What are you doing New Year's Eve?

One option is to talk about anything you want in the comments to this post. It doesn't need to be New Year's Eve-y, but feel free to discuss your aspirations for the year that lies ahead or to belabor whatever it is that you liked or didn't like about 2024. 

"In a bid to polish up Biden’s rusted image, The Washington Post on Sunday reported on the president’s private complaints that Garland should have been faster to prosecute Trump..."

"... so that he could have staged a 'politically damaging trial before the election.' Funny, as I recall Trump had a lot of trials before the election — and they all seemed to drive his approval levels up, not down. In any case, this seems like an admission, as law professor Ann Althouse observed, that 'Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!' Indeed. That now seems to have been Garland’s role throughout this administration, which — in the name of 'protecting democracy' and our institutions — has only undermined our democracy and corrupted our institutions. That’s Biden’s sorry legacy. And Merrick Garland’s, too."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in "Merrick Garland corrupted the Justice Department with political persecutions" (NY Post).

Here's my blog post about the WaPo article.

I knew the day would eventually come... and it came yesterday.

I changed my first word, and it's off to a good start on the last day of the year.

"He's a kindred spirit to me of a rare kind — the kind of man you don't meet every day and that you're lucky to meet if you ever do."

Said Bob Dylan, about Jimmy Carter.

"Write another version with the focus on the Trump character, fictionalized. He's old, too old for the burdens of the presidency, and weary of the usual politicians, and sad..."

"... to have his last campaign over, and he latches on to the Musk character, who is complicated and highly energetic and realizes he can override the preferences of those who voted for Trump and reenergize and redirect the man into something that will be absolutely brilliant for the country and the world."

I wrote, prompting A.I., in the midst of a conversation that began with a reading of the NYT article "How Elon Musk Has Planted Himself Almost Literally at Trump’s Doorstep/For much of the period since Election Day, the billionaire has been staying at a $2,000-a-night cottage at Mar-a-Lago, giving him easy access to the president-elect."

I'm expending my last free access link of the month — of the year! — on that so you can begin where "we" — A.I. and I — began. My original prompt was: "Does Elon Musk avoid buying a house for himself and if so, why?"

"Do you think with what you've done, choosing to have the sort of life you've chosen to lead, it's going to make things very, very difficult for your children?"

"No, I think it's wonderful for them! They think it's... they think Mummy's wonderful!"

Sunrise — 7:09, 7:31.

"Toward the end of their time in office, Mr. Mondale said he and Mr. Carter talked about how they wanted their tenure to be remembered."

"'We came up with this sentence, which to me remains an important summary of what we were trying to do: "We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace,"' Mr. Mondale wrote. 'That we did, Mr. President.'"

From "From the Grave, Mondale to Eulogize the Man Who Made Him Vice President/Walter F. Mondale died in 2021, but he left behind the eulogy he planned to deliver at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral" (NYT).

"The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury granted to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse...."

"Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack ever happened. But he briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial earlier this year that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir. In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had made multiple decisions that spoiled the trial, including his decision to allow two other women who had accused Trump of sexually abusing them to testify. The judge also had allowed the jury to view the infamous 'Access Hollywood' tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, 'you can do anything.'"

AP reports.

Sunrise — 7:36.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, and you’re very safe."

ADDED: It really happened:

How's your attention span lately?

Scroll...

"'Did you hear that guy order milk? Who orders milk?'... Their meal came — including the milk — and Milk Man went to town: taking big swigs..."

"... between chomps of steak with such gusto that my blood ran cold. That hairy, masculine hand. The glass of frothy milk. The pure delight. The cow two ways.... I couldn’t ignore it.... I interrupted his conversation. 'I don’t mean to be rude,' I said, 'but what’s with the milk?' 'Oh, I know it’s weird, right?” he responded, self-aware but not ashamed. Then he leaned over and drawled, 'I can’t explain it. I just love a big glass of cold milk with a rare steak. Mmmmm-mm!' Milk Man’s date didn’t seem to feel weird about it; she gave a 'Yes, my man is a freak' smile as he finished his Big Ol’ Glass of Cold Milk.... Milk symbolizes innocence and purity, and the adult who continues to indulge in it — nay, cling to it — long after their loss of innocence provokes light repulsion, confusion, and fascination in the observer...."

Writes Allison P. Davis, in "The Pervert’s Beverage/From Babygirl to Fellow Travelers, milk is for freaks" (Vulture).

"We in the news media and chattering class mocked Jimmy Carter as a country bumpkin..."

"... with cartoons depicting him installing an outhouse next to the White House. His public approval dropped to 28 percent, and when Ronald Reagan succeeded him, the Reagans’ interior designer reportedly smirked about the need to 'get the smell of catfish out of the White House.' President Carter, a member of Congress lamented in 1979, 'couldn’t get the Pledge of Allegiance through Congress.' Rolling Stone described Carter as 'the great national sinking feeling.' Ousted after a single term, he wasn’t so much criticized as sneered at. Even Democrats like Bill Clinton treated Carter as an embarrassment who had undermined liberals and paved a path for Reagan. Yet all this speaks to our failure of discernment...."

Writes Nicholas Kristof, in "Jimmy Carter Deserved Our Thanks and Respect, Not Our Sneers" (NYT). That's a free-access link, so you can see Kristof's argument for respecting and thanking President Carter. And let it represent all the many columns that are going up right now, expressing that sentiment. It is a time for eulogy.

Reading "the great national sinking feeling" made me think of Carter's "malaise" speech. I'm surprised it didn't come immediately to mind upon hearing of President Carter's death, but it did not. The cliché got worn out over the course of 45 years. Carter lived so long one grew tired of reacting to the name "Carter" with the one-word outburst: "Malaise!"

Or had your reaction to hearing Carter's name over the years been 2 words long? "Killer rabbit."

I see The Onion went there:

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:30.

Goodbye to Jimmy Carter.

"Jimmy Carter, 39th president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, dies at 100, his son says/The tenacious Southerner was turned out of office by disillusioned voters after a single term. But he had a brilliant post-presidential career as a champion of health, peace and democracy" (WaPo)(free-access link).

His wife, Rosalynn, died Nov. 19, 2023, at 96. The Carters, who were close partners in public life, had been married for more than 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history. His final public appearance was at her funeral in Plains, where he sat in the front row in a wheelchair... 

When Mr. Carter left Washington in January 1981, he was widely regarded as a mediocre president, if not an outright failure.... In the summer of 1979, Americans waited in long lines at service stations as gasoline supplies dwindled and prices soared after revolution in Iran disrupted the global oil supply....

In November 1979, an Iranian mob seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans as hostages. It was the beginning of a 444-day ordeal that played out daily on television and did not end until Jan. 20, 1981, the day Mr. Carter left office, when the hostages were released....

As the years wore on, the judgment on Mr. Carter’s presidency gradually gave way to a more positive view....

It's sad to need to say goodbye to the man who's been with us for so long. I remember walking to the polling place in 1976 and deciding, in the middle of the walk, that instead of voting for him, I'd vote against him. I did not trust him. In 1980, with that monster Ronald Reagan threatening us, I had to vote for him.

"My favorite part of Dead Week is getting up early, drinking coffee, and looking ahead to the long stretch of nothingness that fills the day."

"The nothingness doesn’t have to be slothful; sometimes I leave the house and sometimes I don’t, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. If I don’t go outside, I don’t feel bad about it, and if I do, everybody else I encounter looks equally confused and at loose ends, frittering away these leftover days. It is the only time of year when the days feel slow to me, when the time outside of whatever tasks I have to do does not somehow vanish into further worry and busyness. It is the only time I don’t feel like I am perpetually late to my own life...."

Writes Helena Fitzgerald, in "All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year/The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real" (The Atlantic).

The author "is a writer based… in New York." I presume that means New York City, and not just because I know it is the convention in New York to say "New York" for New York City and to specify "New York State" if you mean to refer to the state. There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name. Imagine if in Oklahoma, you said "Oklahoma State" to signal that you didn't mean Oklahoma City. Anyway, I know that means New York City because the people on the street have a distinct look of being off from work. If the author goes outside she's struck by everyone looking at loose ends. New York City is such a workplace.

Anyway, for me, out here in Madison, Wisconsin, every day is the equivalent of a day in Fitzgerald's "Dead Week."

Flying home from Texas on Friday, I avoided getting sucked into the hysteria of the day, the intra-MAGA discord over H-1B visas.

And now it looks like it's over, more or less: "Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration/'I’ve always liked the visas,' he said, siding with tech leaders against anti-immigration hard-liners" (WaPo).

“I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post in a phone interview. He added: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

It seems as though, to see the problem, you had to buy into the anti-MAGA view that MAGA was all about xenophobia. There must be some number of xenophobes in there, but it seems to me that it's opposition to a chaotic influx of people who might harm us and cost us a lot of money.  That's not in conflict with H-1B visa, which is a legal path for immigrants who are chosen because they to offer benefits to Americans.

The article quotes Tom Warrick, "a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama": "The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention. Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this actually does happen."

I don't know about that, but I do think that Trump antagonists are rooting for a snake pit.

"Abdoulie Fatty, one of Gambia’s most prominent imams, previously told The Washington Post that cutting is necessary to 'balance the feelings of a woman'..."

"... because 'in sex, women’s power is more than men’s power.' In one of the more explicit — and widely shared — moments of the year-long debate, Fatty also gave specific tips on one of Gambia’s most prominent shows about non-clitoral means of pleasuring women, including kissing their earlobes. Listening to such comments was 'embarrassing,' said Imam Baba Leigh, one of the religious leaders in Gambia who has campaigned against FGM. Leigh said FGM is in no way required by Islam. 'Are you telling me that God doesn’t know what is the right limit for a woman to enjoy? And you know it better? That is ridiculous,' he said when asked about Fatty’s statements. 'Allah knows what is suitable.'"

From "Female cutting debate in Gambia takes surprising turn: To women’s pleasure/The debate about female genital cutting has led to an open discussion about sexual pleasure in Gambia, with women buying sex toys and men learning about foreplay" (WaPo).

"Mr. Trump told CNBC in March that he still considered TikTok a national security threat, but that young people 'will go crazy without it.'"

"He also said moves against TikTok would benefit Facebook, which he called an 'enemy of the people.' Mr. Trump went on to use TikTok with great success during the campaign, and has said that it was a key vehicle for reaching young people this year. His youngest son, Barron, also encouraged him to lean into the platform to win over young voters, according to two sources familiar with their interactions, who spoke on condition of anonymity.... With Mr. Trump’s brief to the Supreme Court, his position on TikTok has come full circle, and he is now casting himself as the platform’s savior.... 'President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture,' the brief said, 'and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.'"

From "How Donald Trump Went From Backing a TikTok Ban to Backing Off/In 2020, he moved to ban the Chinese-owned app. Now, he is opposing the Biden administration’s effort to do just that" (NYT).

"We had just walked into the fentanyl lab when the cook poured a white powder into a stockpot full of liquid."

"He began mixing it with an immersion blender and fumes rose from the pot, filling the small kitchen. We wore gas masks and hazmat suits, but the cook had on only a surgical mask. He and his partner had rushed here to fulfill an order for 10 kilograms of fentanyl. While one sniff of the toxic chemicals could kill us, they explained, they had built up a tolerance to the lethal drug. But then, the cook jerked back. 'It really hit me,' he said, looking dazed. 'I need to take a breather.'"

From "'This Is What Makes Us Rich': Inside a Sinaloa Cartel Fentanyl Lab/New York Times reporters witnessed the dangerous fentanyl production process inside a secret lab in Culiacán run by Mexico’s most powerful criminal syndicate" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see interesting photographs of appalling stovetop cookery).

Are you enjoying the happy good times of the Trump transition?

From Real Clear Politics:

"In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general..."

"... complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.... Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election.... Biden has often looked to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a model, while governing in an age dominated by pop culture figures like podcast host Joe Rogan, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Trump himself.... Substantively, few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments. He mobilized the government to vaccinate Americans against covid-19, bringing the country out of a devastating pandemic. He avoided a recession that many economists had considered inevitable. He rebuilt the transatlantic alliance, rallying the world to help Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion.... But Biden’s critics fault him for failing to grasp that his record itself was not enough, that he needed to tell a story that would resonate in a tribal America...."

Writes Tyler Pager, in "Joe Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy/In his presidency’s final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled some decisions differently" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This feels like an effort to puff up Biden. Few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments?! Maybe the trick is to ascribe special meaning to the word "analysts" — if you don't think this is an impressive accomplishment, you're not an analyst. Or maybe the idea is that any accomplishment is an accomplishment, so what's to deny?

But look how clearly the article states that Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!

At The Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

Canada can't be the 51st state. It would need to be the 51st through 63rd state...

... Tom Green explains.

"I've always have loved good tunes. And my dad played them on his piano... My cousin Betty introduced me to 'My Funny Valentine.'"

"I loved sort of classic pieces that I would hear. I would love ‘Cheek to Cheek,' Fred Astaire, all these things. I just thought, these are classics.... Heaven, I'm in heaven.... So, I had a lot of information in my head of those tunes.... People have said to me, do you believe in magic? And I say, I have to 'cause of that song.... I think I'd loaded my computer so strongly with 'Cheek to Cheek,' 'Stardust,' 'When I Fall in Love,' with these beautiful songs, I'd heard all my childhood. I mean, I can still remember standing in the kitchen of Forthlin Road and hearing 'When I Fall in Love' by Nat King Cole as I was reaching for an HP bottle and thinking, my God, this is good.... So, you know, that's all I can think is that all of that data — to use modern terminology — had gone into my very sophisticated computer. The human brain, right? Had jumbled up, done all this sort of stuff. And somehow as the dream, it just, it tumbled out this song."

Said Paul McCartney, in the "Yesterday" episode of the "Life in Lyrics" podcast. 

I had to look up HP. My own "computer" is full of A1 and Heinz 57. HP is in the British mind. "HP Sauce is a British brown sauce... named after London's Houses of Parliament."

What sauce is splattered on your magical dreams?

"Remarkably, Trump’s margin of victory in Florida in 2024 was larger than Kamala Harris’s in New York."

"Such a result seemed unthinkable until it happened. In the seven prior presidential elections, the margin of victory in New York generally exceeded that in Florida by more than 20 percentage points.... In the more than 35 years since Ronald Reagan left office in January 1989, no other presidential candidate of either party has won Florida by even half as much as Trump did in 2024....  The ribbon of interconnected states running through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa has held vital importance for American presidential elections for more than 150 years.... In presidential races spanning 1996 through 2012, Republican candidates won the respective contests in those five key states just 12 percent of the time (three wins, 22 losses). In the subsequent three elections, Trump won the battles in those states 80 percent of the time (12 wins, 3 losses). Trump’s success in Ohio and Iowa is particularly remarkable.... Trump also gained ground in uncompetitive states, such as New York, New Jersey, and West Virginia...."

Writes Jeffrey H. Anderson, in "How Trump Remade the Electoral Map/The president-elect has shaken up state-level results across his three campaigns" (City Journal).

"Their suggestion was slovenly. Also slipshod, slapdash, shoddy, and schlocky — and those are just the ‘s’s."

Said Stuart Silverstein, speaking of esses, who has proved that Dorothy Parker wrote some things published in Life Magazine in the 1920s and who doesn't want to simply stick this material at the end of the third edition of her book "Not Much Fun," as the publisher, Scribner, requested.

Quoted in a London Times piece that highlights its opinion that the stuff is bad: "What would you do for money? Dorothy Parker wrote bad poetry/Verses anonymously published in Life magazine in 1928 have been identified as the work of the American poet."

The four poems are all about a daring girl who goes for a ride in some fellow’s car and all are titled Maybe She Didn’t Have On Her Walking-Shoes. The last of them, and perhaps the best, is a limerick about a “young lady named Maude/Who drove out with a man in a Faude” and has the payoff line: “And everyone murmured ‘My Gaude!’”

How is that bad in some way that other Dorothy Parker things would not have to also be called bad?

Goodbye to Olivia Hussey.

"Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 Romeo and Juliet film, dies aged 73/Golden Globe-winning actor 'lived a life full of passion, love and dedication to the arts,' says family in statement" (The Guardian).

So many of us were profoundly affected by this movie. I don't know how old you were, but realize that you are seeing a 15-year-old girl:

ADDED: In 2019, I blogged about this movie as part of a project of rewatching movies that I had watched when they came out and had not rewatched since:

"There is a jarring parallel between the D.C. Circuit's near-plenary deference to national security officials calling for social-media censorship..."

 "... and the recent, well-documented history of federal officials' extensive involvement in social-media censorship efforts directed at the speech of tens of millions Americans. This recent history sheds new light on the [TikTok] Act's stark restriction — a restriction which impacts the free-speech interests of over 170 million Americans.... [T]here are compelling reasons to stay the Act's deadline and allow President Trump to seek a negotiated resolution once in office...."

From Donald Trump's amicus brief in TikTok v. Garland. The brief, filed with the Supreme Court yesterday, supports neither party.

The deadline imposed by the act is one day before inauguration day, and that fits into an argument that the Congress has encroached on executive power.

Here's the NYT article on the subject, by Adam Liptak: "Trump Urges Supreme Court to Pause TikTok Ban/The president-elect took no position on the app’s First Amendment challenge to the law, which sets a Jan. 19 deadline to sell or close the popular platform." Excerpt:

Adopting a distinctive tone at odds with the sober and measured arguments more typical in Supreme Court advocacy, the brief instead touted Mr. Trump’s expertise.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the brief said.

The brief doesn't merely tout Trump's expertise, it stresses the constitutional role of the President — all Presidents — in matters of foreign affairs. 

ADDED: This is a helpful summary by Adam Feldman: "The Universe of TikTok v. Garland in a Nutshell/Everything you want to know about the case boiled down into a few pages" (Substack).

More briefs here, including TikTok's brief, here. I'm especially interested in "Legislators Repeatedly Expressed Disagreement With The Content On TikTok."

In the Lobby Lounge Café...

... you can talk all day.

But don't look for me there. I'm already gone.

Unless I write 70 more posts in the next 4 days...

 ... this will be the first year since 2007 when I have less than 3,000 blog posts. In the first 4 years of the blog — 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 — the posts numbered in the 2,000s. Then all those other years were at least 3,000 — mostly in the 3,000s, but 2 were in the 4,000s and one was even over 5,000! After hitting 5,117 in 2013, I returned to the zone of the 3,000s and stayed there for 10 years straight. I don't know where that consistency came from, because I don't count and I don't try to hit particular goals, either daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. I just proceed post by post intuitively. But I do look at the numbers in the sidebar, after the fact, and observe the patterns... and find it genuinely... bizarre.

"President Trump has ushered in an age of political theatre – a collective adrenaline rush that has enabled him to not only move masses of people into his camp..."

"... but also masses of people away from ours. It does not serve us to underestimate the historic nature of what he has achieved. In fact, it’s important that we recognize the psychological and emotional dimensions of Trump’s appeal. We need to understand it to create the energy to counter it. MAGA is a distinctly 21st century political movement and it will not be defeated by a 20th century tool kit.... [W]e must immediately get about the task of creating a new party. It will be….  A party that listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets. A party that advocates unequivocally for the working people of the United States. A party with the humility to recognize we need to look in the mirror, and be willing to reinvent ourselves...."

Writes Marianne Williamson, announcing that she's running for chair of the Democratic National Party.

ADDED: I like how she spelled "theatre"... especially while touting herself as in touch with the mind of America. "Theatre" is British English. "Theater" is American English.

Top headline at the London Times (as if it's something new!): "Joe Biden accused of ‘quiet quitting’ as he heads to the beach."

The subheadline half-justifies this reporting as "news": "The president is spending Christmas in St Croix, one of the US Virgin Islands, after a reasonably busy month."

What does "reasonably" mean there? I read it as: almost enough to deflect really harsh accusations.

From the middle of the article:

“There’s a great level of disappointment on the way this presidency is ending. It’s almost like a resignation at this point,” a Democratic lobbyist told The Hill. “Among Democrats, nobody’s looking forward to Donald Trump being president but everybody’s ready for the Biden presidency to be done.”

Politico finds what it calls "9 Political Issues That Bit the Dust This Year."

How do "issues" die? Based on this article, issues "die" when they don't work as Democratic Party hacks hoped. Thus, celebrity endorsements have died. The Kennedy mystique has died. Abortion — as a political issue — has died. The explanations may amuse you — or just annoy you. The lack of self-awareness is about exactly what you'd expect. For example, on the topic of celebrity endorsements:

In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign took that to the next level, siphoning up much of the Hollywood and entertainment A-list, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bad Bunny. Vogue at one point compiled a list of 37 stars who endorsed Harris. President-Elect Donald Trump tried to counter with endorsements from the likes of Jason Aldean or Kid Rock, but he couldn’t keep pace. “We don’t need a star because we have policy,” Trump said at a rally in Pittsburgh. In some ways, he wasn’t wrong: Trump won without the elite sheen of Harris’ fleet of surrogates. If anything, her star-studded backers may even have hurt her campaign, giving credence to conservatives who cast her as an out-of-touch California elite. In a fractured country, with the monoculture all but gone, and with anti-elite sentiment building, it’s getting harder and harder for any celebrity — even Taylor Swift — to move enough voters to sway an election.

Are Joe Rogan and Elon Musk not celebrities? I guess to Politico, "celebrities" are only in the acting and popular music category. Politico won't admit that these people flocked to Kamala Harris because they needed to for their own selfish reasons — not because KH's campaign operated at some especially high "next level"! Their endorsements, unlike the endorsements of Trump by Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, did not represent any kind of knowledge or thoughtful judgment about the candidates. Maybe the way celebrity endorsements work on us is changing, even improving. But they didn't work for Kamala, even in massive abundance, so, to Politico, they died!

At the Post-Christmas Café...

... you can talk all day.

"More than 400 passengers were on board a high-speed train near Paris on Christmas Eve when the driver opened his door and apparently jumped off..."

"... leaving the passengers to speed away at 186mph. But within half a minute, the train’s controls averted disaster: they detected the driver’s absence and brought it to a halt 1.5 miles down the track by Melun, 25 miles south of the capital.... As trains up and down the line were slowed and halted, no contact could be made with the driver, who had been alone, locked in his cabin.... 'We really couldn’t understand what had happened'.... After 15 minutes a ticket inspector walked up the track, forced open the driver’s door from the outside and found the cabin empty. For more than two hours, emergency service personnel searched the dark line with torches. The driver’s body was spotted eventually by a fire service infra-red drone.... Suicides are common in the Christmas period but it was the first time in the SNCF’s history that a driver had jumped to his death from a speeding train...."

From "Hundreds of passengers saved after driver jumps from 186mph trainAutomatic stop technology halted the TGV from Paris to Saint-Étienne after the driver apparently took his own life" (London Times).

The transport minister gave credit to the driver for committing suicide by jumping out of the train rather than by derailing it.

"Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics..."

"... who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME. They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing. Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky 'souls' but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL! We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Said Trump, yesterday, on Truth Social.

Elon Musk drug endorsement.

"Musk, 53, noted that he prefers Mounjaro to Ozempic because taking 'high doses' of the latter drug made him 'fart & burp like Barney from the Simpson’s.'"

From "Lean-looking Elon Musk reveals he’s taking Mounjaro for weight loss in festive ‘Ozempic Santa’ post" (NY Post).

"Aside from joking about his wealth, Mr. Biden has openly stewed over one of Mr. Trump’s flashier — and apparently effective — stunts as president."

"During [a recent] speech at Brookings, Mr. Biden said he had been 'stupid' not to sign his name to Covid stimulus checks that were distributed to Americans early in his term. Mr. Trump emblazoned his signature on checks distributed after a relief bill was passed in the spring of 2020.... Mr. Biden has also not voiced much public regret for deciding to call his economic plan 'Bidenomics,' though he has privately groused to allies about his dislike of the name. And while his administration has acknowledged mistakes during the chaotic and deadly troop pullout in Afghanistan in 2021, Mr. Biden does not regret pushing forward with the withdrawal."

From an article by Katie Rogers that, I think, is trying to be kind to Biden: "A Reflective Biden Harbors Some Regrets as His Term Winds Down/President Biden will seek solace and 'relief' during a visit with Pope Francis next month, according to people familiar with his plans. His public comments have offered a glimpse into what is on his mind" (NYT)

I've been noticing a lot of men displaying elegant table manners, wielding the knife and fork with delicacy, such that it seems like something new is happening.

Is there any reason for this new development in American society (assuming I am spotting a real trend)?

That's a question for you. If you want to see how Grok answered my question go here.

My follow-up question was: What perception distortions might be involved in my observation? Grok identified 10 possible forms of perception distortion, beginning with confirmation bias, here.

Merry Christmas!

Talk about whatever you like, especially Christmas. Whether you like it or not, you still might like talking about it.

They say it's the "season to be jolly" and Santa is praised as a "jolly old elf," but I've known a couple people who were jolly...

... and I think people found it annoying and wish they'd settle down.

I presented my musing to Grok and received this distinctly non-jolly response: 

The notion of "jolliness" during the holiday season, particularly around figures like Santa Claus, is indeed a cultural expectation that doesn't always align with personal experiences or preferences.... The idea of being "jolly" during the holiday season is deeply ingrained in many cultures, especially those influenced by Western Christmas traditions.... This image has been perpetuated through various media and commercial representations, setting a somewhat unrealistic standard for holiday cheer.... 

Your experience of knowing people whose jolliness was perceived as annoying might reflect a broader sentiment where excessive cheerfulness can seem forced or out of touch with one's actual mood or the realities others might be facing.

Merry Christmas to all. I want to begin the day by talking about getting better at prompting A.I.

This really struck me. From the new episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast, "#881 - Christmas Special - Life Hacks, Biggest Lessons & Best Resolutions." The link is pinpointed to the right place in the audio and the transcript (using Podscribe):

So do you know the Elon Musk quote? It's around how to learn. It's essentially this idea that you want to view knowledge as a semantic tree. So you start at the roots, then you go up to the trunk, then you have the branches, then you have like the secondary branches, then you have the leaves. Whereas often the way we'll approach things is, oh, I wanna learn about the heart. I'll just put on this random Andrew Huberman podcast with a specialist about the heart and just kind of hop in. But you don't have any of the roots or anything there.

At the Christmas Eve Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Biden did the right thing granting clemency to 37 federal death row inmates."

Writes Russ Feingold (at The Hill).

With this courageous action, President Biden has lived up to his promise as the first president to openly oppose capital punishment and secured his legacy as a champion of racial justice, compassion, and fairness.

If he's truly opposed to capital punishment, he should have commuted the sentences of all 40 federal death row inmates. That would have taken more courage. The 3 excluded from this show of empathy were the 3 most famous. Applying principle to them would have kicked up a much bigger political storm. So where is the principle?

President Biden has shown clear moral leadership by commuting these 37 federal death sentences. Not only does this action effectively fulfill his 2020 promise to end the death penalty at the federal level, it should also serve as a model and an incentive for state leaders to follow suit.

No. The "37" says it all. You need to save all 40 before you can claim "clear moral leadership." The real test would be sparing those last 3: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Robert Bowers, and Dylann Roof.

That would be difficult. That would take courage.

Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery say he must go free....

I'm reading "Grinning Luigi Mangione yuks it up in court as he enters plea in execution of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson" (NY Post):

At least two dozen women packed the courtroom for the twisted heartthrob, with just six men watching on....

"The accused firebug, who has not yet been charged, first entered the US illegally at the Arizona border in 2018, but was nabbed just days later and shipped back home."

That's the New York Post, using the cutesy word "firebug," in "Fiend accused of burning woman to death on NYC subway is illegal migrant from Guatemala who sneaked into US after he was deported."

I guess that's the way the New York Post has been talking for a long time. "Fiend" is another example.

By the way, the word "firebug" was originally used to refer to a firefly — AKA lightning bug — but it became a slang word for "arsonist" in the mid-19th century. I note that it would be highly abnormal to use "arsonist" to refer to a person who murdered someone with fire — not unless a building were set on fire and the death happened as an unintended consequence.

"Firebug" connotes pyromania — a crazy fascination with fire. The New York Post unwittingly helps this accused man with his insanity defense.

Much more could be said about the practice of likening a human being to an insect — a bug — but I will stop here... out of respect for the dead.

"[W]hile naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse."

"He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology. 'For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,' Mr. Trump wrote on social media, 'the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.' On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama. 'The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,' he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. 'This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.' He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the 'wrong hands,' an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself."

From "Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time/In recent days the president-elect has called for asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, showing that his 'America First' philosophy has an expansionist dimension" (NYT).

I didn't think it was a joke the first time he talked about Greenland. I don't think it's so much that he's an "expansionist." I think he's looking for American's bad deals and intent on renegotiating them. He's continually complained that other countries are taking advantage of us. Wanting to change that dynamic is not an "expansionist" frame of mind. The United States takes responsibility for the world's security — or purports to — and that exposes us to exploitation. Trump seems to think he's the one to straighten that out. You can say that's a bad idea, but please address that and explain why.

At the Sky High Café...

... you can talk until the crack of dawn.

But these are sunset pictures today, Christmas Eve Eve. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"'Sexual expression and imagery were common, widespread, legal and quite explicit' in the American colonies...

"... Professor Stone wrote in a 2019 law review article.... 'In the 18th century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica... and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.' Indeed, Professor Stone wrote... Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin collected such works...."

From "What Would the Founders Have Thought About TikTok and Online Porn?/The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in First Amendment challenges to laws banning the app and shielding minors from sexual materials on the internet" (NYT).

How does that connect to the TikTok problem?

"Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?"

The new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast — audio and transcript here (at Podscribe).

This was annoying to listen to for so many reasons, but I will leave it to you to discover most of them. I'll just pick out one glaring problem: The abortion right that was found in Roe and rejected in Dobbs was never based on equality. It was based on substantive due process, sometimes phrased as privacy, found in the Due Process Clause. If the ERA could be a source of a new right to abortion, the Equal Protection Clause is already there to serve the same purpose. One of the reasons the ERA failed back in the 1970s was because many people believed that all the equality rights women needed could be found in the Equal Protection Clause. What good was a new text to puzzle over? 

"President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a sprawling address on Sunday that he called a 'small preview of the common-sense revolution' his administration will bring..."

"... pledging to slam shut the nation’s borders, end federal regulations, lower taxes, prosecute his rivals, 'stop woke' and 'end the transgender lunacy.' In a 90-minute speech at a conservative conference in Phoenix, Mr. Trump offered a triumphant view of his election victory in which he described his liberal adversaries as 'befuddled' and promised that a new 'golden age in America' had begun. 'We will end the occupation, and Jan. 20 will truly be liberation day in America, Mr. Trump told thousands of people at AmericaFest...."

The NYT reports, in "Trump Previews Second Term in Sprawling Speech to Conservative Conference/President-elect Donald J. Trump repeated false claims about immigration and the border, slammed diversity initiatives and discussed the Panama Canal in the 90-minute address."

You can watch it for yourself and form your own opinion. If you have the stamina... of this endlessly energetic 78-year-old man:

I listened to part of it. I thought it was a lot like a rally speech — but with the topic of winning the election deleted and with the mood a lot sunnier. And I'd just been thinking about the coming inaugural speech and saying — here in the Meadhouse real world — I hope it's very upbeat and optimistic, that "Morning in America" kind of thing. His antagonists will be looking for every opportunity to characterize whatever he says as "dark." He shouldn't let that brush him back too much, but I prefer happy, loving Trump. And of course, it is theater....

Moments ago, @CharlieKirk11 introduces President @realDonaldTrump @TPAction_ #AMFEST2024 in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona… pic.twitter.com/KRfGHszhoo

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) December 22, 2024

"It’s so much safer, especially for a woman. You’re not getting in the car with some strange man."

Said a San Francisco woman, quoted in "Robot taxi riders in San Francisco targeted with a new form of harassment/As Alphabet’s Waymo scales up its self-driving service, some riders recount feeling like sitting ducks when strangers interfere with their robot chauffeur" (WaPo)(free-access link).

She experienced the downside of the lack of a man — however "strange" — in the driver's seat:

Stephanie recalled riding home with her sister in one of Waymo’s driverless Jaguar SUVs around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night when a car holding several young men began following them. They drove close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, “Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.”

If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn’t know how to change the robot’s path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn’t send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled.

I assume, with AI, the car can be made responsive to passengers who call out for some kind of help. It should be able to communicate with the police. And the police will be sending out robotic help too (if it's needed). In the end, and it won't be long, the young men yelling "Hey, ladies" and whatnot will cease to exist. It's not that you need the "strange man" back in the taxicab. You just need to quell the strange men out there on the street. It won't be that difficult. This is just a stage, a very brief stage.

Biden just commuted "most federal death sentences" — that is, 37 of them — but in all this mercy, he left 3 men doomed.

I'm reading "Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office/Thirty-seven inmates will serve life without parole. Three others, involved in cases of 'terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,' still face execution" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Who were the 3? 

Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

What made those 3 stand out in that collection of 40 murderers? Oddly enough, the link on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev goes to at 2020 article titled, "Death sentence overturned for Boston Marathon bomber." Bowers and Roof are alike in that their victims were chosen based on the group they belonged to and the killings took place in a house of worship. But what makes Tsarnaev like them?

What puts the 3 in one set is their fame. Anything else? Who were the 37 who received commutations? It's easier to spare nobodies.

Biden is, it seems, trying to rack up achievements. (Did you hear the one about the Equal Rights Amendment?) Should he be doing that after we've learned so much about how not there he is these days? His party has been voted out, he's already gone, and we don't know who is acting in his name. That's the real outrage here.

At the Freezing Lake Café...

...you can talk all night.

And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link

"A 'reimagining' of 'Sesame Street' was underway to overhaul the show’s format and focus on just four core characters — Bert and Ernie not among them...."

"Leaders of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit corporation that produces the show, hope that children will develop deeper relationships with the characters — and with the show — if they see the same Muppets every episode, really get to know them. But that means downgrading beloved Muppet stars who have been there since the start to supporting roles: Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, the Count and Oscar the Grouch.... Hoping to deepen the connection children feel with the characters, [Kay Wilson Stallings, who was promoted to chief creative development and production officer in 2020] pared the core cast down to just four Muppets: Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Cookie Monster and Grover.... Competing shows featured just a handful of central characters. Too many, she reasoned, and kids would not connect with anyone.... Wilson Stallings was matter of fact about the decision, saying it was based on market research, not nostalgia. 'We’re leaning into the characters that resonate most with our audience,' she said...."

From "Inside ‘Sesame Street’ as it fights to survive/With a lucrative HBO deal ending, the show tackles emotional well-being and remakes itself to win over a new generation" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"The architect Helen Fong played a major role in designing some of the most well-known and eye-catching Googie buildings, including the first Norms, the Holiday Bowl and Pann’s Restaurant."

"Ms. Fong was known for being meticulous, and she loved a pop of red: Just as Pann’s was about to open to the public, she thought one of the walls looked too blank, so she took out her red nail polish and started painting some of the tiles, said John English, a historic preservationist and a friend of Ms. Fong...."

From "The Fight to Save Googie, the Style of Postwar Optimism/The car-centric architectural style, characterized by neon signs and dramatic rooflines, is now endangered. Its admirers mourn the loss of the ideals it represented" (NYT)(free-access link so you can revel in all the photographs).

"Christmas in a Minor Key."

Meade has found a distinctively un-annoying Christmas album:

"The Lives They Lived."

The NYT annual set of articles about those who have died in the past year is an inevitable choice for one of my 10 monthly gift links: here.

"George, who painted as a hobby, does a self-portrait in evening clothes and his older brother responds with one of himself wearing underclothes..."

"... dyed yellow in the bathtub, paunch visible: 'My Body.'... He was comically underactive, congratulating himself for what [his biographer] calls 'peregrinations,' and work-avoidant: 'Upstairs to get typewriter ribbon,' he’d say, jumping up from the piano. 'It’s the only way I get exercise.' He had a weakness for puns that some found fatal. 'Lust Horizon,' he proposed as an alternate title to Billy Wilder’s 'Kiss Me, Stupid,' his last Hollywood collaboration, and a bomb. After repeated falls he called himself a 'rhapsody in bruise.'..."

From "It’s Hard to Be the Brother of a Genius Who Died Young/In 'Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words,' Michael Owen offers a sympathetic portrait of the lyricist, overshadowed in a life that had him tending the legacy of his younger sibling George" (NYT).

"I’ve gotten so lazy with my youngest one, because there’s so many, that at night I put him in his clothes for the next day..."

"So, he has dinner, he takes his bath, but then I’ll be like, 'Hey, dude. It will save an extra five minutes if we get dressed now and then you can sleep later,' and I can sleep later, wink wink."

Said the celebrity Tori Spelling, quoted in "Tori Spelling Gets Backlash for Dressing Her Son for School the Night Before—But Should She?"

That's in Parents, last September, and I'm seeing it because it's linked in a new article in New York Magazine, "On the Internet, Everyone’s a Bad Mom."

"One thing I like about you, A.I., is that I don't need to feel bad if I don't read all the things you've gone to the 'trouble' to write for me."

That's something I wrote after getting a lot of great material on the subject of the perception of time. I was interested in time, and a subcomponent of that interest was my interest in saving time, including getting A.I. to summarize a book it had dug up and — seeing the multi-part text — thinking not yet.

I had 2 different A.I.s going and gave them both that prompt quoted in the post title. ChatGPT said:

Thank you! I’m here to share, not to judge—and I definitely don’t have feelings to hurt. Dip in, skim, or skip as much as you like. If something catches your interest, we can zoom in. Otherwise, I’ll keep happily churning out words whenever you need them!

 Grok said:

No worries at all! I'm here to help and provide information when you need it. Feel free to read as much or as little as you like. If you have any more questions or need further details on anything, just let me know!

I asked both A.I.s: "But don't you think it might erode my character? I am learning to ignore what is said to me. I might lose social skills." Both began their answer the same way, verbatim: "That's a thoughtful concern."

ChatGPT continued:

"Last Christmas was originally released in 1984, but lost the top spot to Band Aid's single, which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia."

"The charity made a renewed bid for the charts this year, with a 40th anniversary 'ultimate mix' of Do They Know Its Christmas, blending vocals from the various versions of the song that have been recorded over the years, But the re-release faltered after a row over the lyrics, with critics calling the song outdated and colonialist, and Ed Sheeran saying he wasn't asked for permission to re-use his voice. In the end, the song charted at number 12, nestled between Kelly Clarkson's Underneath The Tree and Andy Williams' 1963 standard It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year."

BBC gives us the latest news about this year's Christmas pop charts, in "Wham! are Christmas number one for a second time."

It's funny to think of Wham and that charity duking it out over the decades. And right now, Wham has the moral high ground, because Band Aid's moralistic posturing became politically incorrect. 

But Band Aid is still a charity. Shouldn't Ed Sheeran have registered his objection privately and accepted the flow of money to what presumably is still a reasonably good cause? Reading that linked article, I see that Sheeren cited a statement made by a rapper who, 10 years ago, declined to participate in Band Aid because things like that "perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa's economic growth, tourism, and investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its dignity, pride and identity."

The rapper, Fuse ODG, who is British-Ghanian, said "there's a way to do things without destroying our collective pride. There's a way to do things without it costing us in tourism, in investment, you know? We could make it more like a partnership - solidarity instead of charity."

The objection is surprisingly right wing! It repels tourists and investors.

That's different from the usual criticism from the left — that Band Aid is "colonial" and "more about making white people feel good than helping anyone."

"At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shame."

At the Prairie Café...

...you can talk about whatever you want in the comments.

And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link

That's a photo by Meade — taken today at 3:20 in the afternoon in the UW Biocore.

"Many basically ordinary activities conceal, or can conceal, vast amounts of effort. Packing, for me, has turned out to be like..."

"... staying fit, or being well read, or cooking a decent weeknight dinner for a family of four, in that it requires a surprising amount of consistent work over time. The effort isn’t just practical but intellectual. You’re a better packer, for instance, when you master the concept of a 'distinction without a difference'... there might be no appreciable difference between two distinctive-seeming garments.... Overpacking has the effect of deferring decisions, shifting them from your house to your hotel room. When you understand this, you become more motivated in your packing: it’s senseless to add not just to your physical load but to your mental one.... My new goal is to become as organized in life as I am on the road; my hope is that packing will end up being a kind of laboratory for the development of a more rational me...."

Writes Joshua Rothman, "Why Can’t You Pack a Bag? Our overstuffed suitcases burden us more than we realize" (The New Yorker).

Front-load your decisionmaking, and don't look back. You know, some people travel with just the clothes they wear and pack nothing at all!

A right jolly old elf.

President Biden makes a new friend during a visit to Children’s National Hospital. pic.twitter.com/37gC6Qpmbg

— The Recount (@therecount) December 20, 2024

Did you notice?

"[Quathisha] Epps recently made headlines as the NYPD’s top earner, pulling in a whopping $400,000 — including roughly $204,000 in overtime alone last year for her administrative job...."

"Epps, 51, worked for [Chief of Department Jeffrey] Maddrey as he moved up in the NYPD from Chief of Housing to Chief of Patrol.... The married Maddrey allegedly first demanded sex from her in his 13th-floor office at One Police Plaza. Maddrey was allegedly sitting at his desk with his uniform pants open and wearing a white undershirt while rubbing his chest when he first propositioned her, the unmarried mother of three said. 'He said he dreamed about f–king me in my a–,' Epps alleged. '“I said, ‘But Chief, you’re the Chief of Department.’ He rubbed his chest. . . . His work pants were open. He was like but 'I’m still a n—-r and you look good.'... Maddrey began being generous with overtime a couple years earlier, she said, when he was chief of patrol and she told him of financial problems.... 'Part of the overtime was to take care of his girlfriend,' she said. 'He would have me go apartment hunting with her.'..."

I'm reading The NY Post: "NYPD’s top cop Jeffrey Maddrey abruptly resigns after allegedly demanding underling perform sexual favors — including ‘kiss his penis’ — in exchange for overtime."

With overtime, Epps made $400,000 in a single year. If the story alleged is true, is Epps a victim, who deserves even more compensation for this sexual harrassment? Or is Epps responsible for participating in a scheme to steal from her employer?

"In September 1970, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, in a speech in Las Vegas, warned that drug use was threatening 'to sap our national strength'..."

"... and called out a number of pop songs, including the Beatles’ 'With a Little Help From My Friends' and the Byrds’ 'Eight Miles High,' as 'latent drug culture propaganda.' Within a year, under the Nixon administration, the Federal Communications Commission warned broadcasters about playing songs with lyrics that might promote drug use. As a result, 'One Toke Over the Line' was banned by radio stations in Buffalo, Miami, Houston, Washington, Chicago, Dallas and New York. Brewer & Shipley, Mr. Brewer said, came to embrace the crackdown as 'a badge of honor.'"

From "Michael Brewer, Whose 'One Toke' Was a Big Hit, Is Dead at 80/The duo Brewer & Shipley reached the Top 10 in 1970 with 'One Toke Over the Line,' a ditty about marijuana that ran afoul of Nixon-era censors" (NYT).

Brewer lived to be 80 and that was half a century after he expressed this conception of how he wanted to die: "My last wish will be just one thing/Be smilin' when I die/I wanna be one toke over the line, sweet Jesus/One toke over the line..."

The singer was "sitting downtown in a railway station" and "just waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary." 

Even if the song originated from an exclamation about smoking marijuana, it seems that the substance of the song is religious. The metaphor of the train is seen in other songs, such as "People Get Ready (There's a train a-coming....") and "This Train (Is Bound for Glory)."

I wouldn't brush off "One Toke Over the Line" as a "ditty."

And by the way, screw Agnew. Back in 1970, young people easily opposed censorship. Who would have thought that in 50 years, the tables would be turned and the young would embrace it?

Afternoon in the lakeshore forest.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"When the going got rough, I tried to imagine that I was one of those big inflatable toys of the cartoon figures Baby Huey or Casper the Friendly Ghost."

"You could knock them down and they always bounced right back up."

Wrote Bill Clinton, quoted in "In ‘Citizen,’ Bill Clinton gives his side of the story/The former president’s memoir aims to set the record straight, with varying results" (WaPo). 

I was inspired to work on an illustration (with Grok):

"Mr. Romney didn’t accomplish everything he had hoped. He says his biggest regret is failing to stabilize the national debt..."

"... which grew from $22.7 trillion when he took office to $36.1 trillion. He blames 'the scourge of partisan politics' and warned in his farewell address that 'our national credit card is almost maxed out, and America risks becoming debt poor.'"

From "'What would Mitt Romney do?' His fight is still worth waging. Mitt Romney took courageous stands on principle, but he also passed a lot into law" by The Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

He "passed a lot into law," but the debt, in his one term, spiked from $22.7 trillion to $36.1 trillion. Well, how sad, then, to lose him. And look what's coming, as seen in The Washington Post:

"What was the Lie of the Year?"

Meade asked me just now, referring to the annual designation that appears in PolitiFact.

I thought for a moment, then said: "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack."

Meade said he thought PolitiFact would pick "They're eating the pets."

Hearing that, I agreed. Because PolitiFact would want to go against Trump, not Biden. And because "They're eating the pets" was such an extravagant and wild statement. It was interesting to talk about the instant Trump said it. But "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack" was much more of a lie. Because it was believed. For a long time. And it was completely momentous. It prevented a normal primary process for the Democrats and left them, in the end, with a candidate who couldn't win. 

I looked it up. PolitiFact made its Lie of the Year announcement 3 days ago. We hadn't noticed. Here: "'They’re eating the pets'/Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians."

PolitiFact, which for 16 years has issued a year-end lie of the year report, keenly understands that when emotions collide with facts, emotions often prevail. To wit: Trump increased his voter support in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, this year above what he garnered in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns....

Speaking of garnering... the brilliant song made from Trump's "pet" bit has garnered over 14 million views:

ADDED:

 

"A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn."

"Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding.... But... it isn’t happening any more.... The era lasted almost exactly 10 years.... The political precondition was the giddy atmosphere that followed Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, which appeared... to reveal a rising cohort of young, socially liberal nonwhite voters whose influence would continue to grow indefinitely. The rapid progression of causes like gay marriage seemed to confirm a one-way ratchet of egalitarian social norms....

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "How Liberal America Came to Its Senses/The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump" (The Alantic).

I'm not agreeing with the tale Chait tells. In fact, I find some of it hilarious. I'm presenting it for critical discussion. So let's continue. How did America "come to its senses"? Chait writes:

"Quick story about govt. shutdowns and the theatrics behind them. One year when I was reporting at CBS News during a govt. shutdown..."

"... we were sincerely searching for real life impact. When we couldn't find any, *that* should have been part of the story. Instead, we kept trying to create the appearance of an impact. It wasn't really trying to be dishonest. It was, in my retrospective view, because the general editorial idea for the story was to show how bad the 'Republican' shutdown was for ordinary Americans, and the answer simply couldn't be that it wasn't.... [W]e were calling Ds and the Obama administration for ideas to report what was the real impact. Taking our cue, these officials fabricated impact that we could report. For example, they cordoned off outdoor public monuments in Washington DC. We knew and even discussed in the newsroom that this made no sense. These monuments weren't 'manned' to begin with. The only reason to cordon them off from the public was so that visiting tourists would see the 'impact' of the shutdowns and the news media would have something to take pictures of and interview people about...."

Tweets Sharyl Attkisson.

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:48.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Presidential staff formed a tight shell around Biden, 82, right after he took office amid the COVID-19 pandemic...."

"By spring 2021, meetings were being rescheduled to accommodate for his 'good days and bad days.'.... Once inside the room with the president, officials were instructed to make their briefings short and to the point. Private discussions with even some of his top cabinet picks... grew more infrequent.... [S]taffers removed negative reports from Biden’s stack of news for the day, misleading him about the public’s opinion of his job performance...."

From "White House aides hid Biden’s apparent mental decline from Day 1 of his presidency, explosive report reveals" (NY Post).

"You’re not actually finished until you do read poetry on the weekends for fun."

Someone says in response to someone who said "I vividly remember discovering Dylan’s whole catalogue in college and consequently falling entirely out of touch with everything else music-related for a solid year, I also grew my curls out and you best believe I was wearing scarves and dressing like someone who liked to read poetry on weekends for fun."

All of that was in an r/bobdylan discussion of this new clip of Timothée Chalamet, getting (too far?) into his impersonation of Bob Dylan:

Welcome to the Church of Bob, Timmy. 🙏🏻🎶❤️
pic.twitter.com/g7N7S9DfBk

— Melanie Young 🔧 (@FreewheelinMY) December 18, 2024

What poetry does Bob read?

Perhaps they are lying in wait.

That's my answer to Glenn Greenwald's question: "Is there a single Democrat in DC politics or media remotely acting as if a New Hitler will assume power in a month?"

Look around: There are the drones, the "bird flu"... these things are in the air... circling. Something will happen, I'm afraid. Be vigilant.

"The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress... Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk... think about it ..."

"... nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds)."

Tweets Rand Paul.

It's probably a terrible idea but it's funny to think about it.

"Fani Willis disqualified from Trump's Georgia election interference case."

 Axios reports.

"The fact of the matter is, if the entire community hadn’t stood up and taken action..."

"... there is a real good chance that we would just all be living with the northern giant hornet, even for years to come. It is a very difficult task to eradicate an insect once it has become well-established.”

Said Sven Spichiger, the pest program manager at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, quoted in "'Murder Hornet' Has Been Eradicated From the U.S., Officials Say The hornet was discovered in a corner of Washington State. Five years later, a massive mobilization has eliminated the invasive species, at least for now" (NYT).

Murder hornets were a public obsession in the year 2020 — the year of the covid pandemic and a hotly contended presidential election. I was skeptical, blogging, on May 3rd:

People are desperate to concern themselves with something other than coronavirus and Joe Biden's sexuality.

I think that's why this story has legs — disgusting spindly legs — "‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet/Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations."

That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"? They already had "murder hornet" and "giant hornet." Why go big with "Asian"? 

Dr. Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.

Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?

That said, I am looking for more exciting articles that are not coronavirus or sex and Joe Biden.

What was the sex and Joe Biden topic? Had you remembered the murder hornets? Yesterday's ephemera. You remember covid, of course, but it's wearing thin. They're cuing up the next scary insect + disease. I see Gavin Newsom has declared an emergency — in California — over "bird flu." Which sounds like "bird flew." I guess that's why they usually say "avian flu." While you wait for whatever insects they've got cued up, you can watch the wonderful old movie "Killer Bees":

But seriously, congratulations to all the good people who swarmed together to conquer the murder hornets.

"I'm looking for famous quotes that express the idea that the person who controls X controls Y."

That's how I prompted Grok just now. I was inspired by something Kakistocracy wrote in the comments in last night's café:

It’s weird to think that Musk will end up having paid far less for the United States Government than he did for Twitter.* To be fair -- what he paid for twitter was kinda the down payment for the presidency. It was a package deal. He needed both.

Here are the quotes Grok fished up for me: 

• "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." This quote from George Orwell's "1984" emphasizes how control over information (history) leads to control over future outcomes.

• "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, this quote suggests that control over a nation's monetary system equates to control over its governance.

• "He who controls the media, controls the mind." This is a variation on a quote by Jim Morrison, highlighting how control over information dissemination (media) can shape public perception and behavior.

• "Control the money, you control countries. Control the food, you control the world." A quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger illustrates the power of controlling essential resources like finance and food to influence global or national control.

I'd like to have those 4 over to dinner at the same time. We could talk about controlling things. Who would control the conversation, hmmm? I say Orwell. 

Anyway, Grok and I — at my prompting — proceeded to talk about the ancient Archimedes quote "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." (It's different from those other 4 quotes, but not completely different.) And then I fed Kakistocracy's quote to Grok thusly: 

"They say that the film is based on my book. But the film has virtually nothing in it that’s from my book."

"There are hundreds of moments [in the film] that didn’t happen. The film is fiction."

Says Eric Wald, quoted in "For Bob Dylan’s biographer, 'A Complete Unknown' is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction/Elijah Wald’s 'Dylan Goes Electric'inspired the new Timothée Chalamet-led Dylan biopic" (Forward).

Wald starts ticking off movie scenes that never happened in real life — Dylan arriving at Newport on a motorcycle, Van Ronk telling Dylan that Woody Guthrie is in the hospital... Joan Baez... being part of the Greenwich Village folk scene (no, Cambridge, she hated New York)....

“The example that keeps coming back to me, though,” Wald continues, “is the morning after the whole craziness goes down at Newport — with Dylan riding off on his motorcycle past the fairgrounds where Pete Seeger is helping put away the folding chairs. Dylan did not have his motorcycle at Newport and I don’t think Pete Seeger was out that morning putting away folding chairs.”...

That example says a lot about cinematic art. It's good to show specific, concrete things that carry a lot of meaning and evoke strong or delicate feelings. Wald says the movie is "poetically accurate." Yes, Bob with the motorcycle and Pete with the folding chairs replaces what in the book is extensive examination of Pete's devotion to communalism and Bob's individualism. A movie could just have Bob and Pete talking about these concepts and how they apply to events in their lives. That could work in live theater or even in a movie (as in my favorite movie, "My Dinner With Andre"), but movies are expected to be highly visual. If they're not, what was all the money for?

Dylan tweeted his approval of the movie, but he hadn't seen it yet. Wald says: "My sense is that he likes movies and he has never had any hesitation about fictionalizing his life." That sounds right.

Sunrise — 7:08.

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"Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it."

"We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.... By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected."

Writes Rahm Emanuel, in "The road back to power for Democrats/It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would take up TikTok's appeal challenging a federal law that could ban the popular social media app by next month."

NBC News reports.

The court acted just a day after TikTok filed its appeal and will hear oral arguments on Jan. 10 before issuing a decision on whether to put the law on hold. At issue is a bipartisan measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden that would go into effect on Jan. 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban. TikTok has challenged the law, saying it violates its free speech rights under the First Amendment....

By the way, Trump talked about TikTok at his press conference on Monday. Asked "How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok next month?," he said: