Althouse: At the Sunday Night Café...

August 14, 2022

At the Sunday Night Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

69 comments:

Original Mike said...: I am glad you were not in the Picnic Point kerfuffle this morning.; 8/14/22, 6:55 PM
h said...: I just went to Washington Post to enter a comment about the Trump Mar-a-lago story and I found that there wasn't a single story linked to the front page about this. So I'm wondering--- Are anti-Trump organs (WaPo) beginning to worry that they don't have the follow up on this story??; 8/14/22, 7:27 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Our local Safeway (Overlake, in Redmond, WA) is locking up most of the Tide detergent products. You have to take a product-card to the cashier, who will then retrieve the product from a locked cabinet that's behind the customer service counter. Too much shoplifting due to our "enlightened" officials who believe that criminals should get out on zero bail rather than waiting in jail for their trials. Also, many of these poor criminals are not even prosecuted at all, because a $25 item is too cheap to be worthy of prosecution.

The current county prosecutor, Dan Sattenberg, is not running for reelection. His do-nothing chief of staff wants to take over his office. Said COS has no trial experience and also believes in non-prosecution. Jim Farrell, the mayor of Federal Way, is running to replace useless Dan and to make prosecutions great again.; 8/14/22, 7:35 PM
Drago said...: It comes as little surprise that the husband of Liz Cheney (D-DC/Pelosi/VA) is married is a partner in a high powered democratical law firm that is currently representing......Hunter Biden AND ChiCom firms. Last time I checked, New Democratical Soviets do not use Washington Law firms that are not bastions of democratical support.

Gee, it's almost inexplicable how the residents of Wyoming are not grateful for Liz's strong stands in support of Pelosi, Schiffty, Swalwell and the deep staters.; 8/14/22, 7:40 PM
MadisonMan said...: What Original Mike said right out of the Gate. I got a lot of Badger Alerts about it, but I'm still not sure what happened.; 8/14/22, 7:53 PM
Narr said...: Would someone kindly remind me what the artwork was that featured in Goethe's novel "Elective Affinities" as described here recently?

Vielen dank.; 8/14/22, 8:12 PM
Bender said...: So there is this from one Substacker: Mysteriously, all over the world the birthrates have collapsed at the same time and the experts seem to have no idea what is going on.

Hmm. What could it be???; 8/14/22, 8:30 PM
Beasts of England said...: This 2022 hurricane season is a real monster, isn’t it? All the death and destruction!! Who knew that global warming could unleash such havoc? Don’t worry climate cultists: zero hurricanes to date isn’t the end of the world... lol; 8/14/22, 8:52 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: The "secret documents" search was a pretext to go thru Mar-a-Lago.

They are worried about Trump running again.; 8/14/22, 9:02 PM
Dave Begley said...: Mike:

The Dem candidate for Lancaster County, Lincoln, Nebraska has never tried a case in his life.; 8/14/22, 9:03 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: "The Inflation Reduction Act" has a fatal flaw: it originated in the Senate. Article I, Section 7 says that all Revenue bills shall originate in the House of Representatives. That makes the entire bill unconstitutional and subject to challenge. Goodbye 87,000 new IRS goons. Goodbye EV subsidies. Goodbye green energy investments. I mean, polluting energy investments. Hello egg on his face, Chuckie Schumer.; 8/14/22, 9:04 PM
Saint Croix said...: On one of the threads I was ranting about Ted Kennedy. Who is dead and irrelevant to us. Sort of like Trump, who is not dead but is out of office and (should be) irrelevant to us. More or less. Libs, seriously, get over the Trump Derangement Syndrome. Worse case ever of president-induced psychosis.

Anyway, the reason I was mad about Ted Kennedy was my thoughts about the liberal media monopoly, which is a serious fucking problem. As in, liberals control the main television networks, the movie studies, the book industry, the magazine industry, almost all the newspapers. It's fucking insane.

Monopolies are bad, dangerous. Liberals used to know this shit.

One-party rules is bad, dangerous. (Regardless of which party it is!). Liberals used to know this shit.

Today -- y'all know this -- liberals are outraged by Fox news, our one fucking Republican TV network in a tsunami of liberal narrative control of the airwaves. Talk radio outrages them and they want to silence it as well. The internet drives them crazy and they want to censor everybody. We all know this but it bears repeating -- liberals now hate free speech (and democracy) and this should be pointed out to them until they change their fucking ways. Which they should because free speech and democracy are liberal fucking ideas. Holy shit.; 8/14/22, 9:09 PM
Saint Croix said...: If a Republican wants to go ape shit on the media (and you should all want to), you just need to point out two things.

1. Ted Kennedy killed a woman and the liberal-controlled media let him get away with it. Pravda shit. Absolutely insane. I'm not going to rant about it for years like I did Roe v. Wade, but holy fuck it's the same problem.

2. The media have been hiding the bodies from abortion clinics for decades. Literally decades. They're terrified of people seeing an abortion and feeling bad about an abortion. They're terrified of American women (and men) getting factual information about abortion. We should be showing teenagers in sex education classes photographs of abortion. Liberals are aghast at this, like their aghast (I guess) at showing teenagers photographs of people mangled in car wrecks in driving education classes. But bad shit happens and a little education might keep future bad shit from happening. Just saying. And censorship doesn't fucking work.; 8/14/22, 9:10 PM
Caroline said...: This is the first time I see stormy lake Mendota. I live in Dallas, where we have very little weather drama, and we’re not near water. But I am from the gulf coast, and I miss the rhythm of the waves as a feature of your daily consciousness. Lucky you.; 8/14/22, 9:11 PM
Saint Croix said...: ha ha

I was like, "I need a vacation, need a break."

and then I was like, "I can sneak back in, incognito, and just read. I don't need to say anything. I'll just lurk."

and then I read something and the urge to speak hit me again

dude

okay, back to vacay (or at least lurker mode); 8/14/22, 9:12 PM
Mason G said...: "Don’t worry climate cultists: zero hurricanes to date isn’t the end of the world... lol"

Maybe not, but it's clearly definitive proof of climate change.; 8/14/22, 9:17 PM
effinayright said...: Narr said...
Would someone kindly remind me what the artwork was that featured in Goethe's novel "Elective Affinities" as described here recently?

Vielen dank.
****************

With all the murky subterranean politics this summer, I'm feelin' kinda dank myself.; 8/14/22, 9:27 PM
narciso said...: https://www.theblaze.com/news/marine-killed-afghanistan-withdrawal-brother-suicide; 8/14/22, 9:35 PM
Howard said...: It was a Mary Oliver type of day.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?; 8/14/22, 9:39 PM
wildswan said...: There's an interactive tool at thissite that lets us you see what the world was like at your city going back through the geological ages. It's very nice looking.

https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#0
This is the map. Just enter your city name up on the right and then move back in time using the left arrow your keyboard

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/map-lets-you-plug-your-address-see-how-neighborhood-has-changed-over-past-750-million-years-180971507/#.YQ9hhLrf3SA.tumblr; 8/14/22, 9:40 PM
Saint Croix said...: falling birthrates

Mark Steyn talked about this, he might have written a book on it. But for them to drop suddenly is kind of strange.; 8/14/22, 10:07 PM
tim in vermont said...: Funny how all of the 'benefits' from the "Inflation Reduction Act" seem to be about electric cars. It's almost as if they just name the bill whatever they think that the people want while filling it with stuff only they and their wealthy donors want.; 8/14/22, 10:18 PM
narciso said...: Sure

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qxvz/salman-rushdie-hadi-matar-revolutionary-guard; 8/14/22, 11:57 PM
narciso said...: https://rumble.com/v1g0sth-live-now-unite-and-win-rally-in-phx-az-powered-by-turning-point-action.html; 8/14/22, 11:58 PM
narciso said...: https://mobile.twitter.com/AirielHicks/status/1558436811390828545?cxt=HHwWgoC-vbyB16ArAAAA; 8/15/22, 12:05 AM
Clark said...: Hi @Narr --

Here's hoping you check back in.

I posted the info about the painting Goethe mentioned in the overnight thread (with the sunrise pictures) on August 12th, at 3:42 a.m.; 8/15/22, 12:30 AM
Mutaman said...: "I am glad you were not in the Picnic Point kerfuffle this morning.'

It was just Meade exercising his second amendment rights by shooting off his machine gun and killing a few squirrels.; 8/15/22, 12:32 AM
BudBrown said...: 14 posts including 11 tic tocs. I've been readin Althouse all the live long day, meant
with no emanating negative connotations. I think.; 8/15/22, 4:01 AM
Clyde said...: @ Beasts of England

Re: Hurricane season, tropical storm activity in the Atlantic/Caribbean has been slowed so far by Saharan dust clouds. We are still four weeks away from the normal peak of the season (as a Floridian, I know these things). Hopefully activity remains low!; 8/15/22, 4:46 AM
Zavier Onasses said...: Apropos hurricanes. There is a large system now centered about midway between Eagle Pass and Laredo, gently rotating and dropping much needed rain. Started watching it about 0300 hrs Sunday morning, when it was centered off the coast between Port Mansfield and Corpus Chrsiti.

Most, but by no means all, Lower Rio Grande Valley cotton looks to have been picked and baled; but many of the bales are now in fields too muddy to be collected.

Guessing there will be at least 3 inches of rain from this system. Rain bands go up to New Braunfels and Del Rio. The LRGV and US-77 (I-69E) is now on the wet side of the system. Have a look at
https://radar.weather.gov/

Mini-frogs have hatched and are croaking in the back pasture, now several inches deep in places.; 8/15/22, 5:45 AM
Andrew said...: “If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”; 8/15/22, 5:52 AM
tim maguire said...: Blogger tim in vermont said...It's almost as if they just name the bill whatever they think that the people want while filling it with stuff only they and their wealthy donors want.

The practice of naming bills should be stopped. Inevitably, the name has nothing to do with the contents of the bill and is based entirely on what would make a nice attack ad if you vote against it.; 8/15/22, 6:04 AM
Lurker21 said...: The new Biden as winner narrative indicates the disconnect between Washington DC and the rest of the country. Once upon a time, we really did have "landmark legislation" and you learned about the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the Wagner Act in schools. Now the government is involved in so many things that it's hard to think that adding more things is that much of an achievement. Of course, some new legislation is necessary, but much of it isn't, and a lot is just pork packed in with the rest, but all DC sees is that Biden managed to get his bill through Congress.; 8/15/22, 6:46 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "This is the first time I see stormy lake Mendota."

It's funny. It was the kind of precipitation I love, a mist with the droplets of water so large that I feel them pinging on my arms and face, and I say it's rain. Meade and I were talking about whether it counted as rain. He said no. Out at the vantage point, there was another person, and I asked him if this is rain. He said no, so I was out voted. There was some discussion of umbrellas. He was concerned that it might turn into rain, and he didn't have an umbrella. And I had just been talking about how the test of whether these water drops in the air count as rain could be whether an umbrella would work — because it wouldn't. These drops remain suspended and you'd walk right into them horizontally.

Since the vote was 2-1 that it wasn't even rain, I'd have to say it wasn't "stormy."

It was a very pleasant day, my favorite weather: in the 60s and overcast.; 8/15/22, 6:55 AM
tim in vermont said...: Can I just say that if Lizzie Warren had a penis, she would be teaching high school social studies, best case.

Sometimes I watch the DP golf series in Europe where men and women compete, the men from longer tees, to even it up. Well, the woman who was leading by 5 strokes over the top man was playing great, no denying it, but there were also 6 other women either leading or tied with the top man. They give the men precarious tee shots, slow up the greens to negate men's advantage in putting. On the US Open, for example, the putting greens are nearly as fast as a hardwood floor. They might have gone too far, anyway, this is the kind of thinking that has made mediocrities like Warren US Senators.; 8/15/22, 7:15 AM
Saint Croix said...: Not sure where the heck I published this, or even if I did. But Russell Brand skewers Nancy Pelosi and it's hilarious.; 8/15/22, 7:20 AM
tim in vermont said...: The "Inflation Reduction Act" gives the EPA the power to regulate CO2 by declaring that they have always had that power, overturning the SCOTUS. Joe Manchin sold out his own state for Chuck Schumer. Same as Sinema held out for a change to tax laws that mostly benefited Schumer's wealthy Manhattan donors.; 8/15/22, 7:27 AM
William50 said...: So there is this from one Substacker: Mysteriously, all over the world the birthrates have collapsed at the same time and the experts seem to have no idea what is going on.

Hmm. What could it be???
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

What is the one common denominator? Hmm, could it be the Covid injectable products?; 8/15/22, 7:56 AM
Humperdink said...: Mis-naming of federal legislation? The Affordable Care Act cost my spouse and I an additional $6,000 annually in health insurance premiums. Viva Obamacare!!!; 8/15/22, 7:57 AM
Robert Cook said...: "So there is this from one Substacker: Mysteriously, all over the world the birthrates have collapsed at the same time and the experts seem to have no idea what is going on.

"Hmm. What could it be???"

Extra-fortified fluoride in our drinking water and toothpaste!; 8/15/22, 8:29 AM
Original Mike said...: "It was a very pleasant day, my favorite weather: in the 60s and overcast."

The unforecasted precipitation this weekend has thrown a monkey wrench into my tightly scheduled outdoor project.; 8/15/22, 8:29 AM
Christopher B said...: tim in vermont said...
The "Inflation Reduction Act" gives the EPA the power to regulate CO2 by declaring that they have always had that power, overturning the SCOTUS. Joe Manchin sold out his own state for Chuck Schumer. Same as Sinema held out for a change to tax laws that mostly benefited Schumer's wealthy Manhattan donors.

This was discussed on a couple of episodes of Steve Hayward's Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast, and the consensus on the last one was that this provision was removed at the last second by the Senate Parliamentarian at the request of Mary Capito and Lindsey Graham. The intent seemed to be setting up a claim that explicit funding for the Section 111 program would provide the necessary Congressional intent to overcome the ruling but it was stripped out.; 8/15/22, 8:36 AM
Jersey Fled said...: Congrats Big Mike!

Grandkids are so much better than kids. I can't figure out why.; 8/15/22, 8:37 AM
Christopher B said...: The fact that birthrates are falling *everywhere* messed with the usual explanations that urbanization and better health care reduced the need to have large numbers of children. The reason for the declines outside WEIRD and WIERD-adjacent countries is the mystery.; 8/15/22, 8:41 AM
Beasts of England said...: ‘as a Floridian, I know these things’

We get hurricanes in Alabama, too. Our beach house has been rebuilt three times over the decades… :); 8/15/22, 9:07 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: There's a 16-month lag between the increase in money supply and inflation. I looked at the M2 money supply vs. inflation rate for the last 23 years. The best correlation occurred when inflation was lagged by 16-months.

The Fed has been holding the money supply constant since the start of the year. If they keep that up for 16 months (April/May 2023), they'll wring inflation out of the economy. It could get brutal with all the out of control spending the Democrats have created.; 8/15/22, 9:12 AM
Saint Croix said...: Extra-fortified fluoride in our drinking water and toothpaste!

ha ha

love that movie

Dr. Strangelove makes nuclear war funny.

Hard to do!; 8/15/22, 9:17 AM
Saint Croix said...: Althouse, did I tell you my "rock star" story?

I was working on a legal project and the woman next to me was African-American. And we got to talking and she was an attorney who had gone to the University of Wisconsin.

I said, "hey, did you have Professor Althouse?"

And she said, "No. I didn't know who she was. And my friends were laughing at me and saying she's famous, she's a rock star."

That was like 10 years ago and I still remember it. Rock star!; 8/15/22, 9:31 AM
Saint Croix said...: Three or four years later, I ran into another attorney, female, with tattoos, pretty hot. And she went to the University of Tennessee.

And I said, "hey, did you have Glenn Reynolds for a professor? You know, Instapundit?"

And she said, "oh yeah, he's amazing."

So if anybody was wondering if Althouse or Reynolds are good professors, my unscientific 2 person polling would say hell yes.; 8/15/22, 9:39 AM
Narr said...: Thanks Clark! I'll go back and find it. Memory not what it used to.; 8/15/22, 10:15 AM
Saint Croix said...: Has anybody read Bo Snerdley's book about Rush?

I wonder if my library has it.

Might have to buy that one.; 8/15/22, 10:22 AM
Saint Croix said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/15/22, 10:29 AM
Saint Croix said...: Okay, I'm wrong, they're new. But that is a legit label. Okay, I feel better.; 8/15/22, 10:31 AM
Mark said...: Re: falling birthrates

Let's just come out and say it. Remember the Jumble word game?

The answer is found in the following jumble of letters: M R N A

__ __ __ __; 8/15/22, 11:10 AM
Saint Croix said...: Despite it's very woke website, my actual public library is very libertarian. I had no trouble finding the Snerdley book there. So whoever is in charge of book acquisition is awesome. I've never had trouble finding books at my library, across the political spectrum.

My assumption (I don't actually know) is that it's a young woke person who knows how to code that is doing the website. And it's an old liberal person who is in charge of book acquisition.

I wonder what the Democrat party will be like when the boomer class is gone? When AOC and the squad are the face of the Democrat party?

I think it's entirely possible that the Democrat party collapses, to be replaced with, I don't know, a Green party or a Woke party. (Or both).

A lot of the liberals who used to believe in free speech and equality have morphed into Republicans. Right, Althouse? Or they have abandoned free speech and equality and just give into the mob all the time. Right, Ivy League?

Anyway, so far, all of my life, I can find right-wing books in my public library. So it remains a bastion of free speech.; 8/15/22, 11:19 AM
Ceciliahere said...: The “Information Reduction Act” brought to you be Slow Joe, Schmucky Chuck and Fancy Nancy. All for your benefit now and years to come. Shut up peasants…we’re the boss of you.; 8/15/22, 12:14 PM
Saint Croix said...: Re: falling birthrates

Let's just come out and say it. Remember the Jumble word game?

The answer is found in the following jumble of letters: M R N A

Thanks for scaring the shit out of me.

You're wrong (I hope).

Study; 8/15/22, 12:35 PM
tim in vermont said...: They took the Trumps' passports.; 8/15/22, 1:01 PM
Narr said...: Nice to see someone serious say something good about the much-maligned librarian. I don't usually seek out current events or controversialist books, but when I am at my own libraries (public and u) the tradition of even-handedness seems to prevail in acquisitions.

When I was selecting for many humanities disciplines with minimal library budgets, party political issues just didn't arise. Had to reorder "Mein Kampf" in paperback several times--someone kept stealing them. I also had to order more general works because the profs almost always wanted narrowly-focused monographs in their fields.

It's true that the younger gen are Woke, but not all of them are stupid.; 8/15/22, 1:16 PM
Narr said...: I found the Paternal Admonition painting by ter Borch/Terbork.

Was Goethe, the old poofter, having us on with his interpretation? One of my history profs had me reading Elective Affinities but I don't even recall this coming up in our discussions, or much else about the book--might have been a poor translation.; 8/15/22, 1:22 PM
wendybar said...: The corrupt Feds stole Trumps passports. They are making America the laughingstock of the world. https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/trump-fbi-stole-my-passports-during-mar-a-lago-raid/; 8/15/22, 1:31 PM
paminwi said...: Speaking of libraries my husband asked where books written by Thomas Sowell would be. (Brand new library-multiple floors) and the librarian asked him “who”?; 8/15/22, 4:15 PM
Saint Croix said...: I could tell you some librarian stories.

When I lived in Saint Simon's Island, this was before I owned a computer, and there was no internet, I took one of my early novels to the public library to make copies.

Lot of cuss words in my novel. "Fuck" and "shit" and so on. I think this was Drunken Ramblings of a College Student. I was right out of college. My very first book (I got this idea from Hunter Thompson), I would get drunk and talk into a tape recorder. And then the next day I would type that shit up.

One time I passed out with the tape recorder on my chest. And you can hear me snoring into the damn thing. So I had a whole chapter like this...

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Susie ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ fuck me ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

and so on. It was a creative book, and heartfelt, but not very good. Anyway, there were curse words all in the damn thing. And the librarian, a little old lady about 80 years old, insisted on running the copier herself. And I'm just a kid, maybe 23, and I'm embarrassed that this woman older than my grandmother is reading all my "shit" and "fuck" and "boner" and whatnot. And she could tell I was a little embarrassed. And she patted me on the arm and said something like, "Don't worry. I'm a librarian."; 8/15/22, 7:25 PM
Saint Croix said...: When I was a kid I would check out Hardy Boys mysteries. And the stack would be higher than my head.; 8/15/22, 7:27 PM
Saint Croix said...: When I was a teenager I asked a librarian, "Do you have any books by a guy named, I can't remember. Might be Wode House. And there's a butler! And his name is Jeeves."

And she said, "P.G. Wodehouse. It's pronounced Wood House. Yes we do."

And that's how I discovered P.G. Wodehouse, the funniest guy to write in the English language.; 8/15/22, 7:30 PM
Narr said...: Don't keep us in suspense, paminwi. Did they have any books by Sowell?; 8/15/22, 8:30 PM
Narr said...: The Poplar-White Station Branch of the Memphis and Shelby County Public Library System provided at least half of what I read from about the age of 10 till I was in college, when the university library became available to me.

Once I had proved that I could read the adult history books fluently the lady librarians at PWS let me check out anything I wanted. I still use that branch from time to time.; 8/15/22, 8:55 PM
Mutaman said...: Always wonder what guys like Sowell have to say when they walk around Manhattan- that free market system does not seem to work too well when it comes to commercial real estate.; 8/15/22, 9:09 PM
gadfly said...: Fissures certainly emerge in Wisconsin lakes as a deep fracture or crevasse appears each spring in the ice crusts riding atop liquid water below. But as for a fissure in the GOP, there is no change in the alignment of the voting members who will continue to support TFG even if he is convicted and sent to jail. The warmer the temperature brought on by the courts only freezes membership support. So our court system is dishonest and TFG is somehow believable.

Now can we expect to see Trump driving a 2022 Ford Bronco, painted Cyber Orange Metallic, south on FL Hwy A1A with the Palm Beach Police in close pursuit at 45 mph? The OJ defense begets OJ memories.; 8/15/22, 10:47 PM