? I can't believe that filling the air with chattering recordings is good for the young brain! I'm just going to guess that the studies of child development are looking at caregivers speaking to the child in person and saying words of substance that have to do with understanding the world around him and interacting with people who are looking him in the face.

Second, Biden is supposedly talking the vestiges of slavery, so the parents who "don't know quite what to do" are, unless he's gone totally off topic, black people. He's making them sound dumb and inept! And his solution seems to be to "make sure" to "bring social workers" into their homes "to help them deal with how to raise their children." Is that really his proposal — social workers in homes? Is that really what African Americans want to hear is the way "to repair the legacy of slavery"? White people taking responsibility is done not by intruding on white people but by sending social workers into the homes of black people?

Can we stop talking about the damned "record player" — which is so distractingly funny — and talk about those 2 things?

The same small place after a 14-hour interval...

Why travel all over the world looking for things to see when you can see so much on repeated walks through the same place? It's like marriage...

Goodbye to Ric Ocasek.

The Jon Pareles tribute at the NYT is "Ric Ocasek, New Wave Rock Visionary and Cars Co-Founder, Is Dead/The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee updated classic sounds for a broader pop audience, making polished songs with sonic depth."

From 1978 to 1988, Ocasek and the Cars merged a vision of romance, danger and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock. The Cars managed to please both punk-rock fans and a far broader pop audience, reaching into rock history while devising fresh, lush extensions of it.

Pareles doesn't mention Talking Heads, but it always seemed to me that The Cars were like Talking Heads but easier — like The Monkees to the Beatles. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

[A]fter the Cars disbanded, he produced music for Weezer, Bad Religion and No Doubt.... After two previous marriages, Mr. Ocasek married the model and actress Paulina Porizkova in 1989; they met in 1984 while the Cars were making the music video for “Drive.”

Yes, he had a very beautiful wife (and she announced last year that they'd separated, in this Instagram message that I'm going to read as a statement of eternal love). Here's the video that brought them together, "Drive":



Who's gonna tell you when/It's too late?/Who's gonna tell you things/Aren't so great?/You can't go on/Thinking nothing's wrong, ohh no/Who's gonna drive you home/Tonight?

Scott Adams: The Democrats are pushing "the stalest old stories" — Kavanaugh, impeachment, Stormy Daniels, Russian collusion — "are ya frickin' kiddin' me?"

"It's starting to get sad... They've completely given up at this point. It feels like they're not even working on task. It feels like busy work. That's what it is: busy work.... It feels like the Democrats can't figure out anything useful to do, but they have to do something...."



The S.E. Cupp thing he's referring to in that clip is, I think, this:

"Wait a second. Who did what to whom? Kavanaugh’s 'friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student'?"

"Can someone explain the logistics of the allegation here? Was Kavanaugh allegedly walking around naked when his friends pushed him into the female student? No, if I’m reading [NYT reporters] Pogrebin and Kelly right, the friends didn’t push Kavanaugh in the back. Rather, the 'friends pushed his penis.' What? How does that happen? Who are the friends? Who is the female student? Were there any witnesses besides [the classmate Max] Stier? All that the authors write in the New York Times essay about corroborating the story is this: 'Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)' So they corroborated the fact that Stier made the allegation to the FBI, but the authors give no indication that they have corroborated any details of the alleged incident. The book isn’t released until Tuesday, but Mollie Hemingway got a copy, and she writes on Twitter: 'The book notes, quietly, that the woman Max Stier named as having been supposedly victimized by Kavanaugh and friends denies any memory of the alleged event.' Omitting this fact from the New York Times story is one of the worst cases of journalistic malpractice in recent memory."

From "The New York Times Anti-Kavanaugh Bombshell Is Actually a Dud" by John MacCormack (National Review).

The NYT article — "Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not. Deborah Ramirez’s Yale experience says much about the college’s efforts to diversify its student body in the 1980s"— now has an update:

An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.

Note that Deborah Ramirez is not the person in the incident alleged by Max Stier. The Max Stier allegation is used to corroborate the Deborah Ramirez allegation — which is that Kavanaugh, drunk at a party, exposed his penis in some sort of "thrust" near her and that she reacted by hitting him in the penis.

The article — as you can see from the headline — is mostly about class difference. Some young people supposedly felt at home with whatever was going on at parties like that, and some were lost and alienated. That is a serious problem with college life, I'm willing to believe, but I'd rather see it reported and analyzed as a free-standing problem, not appropriated for the purpose of taking down a political enemy.

And I'd like to know: When is it okay to hit a naked man in the penis? When can people get naked at parties and waggle their genitalia at each other? I don't fit in with that kind of partying either — and I never did — so I'd like a sober, neutral explanation. I'm inclined to believe that people at private parties can get naked. We were just talking about Woodstock, that revered historical event where young people got naked. In the words of Frank Zappa:

There will come a time when everybody who is lonely
Will be free to sing and dance and love
There will come a time when every evil that we know
Will be an evil that we can rise above
Who cares if you're so poor you can't afford
To buy a pair of mod-a-go-go stretch elastic pants?
There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance

Clearly, Zappa was making fun of the hippies' high hopes for naked dancing. That song is from 1968, a year before Woodstock, and a decade and a half before Kavanaugh's Yale party days. And here we are today — 40 or 50 years after that youthful revelry — judging those people. I'd love to analyze the whole thing, and I'd even like to see a strongly feminist analysis. But this get-Kavanaugh motivation makes it all twisted and tainted with lust for political power.

Late summer box spring.

"I'm afraid I'm still not quite following what happened or who she is or why this is news"/"I think you are a member of an ever-expanding club"/"Count me in too"/"And me. I have now read three articles in WaPo..."

"... about this person. And although this was the better written of the lot, I'm still struggling with why anyone above middle school would care about Mason jar gardens and flower crowns"/"After reading this article I feel like I'm a dog chasing it's own tail. Why, why, why, for the love of humanity?!?!?"/"This is the second article I've seen in the last few days of Caroline Calloway, and I've never heard of her. I can't seem to glean from either this or the other article who she is or why I should care."

Comments on the WaPo article by Monica Hesse, "The messiness and meaning of Caroline Calloway." I keep seeing these articles about Caroline Calloway and half skimming them. It's like some kind of joke about the meaninglessness of everything.

We're told the story is "like boiling six seasons of HBO’s 'Girls' into a teaspoon, and injecting it into your veins." Yeah, okay, I'm going to just say no to that drug.

"She began dating Mr. Brown, now 85, around 1994, when she was working in Alameda County and he was speaker of the California Assembly."

"He appointed her to two well-compensated state posts. He gave her a BMW. He introduced her to people worth knowing.... Ms. Harris’s allies have bristled at any suggestion that Mr. Brown powered her ascent, dismissing the charge as sexist and making clear that she was plenty capable of impressing on her own... Ms. Harris told SF Weekly in 2003 that she was so independent of Mr. Brown that he 'would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me.' 'His career is over,' she said, as Mr. Brown’s second mayoral term wound down. 'I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years.' But Ms. Harris also promoted Mr. Brown’s support on her fliers. And his barely hidden hand helped goose her precedent-busting fund-raising. 'He was instrumental behind the scenes,' said Mark Buell, a major Democratic donor who served as Ms. Harris’s finance chairman. 'Willie Brown told me — and I didn’t want to believe him — you have to raise $1 million to win this race. And we did.' Mr. Brown, who now writes political columns, cheekily declined to be interviewed, on the grounds that he could not assist a rival publication... Asked if Mr. Brown was a factor in the [2003] race — either as a boogeyman deployed by her rivals or as a sitting mayor with an interest in the outcome — Ms. Harris said: 'Um, I’d — you know. You can ask the pundits. I — yeah.'"

From "Kamala Harris Was Ready to Brawl From the Beginning/In her first race, she defied her old boss, a fund-raising pledge — and the implication that she owed her career to her ex-boyfriend" (NYT).

I did the math so you don't have to: In 2003, Brown was 69 and Harris was 38. And 69 divided by 2 plus 7 is 41.5.

Whatever you want to say about how Harris ascended in politics in California, you know very well what she's been doing as a presidential candidate in the past year. She's a terrible candidate. As I wrote after the last debate: "I don't understand why she's there and I don't believe she understands." Has anyone ever asked her the "Ted Kennedy" question, "Why do you want to be President of the United States?"

Is Trump a "mad aberration" or is he "rewiring the game in some permanent way"? "Watching that depressing debate, one must conclude that the rewiring is well underway."

Writes Maureen Dowd (NYT).

It’s a paradox wrapped in an oxymoron about a moron: Trump’s faux-thenticity somehow makes the Democratic candidates seem more packaged, more stuck in politician-speak.

In speeches and at rallies, Trump kicks over the traces, saying what’s on his mind, even though it often doesn’t mesh with reality, even though it lacks dignity and can be ugly and hateful....

At this point, the column is festooned with amusing quotes from a Trump rally that happened at the same time as the Democrats' last debate. Sample:

He mocked the Green New Deal, saying: “That’s a beauty. No more cows. No more planes. I guess no more people, right?” Then he teased Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader: “Because Kevin is just like a cow. He’s just smaller.”

"But how to counter this?" — Dowd asks. She wrote "the rewiring is well underway," but she didn't find that any of the Democrats had rewired. It's more that we are rewired and so we perceive them in a different way. We find them "depressing...  more packaged, more stuck in politician-speak."

The three hours seemed endless, with two questions hanging over the night: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” and “Will the most beatable candidate in American history win twice?”

I'd say you're not "rewired" until you see why Trump is hard to beat.