२० जानेवारी, २०२४
"On April 13, 2023, former President Donald Trump sat for a pre-trial deposition in his civil fraud case in New York."
"The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred. Which is really sad."
Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif took 22 Boy Scouts and separated them into two groups camping at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Only after a week did they learn that there was another group at the far end of the campground.What they did next fascinated the research team. Each group developed irrational contempt for the other. The boys in the other group were seen not just as rivals, but as fundamentally flawed human beings. Only when the two groups were asked to work together to solve a common problem did they warm up to one another.
Ironically, the top comments over there are about how Republicans are fundamentally flawed human beings.
"She looks so simple in her way/Does the same thing every day/But she's dedicated/To having her own way/She's very complicated...."
"'Brb — trying to think up a witty pickup line'.... He skimmed her dating profile, which mentioned that she liked men who..."
From "She Went on 100 Dates Before They Met. He Hadn’t Been on Any in Years. After Molly Hunt matched with Harry Rimalower on Bumble, they went out to a bar — Mr. Rimalower’s first date since his separation" (NYT)(a wedding story).
“I awkwardly asked, ‘What are you looking for?’” he said, to which she replied, “I’m on the fast track to marriage and kids.” So was he.
"Look at the way Mary looked then! Good Lord, she was only 15! She had the perfect tough girl image."
I wrote, about Mary Weiss, back in 2007.
Now, I see this morning, she has died.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no.
"You distance yourself from 'other' white people. You see only unapologetic bigots, card-carrying white supremacists and white people outside your own circle as 'real racists.'"
That's the "reality check" on item #21 of a DEI handout called "Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors That Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn into White Guilt, Denial or Defensiveness."
"Immediately I knew that’s not a wild rat... It had a shorter, rounder nose, its ears were on the side of its head and it was white. … If you know rats, you know rats."
"The problem with eating out in America today is that it’s making us fat."
From "Why Restaurants Make You Fat/Restaurant Syndrome: 1. Eat out. 2. Eat too much. 3. Feel bad. 4. Repeat" by Susan B. Roberts (The Daily Beast).
"Have you ever seen a restaurant? They serve food. Next, the church will open up again....""The Judge is losing his grip. He's afraid of a place that sells vittles. Vittles and a pack of calf-faced girls...."
Joe Biden campaign style: He shows up, with fast-food take-out, at this one guy's house.
I hope Biden fans don't feel body-shamed. Are your kids athletic? You'd better be "an impressive family" if you want a chance at being the place Joe stops by next. Ease up on that take-out food, for now. Get your kids in shape. Then maybe Joe will come around with a bag of Cook Out.Yesterday in North Carolina, I stopped by Eric’s house to have lunch with him and his two sons. I brought some Cook Out. They were an impressive family—Eric’s an award-winning educator and his sons are both athletic and academic all stars. We talked about the importance of… pic.twitter.com/UX9JMpWD4z
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 20, 2024
१९ जानेवारी, २०२४
Malia Ann — AKA Malia Obama — hopes her film makes you feel "a bit less lonely."
"[Authentic Brands Group] has owned [Sports Illustrated] since 2019 and sold the publishing rights to a company called the Arena Group."
From "Sports Illustrated lays off most of its staff, threatening iconic brand’s future" (WaPo).
"Following the E. Jean Carroll trial feels like watching one 80-year-old woman realize there is just nothing she can do to rid herself of this omnipresence..."
Writes Monica Hesse, in "E. Jean Carroll used to be somebody/Once you enter Trump’s world, your own world evaporates" (WaPo).
"Nearly 50% of elites believe the U.S. provides 'too much individual freedom' — compared with nearly 60% of voters who believe there is too much 'government control.'"
Drooling winters.
I don't have an EV, nor did I want one... even before all the talk this year about how bad they are in cold weather. But somehow I clicked on "Frigid weather saps EV batteries. Here’s how to keep yours running."
Is there really any good advice, or are you just screwed when it's really cold?Let's read Trump's brief, filed yesterday, in the Supreme Court case about kicking him off the ballot in Colorado.
Here it is.
I like the way the key citation I've been using in my posts on this issue — see here, here, here, and here — appears in the 3rd sentence of the brief:[I]t is a “‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy,’ embodied in the Constitution, that ... ‘the people should choose whom they please to govern them.’” U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 783 (1995) (first quoting Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 547 (1969); then quoting 2 Elliot’s Debates 257 (A. Hamilton, New York)).
That's a principle that ought to be kept in mind in considering each of the 5 different grounds for overturning the Colorado Supreme Court's decision:
How strategic was Trump's lawyer's choice of the word "haughtiness"?
I'm reading — in The New York Times — "Trump Prosecutor in Georgia Seeks to Avoid Testifying in Colleague’s Divorce Case/Fani T. Willis was subpoenaed in the divorce case of a colleague she hired to manage the Trump prosecution in Georgia, with whom she is accused of having a romantic relationship."
I already think it is a huge problem when someone who wields prosecutorial power — threatening the liberty of private citizens — asserts that she is the real victim here, the victim of racial prejudice, racial prejudice bubbling under the surface.
But look at this:
"When [Hugh Hefner] died of cardiac arrest at 91, [his last wife] at first protected his reputation."
१८ जानेवारी, २०२४
"Former President Donald Trump is a cultural phenomenon.... For his legion of passionate supporters, he is more than a politician."
Writes Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history and public affairs professor, in "What’s really working for Trump" (CNN).
What a dress! Worn by Emma Brooks McAllister at the Emmys.
"[E. Jean] Carroll was also in the courtroom on Tuesday. She is eighty years old. She made her name as a sassy, knowing, charming advice columnist..."
I see a woman with a cute/cutesy, quirky self-presentation who is leaning into an arty, hippie vibe.Donald Trump is not allowed to call his accuser E Jean Carroll a nut job. So we can do it for him. pic.twitter.com/X6kPqOsHdY
— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) January 17, 2024
Thanks to Jamie Dimon for saying just the right thing about Trump supporters.
I didn't know who I was listening to when I first heard this clip. Meade was playing it out loud and I was just overhearing it. I kept injecting comments like: "That's what I've been trying to say," "That's what I think," "This is what Democrats need to hear," and "Who is that guy?"
It was the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon.
Video and text at the link. From the text:
I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA....
१७ जानेवारी, २०२४
"Weight loss is easiest at the beginning, before your body starts actively working against it."
From "The Ozempic Plateau/Everyone hits a weight-loss plateau, but the race is on for next-generation drugs that can help patients lose even more weight" (The Atlantic).
"[Trump] said 'witch hunt' and 'it was a con job,' loudly enough that jurors could hear, said Shawn Crowley, one of [E. Jean] Carroll’s lawyers."
From "Judge Threatens to Eject Trump From Carroll Trial After His Complaints/The former president’s right to be at his defamation trial 'can be forfeited,' the judge warned. E. Jean Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages for his denials that he sexually assaulted her" (NYT).
"Judging from questions in two hard-fought arguments that lasted a total of more than three and a half hours, the fate of a foundational doctrine of administrative law..."
"The Biden Administration went all in on the false claim as a cudgel to use against Texas for trying to secure the Southern border with its own personnel to stop the unprecedented surge of illegal migrants."
Perhaps you heard: "On Friday night, a woman and two children drowned near Eagle Pass, and Texas officials blocked U.S. Border Patrol from attempting to provide emergency assistance."
I looked up the Celtic Sea, because it came up in my readings... and I was entranced....
.... by the reviews people had given it in Google Maps. To quote 4:
1. "It was wetter than I expected. Lots of fish swimming about under the surface, if you like that sort of thing."
2. "Very good sea. Compared to other seas, lakes and natural reservoirs it is undoubtedly superior. However, looking at the oceans, we need to admit that Celtic sea is slightly inferior. Nevertheless, it is a great representative of a sea.
3. "Against all the odds it does appear to be a genuine sea! I can confirm the presence of both waves and sky, with the correct one being above the other. Very tricky to get around if you don't have a boat. Minus 1 star."
4. "Lovely spot of water."
***
I was reading "Colonel Roosevelt" (commission earned). This part:
"Chinese women have been shunning marriage and babies at such a rapid pace..."
From "China Told Women to Have Babies, but Its Population Shrank Again" (NYT)
"The authorities have tried to silence China’s feminist movement, but its ideas about equality remain widespread...."
"Politics seeped into the courtroom as the judge asked whether potential jurors had voted in recent presidential elections.... Had they attended Mr. Trump’s rallies?"
"Winter and her husband struggled with when and how to tell their sons about their arrangement..."
From "How a Polyamorous Mom Had 'a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself/In her memoir, 'More,' Molly Roden Winter recounts the highs and lows of juggling an open marriage with work and child care" (NYT).
"One of the ways in which President Trump will challenge that testimony is by demonstrating that the intelligence community has operated with a bias against him..."
"People are saying it feels like we’re sleepwalking off a cliff... The left is kind of despairing and divided and exhausted...."
From "Michelle Goldberg Imagines a Second Trump Inauguration/Sounding the alarm on 'the utter bleakness'" (NYT)(transcript of this audio).
"We will let you know if there is any news made in that speech, if there is anything noteworthy, something substantive and important."
MSNBC and CNN REFUSE to air Trump's victory speech in Iowa🇺🇸 We took a closer look and unpicked their HYSTERIA🚨 pic.twitter.com/5oFQVC5w5r
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) January 16, 2024
If not for homophobia, we could have had Utopia... through LSD.
१६ जानेवारी, २०२४
No photos today. It's too cold!
Frankly, I haven't left the house in days.
Write about whatever you want in the comments.
After winning the Iowa caucuses last night, Trump is using Truth Social this morning to put up 30+ posts in a row about E. Jean Carroll.
Now, the timing is foisted on him. Today, the new E. Jean Carroll defamation trial begins.
There's another trial because he continued to deny certain facts that had been established at the first trial, so he, arguably, re-defamed her. He doesn't seem too worried, this morning, about re-re-defaming her.
Here's his Truth Social feed. Just go there now and scroll. I can't embed everything. Most of it is re-posting things she's written. Like this:
But some of it is written-out text like this (and I assume it will be used against him at trial):
"How I laughed at The Times headline yesterday that said, 'siblings are a source of teenage stress.'"
Writes Giles Coren, seeking attention in "I’m so lucky my sister never came to anything" (London Times).
Here's the article he's commenting on: "Why siblings are a source of teenage stress/An adolescent with more brothers and sisters is more likely to feel depression, anxiety and low self-esteem."
"If the Obama administration helped create the conditions for the genuine grievances propelling Trump to power in 2016..."
Writes Adrian Pabst, in "Why Trump will win/His rhetoric – and even his personality – continue to appeal to ordinary American voters" (The New Statesman).
"As her work has shifted, a generation of Potter enthusiasts have been increasingly disillusioned by Rowling’s evolution from saint-like Labour Party-supporting children’s author..."
Writes Nick Hilton, in "JK Rowling, Britain’s gloriously nasty novelist/Her electric Robert Galbraith novels portray a Britain populated by paedophiles, domestic abusers, rapists and terrorists" (The New Statesman).
"A third-place finish didn’t deliver the boost Nikki Haley wanted as she tries to turn the race into a one-on-one with Donald Trump."
That's the subheadline in the NYT for Nikki Haley and Iowa. Headline: "Haley’s Missed Opportunity: Iowa Slows Her Roll Into New Hampshire"
Haley got "the boost [she] wanted" from the media in the run up to the Iowa caucuses. It didn't work. Taking down Trump didn't work, and making Haley into his one true rival didn't work.
"The Most Durable Force in American Politics" — The New York Times gives Trump his due.
Donald Trump is loved. It's finally front-page news in The New York Times.Bill Clinton once explained the nation’s two political parties by saying that Democrats want to fall in love while Republicans want to fall in line.
That adage has not withstood the Trump era. Today, it is Republicans who are besotted....
Trump's Iowa victory speech: "I really think it's time now for everybody — our country — to come together. We want to come together — whether it's Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative."
"[H]is bleak vision of millennial and Generation Z voters 'starved for purpose, meaning and identity,' with a black hole in their hearts had surprising resonance with older voters."
From "Vivek Ramaswamy, Wealthy Political Novice Who Aligned With Trump, Quits Campaign/A self-funding entrepreneur, Mr. Ramaswamy peaked in late August but deflated under attack from his rivals. He endorsed Donald J. Trump after dropping out after the Iowa caucuses" (NYT).
Trump's secret: hats... always hats.
Much of the Trump campaign’s focus was on enlisting 'caucus captains,' devoted supporters who agreed to recruit 10 friends and neighbors to caucus for Mr. Trump. To incentivize them, the campaign offered signed hats and chances to meet the former president. The campaign held trainings for caucus captains at its headquarters, where it taught them the ins and outs of caucusing so the captains could pass their knowledge on to new caucusgoers.... At his rallies, caucus captains and volunteers collected information from attendees, and the campaign followed up with emails, phone calls and text messages.... The campaign... deployed educational videos — one with a cartoon blob named Marlon, the other with Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law — that offered step-by-step instructions to first-time caucusgoers.
Hats and simple cartoons — here's that Marlon thing — maybe politics is far simpler than anybody but Trump understands.
ADDED: Political hats are a big topic. There are metaphorical hats — the hat that you throw into the ring, the white hat that designates the hero. And there are literal hats, like the shockingly powerful MAGA hat. And remember pussy hats? To go back in history, there's the liberty cap.
And look, here's a liberty cap, atop the flagpole, in The Great Seal of the State of Iowa:
"I can attest that to speak as a black man often at odds with the stated consensus of his fellow blacks can be liberating."
The loyalty trap does not spring unexpectedly and maim you; it welcomes you in and fills you with the warmth of comradeship. That is what makes it so deadly: it feels good to be trapped....
१५ जानेवारी, २०२४
"Denmark welcomed a new king on Sunday in a ceremony that didn’t feature crowns or scepters or multiple robes..."
"Schools were closed, cars veered into ditches, and DeSantis did his best to bond with locals over their strange, snowy ways."
Writes Sarah Larson, in "When Ron DeSantis Forgot His Coat/On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, the Florida governor faces blizzards, skeptical voters, and the chill of his own campaign" (The New Yorker).
"'Do my work, ignore the distractions,' she said God told her."
१४ जानेवारी, २०२४
Bangs came up, organically, reminding me I still need to do that post about today being the 20th anniversary of the first day of this blog.
That's why I've already written 6 posts today, and I've yet to do the 20-year anniversary post. But now it's happened. And all because I wanted to tell you what Theodore Roosevelt said about the 1913 Armory Show, and he'd used the phrase "lunatic fringe."
It turned out he was the first one, as far as the OED has noticed, to use "lunatic fringe" to mean something other than women's bangs. In 1874, someone had used "lunatic fringe" to mean "A woman or girl's hairstyle in which the front is cut straight and square across the forehead":
'Was that why you studied so hard all winter, and wouldn't go to singing-school, you sly thing?’ said Lizzie, eyebrows and lunatic fringe almost meeting again. Our Boys & Girls....
And there it was, the spontaneous thing: a portal back to the first day of the blog, January 14, 2004. There are a number of posts in the 20-year archive that bear the tag "bangs," but click on that and scroll, and you'll get back to...
Next to me at the hair-washing station of the salon was a woman who was ranting about bangs. "I've always had bangs. Then, not having bangs, I was going crazy." Googling "bangs," by the way, is not a good way to come up with websites about the kind of bangs people rave about in hair salons.
That was the fifth and last post of the first day. One thing fell trippingly after another... for 20 years!
"It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand... of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact..."
"[V]oters with a college degree... have quietly powered [Trump's] remarkable political recovery inside the party..."
"... a turnaround over the past year that has notably coincided with a cascade of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases."
Writes Michael C. Bender, reporting from Des Moines, in "How College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again/Blue-collar white voters make up Donald Trump’s base. But his political resurgence has been fueled largely by Republicans from the other end of the socioeconomic scale" (NYT).
I'm seeing phrase "91 felony charges" is everywhere this morning. It seems those who loathe Trump don't realize how it can help Trump to stress the overabundance of charges.
But this is another article that purports to understand the Trump supporter, and it's interesting to me because it's got the college-educated going for Trump. I thought that's what isn't happening. So let's read this piece, which is based on "interviews with nearly two dozen college-educated Republican voters":
"Thousands of protesters participated in the rally, some carrying signs that read: 'No votes for Genocide Joe,' 'Biden has blood on his hands' and 'Let Gaza live.'"
From "Pro-Palestinian protesters chant ‘f–k Joe Biden,’ damage fence outside White House" (NY Post).
ME: Maybe the chants will get to him, like they got to LBJ, and he'll withdraw.MEADE: Stop making me like Joe Biden.
"When you finally get to the phrase that needs improving, you have to rotate the platen downward in order to squeeze fresh words above it...."
"Because of this awkwardness, the tendency of the typer, as opposed to the writer (in Truman Capote’s famous distinction), is to move ever forward, ever faster. Why waste thirty seconds revising an obscure clause, when you can tack on an explanatory sentence in five? Hence paragraphs come out longer than they should be, and an accretion of verbal debris weighs the typescript down. Such debris, of course, can be cleared away in revision. But the tolerance that permitted it in the first place tends to lower critical standards the second time around. The pen, on the other hand, is an instrument of thrilling mobility. Its ink flows as readily as the writer’s imagination. Its nib flickers back and forth with the speed of a snake’s tongue, deleting a cliché here, an adjective there, then rearing up suddenly into white space and emitting a spray of new words.... Unlike the electric typewriter, it does not buzz irritatedly when motionless, as if to say, Hurry up, I’m overheating. It sits quietly in the hand, comforting the fingers with acquired warmth, assuring you that the sentence you are searching for lies somewhere in its liquid reservoir...."
From the essay "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Smith-Corona" — written in 1981, before writers used word processors.
The essay, by Edmund Morris, is collected in "This Living Hand: And Other Essays" (commission earned).
I added the link on "Truman Capote's famous distinction." My link goes to Quote Investigator, which looks into whether Capote really said — about "On the Road" — "That’s not writing, that’s typing."
The central question is too "complex" for David Brooks... that is, it involves understanding the people he doesn't want to understand.
Trump... has an advantage that Haley can’t match. He is reviled by the coastal professional classes. That’s a sacred bond with working-class and rural voters who feel similarly slighted and unseen. The connection between working-class voters and a shady real estate billionaire is a complex psychological phenomenon that historians will have to unpack. But it’s a bond no amount of Nikki Haley toughness can break.
Leave it to the historians to figure out who the hell these Trumpsters were.
Why wouldn't you want to understand your fellow citizens? Your aversion to them might have something to do with their aversion to you.
Instead, Brooks writes a column about the abstraction "toughness." Politics is tough. Politicians need to be tough. Nikki Haley is tough. He muses: "I wonder if Haley would be seen as tougher if she were a man." On the toughness of women, he quotes Maya Angelou. At length!
At the end, he pivots: "This campaign is about toughness... but it’s also about identity and class." And it's here that Haley falls short. She "does better among more educated voters... and she does poorly among evangelicals, which these days is as much a nationalist identity category as a religious one."
You don't want to understand them, you want to leave them to the historians, but you are willing to cast aspersions on their religiosity and their patriotism.
"[F]or the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that forms of violence on a much smaller scale than the Civil War could qualify as an insurrection or a rebellion..."
Writes Ross Douthat, in "Why Jan. 6 Wasn’t an Insurrection" (NYT).