Sunrise — 6:44, 7:01, 7:12.

"She makes me happy. ... She'll probably lose, but she makes me happy. I like seeing her. It's the joy you have when your best friend, who doesn't have their homework, gets called on...."

"It is the face — your friend confides in you: They did nothing. They go, bro... I didn't open the book. 'Cause this was me in school. Like I didn't open a book. And then they'd call me, and they'd be like: Mr. Dillon, what do you think? And I'd go: I'm trying to create an opportunity economy. Like, I'd say shit kind of like her. She still won't study. Like, she's running for president. She's still won't really even — which is what I like about it! If she was like really trying, I'd find it disturbing. The fact that she's kind of half-assing it on the biggest stage — there is no bigger stage.... She's kind of half-assing it on the largest stage. And... I wanna hang out with her. I wanna have drinks with her. I think she'd be a fun person. 'Cause a few years from now, she's just gonna be somebody fun in California.... She's gonna be like: Remember what I was? They tried to make me President. And we're all gonna laugh about it.... There's so, so much hot-under-the-collar anger at her... but we can't forget that this is essentially just a person who had no idea any of this was going to happen.... She never thought that it was going to happen the way that it happened.... And, she refuses to study. She will not open the book."

Says Tim Dillon, in the new episode of his podcast (audio and transcript at Podscribe).

ADDED: I listened to that as I was out on a walk, but the post I had meant to write — just before I gave in to the whim to do a walk — was based on Maureen Dowd's new column, "Where Is the Fierce Urgency of Beating Trump?" (NYT). And now that I'm getting back to it, it feels like the same idea as Dillon's, just way more polite. Dowd says:

[Kamala Harris] needs to make the case for herself more assertively.It’s hard to understand why she didn’t sit down with a yellow pad or laptop long ago and decide why she wanted to be president, what her top priorities would be and how she would get that stuff done. The Vision Thing. Even when getting softballs from supportive TV hosts, Harris at times seemed unsure of how to answer.

ALSO: Here's the Tim Dillon monologue in video form: 

33 things "our most aggressive adversaries would likely implement if they wanted to destroy America from within, and had the ability to take control of our leadership."

A number of my good friends and family have been surprised about my decision to support @realDonaldTrump for president. They have been surprised because my political giving history has been mostly to Democrats, my voting registration has typically been Democrat (in NY, you must…

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 11, 2024

"Then the vice president enters amid a rain-like patter of footfalls, and the energy in the room changes. 'Hi! How are you? Good to see you again!' Harris says, grabbing my hand and folding down into the opposite seat."

Let's fold down into Vogue Magazine.

I'm reading Nathan Heller's "Vice President Kamala Harris on Her Race to the Finish."

Distinctive photos... by Annie Leibovitz.

Althouse and Meade photograph an ash tree at 7:43 a.m.

Photo #1 by Althouse, photo #2 by Meade.

Open thread in the comments.

"Hospitals and shops catering to pets have become ubiquitous, while childbirth clinics have all but disappeared..."

"... as South Korea’s birthrate has become the lowest in the world. In parks and neighborhoods, strollers are more often than not carrying dogs. Online shopping malls say they sell more baby carriages for dogs than for babies.... 'Liam is like a child to me,' said Ms. Sim, 34, who does not plan to get married or have children. 'I love him the way my mom loved me. I eat old food in the refrigerator, saving the freshest chicken breast for Liam.' Her mother, Park Young-seon, 66, said she felt sad that many young women had chosen not to have babies. But she said she had come to accept Liam as 'my grandson.' On a recent weekend, the mother and daughter joined six other families who took their dogs on a picnic to Mireuksa, a Buddhist temple in central South Korea. So-called temple stays are a way for ordinary people to meditate and enjoy the monastic quiet. Now, some temples encourage families to bring their dogs along. All participants, human and canine, wear gray Buddhist vests and rosaries."

From "One of the World’s Loneliest Countries Finds Companionship in Dogs/They have become pampered family members in South Korea, which has the world’s lowest birthrate and where much of the population lives alone" (NYT).

"Since buying Twitter in 2022, the centaur Elon Musk has been using the platform to reinforce his personal views."

"He fired about 80 percent of employees, unilaterally decided to rename it X and has no compunction about using the platform to support his chosen candidate, Mr. Trump, and to spread disinformation about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Not only did Mr. Musk fire most of the people who were tasked with identifying and eliminating disinformation; he reposts it himself. Since Mr. Musk bought it, the company’s reported value plummeted to about $12.5 billion as of January 2024, down from the $44 billion purchase price. Maybe buying Twitter was just a bad investment, but an even more frightening hypothesis is that it was worth $31.5 billion to Mr. Musk, who is still worth $260 billion, to silence his opponents. This is how founder mode theory gets dangerous not just for investors but also for all of us...." 

Writes Kim Scott, former executive at Google and Apple and author of "Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity," in "'Founder Mode' Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley" (NYT).

"Founder mode" is a coinage that refers to a management style where the founder makes decisions on his own.

Interesting that Kim Scott speaks of Musk buying Twitter (and losing money on it) "to silence his opponents." Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents? 

Scott ends her article this way:

"When it’s made clear that certain kinds of speech are not only not going to be punished, but that prominent individuals who were deplatformed for it are now reinstated, it sends an extremely clear signal to everyone that this speech is now explicitly welcome on the platform."

Said Paul E. Smaldino, a professor of cognitive and information sciences, quoted in "Twitter Barred Them. What Happened When Elon Musk Brought Them Back?" (NYT).

I get the feeling the NYT doesn't know that people who care about free speech feel good when it’s made clear that certain kinds of speech are not going to be punished, that speakers who were once punished are participating public debate once again, and that it's extremely clear that even false, misleading, offensive, delusional, and — gasp! — right-wing speech is explicitly welcome on X.

Is the NYT implying that those of us who take the strong free-speech position ought to heed Elon Musk's insistence that it is crucial to vote for Trump?!

"But the threat of a second Trump presidency means that having my birth certificate reflect present reality has turned into a matter of grave importance."

"Quite frankly, whatever is on that document may in the not so distant future determine whether one can live one’s life in peace."

Writes Jennifer Finney Boylan, in "Why I Changed My Birth Certificate 25 Years After I Transitioned" (NYT). Boylan is 66 and "transitioned nearly 25 years ago."

Despite the essay title, there's nothing more about the why — no detail about why Trump is a threat and why a revised birth certificate would work as protection against that threat. Most of the essay is about the process of getting the new birth certificate.

It reminded me of the David Rakoff essay "Love It Or Leave It" in his 2005 book "Don't Get Too Comfortable" (commission earned). It begins:

George W. Bush made me want to be an American. It was a need I had not known before.

"I decided to record my feelings right away, because all year I had been training for situations like today, developing what I call my 'prison Zen.'"

"Whatever way you look at it, nine years, especially in 'strict' conditions, is an extremely long sentence. In Russia, the average punishment for murder is seven years. A prisoner sentenced to an extra term of nine years is going to be upset, to say the least. When I got back to the prison, everyone—who of course already knew about the sentence—furtively gave me a particular kind of look. How was I taking it? What was the expression on my face? It is, after all, intriguing to see someone’s reaction when they have just been told they will be serving the longest sentence of anyone in the entire prison complex. And that they are going to be sent somewhere especially grim and usually reserved for murderers. Nobody is going to come over and ask how I feel, but everyone is curious to see how this plays out. It’s an occasion when a person might hang themselves or slash their wrists. But I am completely fine. Even 'my' jailer said in the course of a really annoying full strip search, 'You don’t look to me to be all that upset.' I am really O.K. I am writing this not because I am willing myself to keep up a pretense of being carefree and blasé but because my prison Zen has kicked in...."

From "Alexei Navalny’s Prison Diaries/The Russian opposition leader’s account of his last years and his admonition to his country and the world" (The New Yorker).

If you are reading this on a mobile phone and can see that I've activated the "mobile" view...

 ... please let me know if this is helping you in any significant way.

I don't like how it looks and plan to turn it off again unless I can understand the benefit.

I believe one "benefit" is the ability to reply to a comment and have your reply appear under that comment. That's something I don't like. I prefer a straight line of chronological comments (and you can simply quote what you are replying to or write @username at the beginning of your comment).

UPDATE: Thanks for all the comments. I'm switching it back. Feel free to keep commenting. This is an option I could turn back on if I saw a good enough reason.

The sky at 3:22 a.m.

We were out at 3:22 a.m. in the hope of seeing the northern lights, but it was not to be. I know people saw the lights much earlier in the evening — around 8, which seems much easier to do. The 3 a.m. slot is the least used hour of the day — is it not? It is when it is most likely that night owls and early birds will both be in bed. But it's a lovely time. Giving up on the lights, we drove around town, just for fun, before heading home.

Another night approaches. Use it well! If you need a place to write, you can write about whatever you like in the comments.

Garnering Amish votes.

I'm reading "The famously secluded Amish are the target of a Republican campaign to drum up Pennsylvania votes for Trump" (WaPo):

Amish PAC aims to garner more votes for President Trump in 2020 in a state both the president and the Democrats are desperate to win. Amish people tend to align strongly on policy with Republicans.... But making voters out of the Amish, who forgo television and the Internet and believe fiercely in the separation of their religious community from government intrusion, may be a steep goal....

A quote from Ben Walters, who co-founded Amish PAC: “The Amish care about religious liberty, business regulation, abortion and judges. Those are four things that the Amish overwhelmingly support President Trump over whoever the Democratic candidate is. We talk a lot more about issues than we do about candidates."

A quote from an Amish woman: "I think Trump — who’s Trump? He’s the president, right? — he’s doing pretty good. Just from what I hear people say, he’s trying to improve things."

"These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic.... He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire..."

".... he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, 'I love Trump.'... It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Mr. Musk is providing to Mr. Trump. This is in part because of his role on X, where he amplifies so much of the former president’s message. Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million.... Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment."

From "Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump/Elon Musk is planting himself in Pennsylvania, has brought his brain trust to help and may even knock on doors himself" (NYT).

"What is drama? Mamet says it 'is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.'..."

"That suggests that [Kamala] Harris needs to show the American people her strongest, most acute and controlling desire, the ruling passion of her soul. I know what Trump wants. He wants to dismantle the elites who he thinks have betrayed regular Americans. It’s unclear what Harris wants most deeply, other than the vague chance to do good and to be president. You don’t communicate your deepest desire when your campaign is run by a committee. Candidates who are not driven by a single, specific, compelling desire become reactive. They hedge and trim according to the polls. People can sense their cautious, calculating nature. On the other hand, those who are compelled by a single strong desire are obsessed with a well-defined problem, which touches the taproot of their soul. They are on the attack, on the move."

Writes David Brooks, in "How Harris Can Finish Strong" (NYT).

Why are we talking about drama? David Mamet's idea was about how to command the attention of the audience. If Harris is reduced to the level of needing to get us to pay attention, she is already falling far short of what it takes to become President. And somehow this brings us back to a topic that's annoyed me for a long time, which I mark with my tag "how does Kamala feel." The election is not about her feelings, and there has always been something insane about acting like it is.

The convention went so well, we were told, because the theme was joy, and Kamala was joyful. No, she wasn't, but they seem to have thought they could keep that bubble bouncing for her super-short run to Election Day. What about our feelings?

The lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris "seems to be more pronounced with the brothers."

Said Barack Obama, quoted in "Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris/Former president suggests some in the Black community are uncomfortable voting for a woman and are coming up with excuses" (WaPo).

“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”...

The “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time,” Obama said. “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

It looked like this:

Former President Barack Obama has a “tough talk” at the Black voters for Harris event in East Liberty. He addressed that Black men have not been as enthused about Harris as during his first run, and he sought to encourage them to join Harris’ movement pic.twitter.com/gDFZhsdLxC

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) October 10, 2024

This gets my "Obama and manliness" tag.

And it made me think of the old "talking down to black people" controversy of 2008

"There’s a raw, instinctive quality to Goebel’s routines: The dancers look as if they aren’t just dancing but are following an elemental urge."

"Over the last decade, pop stars have sought out this off-kilter vision of how female bodies can move. As a result, Goebel is reshaping what pop choreography looks like — and exploding our ideas of what makes a femme body desirable.... It’s not as if this overt display of sexuality has vanished from contemporary pop choreography.... But Goebel’s routines push past titillation into startling, even disturbing territory.... In a routine she choreographed for Nike during Paris couture week, the dancers rolled and thrust their chests forward in a unsettling, Frankenstein-ish lurch, before leaping from the stage and strutting forward, arms crossed, like something Gene Kelly might do in 'Singin’ in the Rain.'"

Writes Coralie Kraft, in "Parris Goebel Is Changing the Way Women Move" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the many video clips of what that prose describes). Goebel was the choreographer for Rihanna at the 2023 Super Bowl — "sexy — hands stroking, chests heaving — but strange."

If that made you think of "Puttin' on the Ritz," here's the relevant "Young Frankenstein" clip. If it made you think of "Thriller," go here. If you got hung up on "femme," in the phrase "femme body" — why not "woman's body"? — so did I. But — short of a "femme bodysuit," on sale at Amazon — I didn't find anything I wanted to link, but I did encounter some godawful academic writing that made me feel sorry for the kids going to college these days.

"I think this will be the biggest product — ever — of any kind."

pic.twitter.com/VK9vlGF0Ms

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2024

Meade's comment at 0:45: "Walks like Joe Biden."

My comment at 0:59: "It's like Rosie the Robot from 'The Jetsons.'"

"Kamala was just caught using a teleprompter at her Univision town hall!"

"Producers panic and turn off the prompter midway through her answer. Why did Univision allow this?! This is egregious journalistic malpractice."

Writes Charlie Kirk, at X, with this video:

 

BUSTED!!

Kamala was just caught using a teleprompter at her Univision town hall! Producers panic and turn off the prompter midway through her answer.

Why did Univision allow this?! This is egregious journalistic malpractice. pic.twitter.com/tH5Bh2clBx

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 11, 2024

If it's a town hall, you're not supposed to have the questions in advance. It's supposed to test the candidates. If the answers are pre-written, the candidate is cheating on the test, posing as capable of spontaneity, when she is actively protecting herself from the risk of spontaneity, and hiding that self-protection from us. She's asking us to see her as our protector.

Further evidence of scripting and self-protection:

I’m at the Kamala “town hall” being taped right now in Las Vegas. The corporate PR director of Univision is refusing to allow journalists access to the audience members who have been pre-selected to ask Kamala questions pic.twitter.com/Mb1AjRfMMx

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 10, 2024

UPDATE: I'm seeing some people on social media saying that the teleprompter was displaying Spanish text and had some other function than to assist Kamala Harris. I've searched for a mainstream news site that provides this information, but I cannot find it. Since it's a big topic and damaging to KH, I believe that there would be mainstream stories if it were true that the text was in Spanish.

"The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"The survivors 'help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,' Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said during his announcement on Friday. Mr. Frydnes added that 'extraordinary efforts' by survivors of the U.S. nuclear attack in Japan, including those who are part of Nihon Hidankyo, 'have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo.' That, he said, had led to a world in which no weapons of that type had been used in war in 80 years."

The NYT reports.

Sunrise — 6:39, 7:08.

"The [Democratic P]arty’s current 51st seat, held by Joe Manchin, will turn Republican next year. The 50th seat, occupied by Jon Tester..."

"... in heavily Republican Montana, also seems to be gone.... In theory, Democrats could hold 50 seats and break ties by sweeping every other contested race and deposing either Rick Scott in Florida or Ted Cruz in Texas.... It is possible Cruz will be upset, but the chances that occurs and Democrats hold on in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — all of which appear closer than Texas — are remote at best, and fantastical at worst. The race for House control remains a toss-up. It is possible that Trump would have to contend with divided government. But it is almost certain Harris would do so. That means that her legislative ambitions are largely dead on arrival.... Harris is not going to be enacting new social programs, and her latitude in confirming judges and even picking a cabinet will be tightly constrained..... Trump is a different story.... The options on the table in all practicality are Harris governing in conjunction with Republicans, or Trump implementing his unfettered vision of American Orbanism."

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "The Election Choice Is Divided Government or Unrestrained Trumpism/Harris won’t be able to implement her plans. Trump will" (NY Magazine).

To restate that argument: Don't worry that you don't know who Kamala Harris really is, because whatever plans she might be hiding will never be revealed.

And speaking of Ted Cruz, here's a bumper sticker my son Chris photographed in Austin, Texas 2 days ago:

Goodbye to Ethel Kennedy.

Ethel Kennedy, widow of RFK, dead at 96 after suffering stroke https://t.co/30Q0nkr8HJ pic.twitter.com/5s5wAZyQnG

— New York Post (@nypost) October 10, 2024

From RFK Jr.'s "American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family" (commission earned):

After my father fell for my mother, they embarked on what Arthur Schlesinger described as “one of the great love stories of all time.” My dad loved Ethel Skakel’s fiery spirit, and was intensely proud of her reckless competitiveness and athleticism, her self-confidence, her humor, and her peculiar blend of deep religious faith and mischievous irreverence. Her fearless, fun-loving, outgoing personality perfectly complemented my father, providing encouragement to a man who was inherently quiet, vulnerable, and shy. Her devotion to him became a platform for his growth as a public leader. Where Jack was detached and deliberative, my father burned with passion. She fueled those flames. 

My parents were so affectionate with each other that they often appeared pasted together, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, kissing and calling each other “sweetheart,” “darling,” and “honey.” I had an early allergy to corniness, and these antics would have put me in anaphylactic shock had they not been so casual and adorable. They held hands when they ice-skated or walked on the beach. On river trips they lay against each other beside the campfire. He proudly introduced her at his speeches, and she always took the front row and hung on every word, even after hearing the same stump speech a hundred times. Her disciplined attention to his talks always impressed me. I thought, “She must have learned that in Catholic school, where they rapped your knuckles for wavering attention.” She sat behind him in the motorcades, and he would look around whenever he lost track of her. He told reporters that his greatest achievement was “marrying Ethel.”

"I talk to anybody. I always call it my poll. People jokingly tell me you know that Trump will speak with anybody. And I do."

"I speak to the construction workers and the cabdrivers, and those are the people I get along with best anyway in many respects. I speak to everybody.... You’ve got to know your audience, and by the way, for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy. For some people, different. For some people, both."

Said Donald Trump in 1989, talking to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in "A lost Trump interview comes back to life/The yet-to-be-president holds forth on strength, friendship, dealmaking, public service and building violations" (WaPo)(free-access link, so you can read it all and click on the recordings).

Woodward — who's pushing his new book from which this is an excerpt — exclaims "What a remarkable time capsule, a full psychological study of a man, then a 42-year-old Manhattan real estate king."

I think Trump comes across very positively, so thanks to The Washington Post for making this available.

Here's one more Trump quote, short and sweet: "I believe in having great friends and great enemies."

Great enemies. That's so funny — makes me think of Batman, James Bond — and Trump does have great enemies. Putin. Pelosi. Who else? The big categories: establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats. But who are the individuals? Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris really aren't that great, as enemies... or even opponents. He needs someone he can really go big with.

Putin is big, and yet he can't go big with Putin. He has to be trickier, tricky enough that people would say Putin is his great friend, not his great enemy. But there's the idea: "for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy.... For some people, both."

Here's the commission-earned link for Woodward's book: "War."

What did Elon Musk mean by "I’m not just MAGA, I’m Dark MAGA!"

I saw this in real time in the live feed from Saturday's Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and I thought he might just be referring to his black clothing and his black-on-black Make-America-Great-Again cap.

And then I thought it might be a slang use of "dark" as in "Dark Brandon." Remember that? Wikipedia says:

The phrase "Dark Brandon" was initially a meme created by online progressives to parody supporters of "Dark MAGA", a belief promoted by former U.S. representative Madison Cawthorn that former president Trump would return to power "with a vengeance."  It copies the "fashwave" aesthetic used initially by online supporters of figures like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis....

So Dark MAGA preceded Dark Brandon. 

Remember Madison Cawthorn?

Railing against "the cowardly and weak members of our own party," Cawthorn wrote [in May 2022]: "It's time for the rise of the new right, it's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command." "Dark MAGA" references a fringe movement advocating a vengeful return of Trumpism.

With that background, why would Elon Musk choose to horse around with the phrase "Dark MAGA"? Could he be seriously connecting to the Cawthorn meaning?

In discussions of Elon Musk's recent declaration, I'm seeing various sources that discuss the 2022 use of the phrase, so let me just select one to quote: "Dark MAGA: Will It All End Here?" by David Levi Strauss (in The Brooklyn Rail, which seems like an interesting publication, around since 2000, but only just noticed by me today).

"The Harris post-debate starburst dims to a glow as Harris enters the last weeks slipping slightly in the Rust Belt."

Said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy, quoted in "Swing State Poll 2024: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin: Blue Wall Shows Cracks As Race Tightens, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; U.S. Senate Races: Michigan Moves To Toss-Up, Dems Lead In PA & WI" (Quinnipiac University Poll).

I didn't even know she'd had a starburst... and I look at the polls (listed at Real Clear Politics) multiple times a day.

Starburst... glow... there's puffery even while talking about dimming.

Are you living through Milton?

Tell us about it.

I'm reading "Florida wakes up to Milton’s devastation; 3 million lose power" (WaPo)(free access link) and "Live Updates: Hurricane Milton Carves Destructive Path Across Florida/As the storm moved offshore into the Atlantic, Gulf Coast residents were beginning to assess damage from heavy winds, rain and storm surges. More than 3.3 million customers were without power" (NYT).

Is this getting politicized? Of course it is, but let's listen to 2 key players, President Biden...

Here is Joe Biden throwing Kamala under the bus when he’s asked directly today if DeSantis should take her call. He hates her. This is two days in a row of insulting her. He never takes questions. He was waiting for this one. Again. pic.twitter.com/skCx8HASH8

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 9, 2024

... and Ron DeSantis:

🚨JUST IN: Ron DeSantis shut down CNBC host that accused him of politicizing Hurricane Milton!

THIS is how you handle the Fake News!

DeSantis: “I didn't even know she was trying to reach me, but she has no role in this process… and I've been dealing with these storms in… pic.twitter.com/uHoaJYnmIN

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 10, 2024

Attempt humor at your own risk:

Sunrise — 7:09.

"Harris Is Said to Have Raised $1 Billion Since Entering Race."

The NYT reports.

Why isn't she crushing Trump by now with all that dough? All you can do with money is buy things. At some point, what is there left to buy? We're told the money "is being spent on a wave of television and digital advertising and an expansive operation of offices and staff in the seven battleground states and beyond."

"The sums are so large because both candidates are raising funds into jumbo committees that can collect checks of more than $900,000 by including state parties nationwide and the national party."

Does anyone complain about all the money in politics anymore or is that an antique concern? Now, one simply exults and taunts.

"The Kremlin confirmed that former US President Donald Trump while in office sent Russian President Vladimir Putin Covid-19 testing devices..."

"... during the height of the pandemic, as recounted in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the tests had been sent, but denied the book’s claim that the two leaders had spoken by phone several times since Trump left office. 'We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,' Peskov said in a written response when asked about the book. 'But about the phone calls — it’s not true.'... Trump has long boasted about his relationship with Putin, including by claiming that he could broker an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine if he’s elected again to the White House, without detailing how he would accomplish that. The former president has assailed Biden over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.... saying [it] would not have happened if the Republican was still in office."

From "Kremlin Says Trump Sent Putin Covid Tests While President/Kremlin denies phone calls took place after Trump left office/Trump campaign pushed back on claims in Bob Woodward’s book" (Bloomberg).

No one can know what would have happened if Trump had remained President, but was there something obviously wrong with sending these Covid tests? I'm not seeing it.

"'The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt' was a feminist triumph that reinforced her legacy as both a quote machine and an accomplished political actor."

"Betty Ford’s 'The Times of My Life' was a groundbreaking confessional that changed the country’s understanding of addiction. At best, a first lady’s memoir is an important historical document, intimately chronicling a White House administration and the powerful man running it. At worst — whoops, Nancy Reagan is calling in the astrologers again. So where does 'Melania' — a plain-black-covered book written by a woman who rightly assumes she needs no other introduction — fall into this pantheon? Let’s check: 'Over the next few months, we developed several items: the Fluid Day Serum, the Luxe Night with Vitamins A and E, cleansing balm, and an exfoliating peel, all priced between $50 and $150. In my meetings with chemists, I discovered the rejuvenating properties of caviar.'"

Writes Monica Hesse, in "In the pantheon of first lady memoirs, Melania Trump’s is something else/The dominant theme of 'Melania' is one of graceful grievance" (WaPo).

"In 2020, Joe Biden ran on the promise to reverse Trump’s border policies and expand legal immigration."

"'If I’m elected president, we’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,' he said during his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. 'We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.' That kind of humanitarian language is gone from Democrats’ 2024 messaging. So is any defense of immigration on the merits. When asked about immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris touts her background prosecuting transnational criminal organizations and promises to pass legislation that would 'fortify' the southern border.... Although public opinion is known to ebb and flow, a reversal this big, and this fast, is nearly unheard-of...."

Writes Rogé Karma, in "The Most Dramatic Shift in U.S. Public Opinion/The size and speed of the immigration backlash over the past four years are nearly unheard-of" (The Atlantic).

"[Howard] Stern predicted that the Republican whom [Kamala] Harris has pledged to place in her cabinet would end up being Liz Cheney..."

"... the former Wyoming congresswoman who last week appeared at a campaign rally with her in Wisconsin. Ms. Harris would not take the bait. 'I gotta win, Howard,' she said. 'I gotta win. I gotta win. And listen, but the thing about Liz Cheney, let me just say, she’s remarkable.'"

From "13 Things We Learned From Harris’s Interview With Howard Stern/In a lengthy sit-down, the veteran radio host extracted an array of new details about Kamala Harris’s life" (NYT).

What were the other 12 things? Let's just say that I chose not to use one of the 10 free links the has NYT empowered me to give to you in the month of October... and that one of the things is she eats Raisin Bran and Special K for breakfast.

"So the surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, put out an advisory. These are rare warnings. Past ones have been for things like cigarettes or gun violence."

"And this time what he's saying is that today's parents are not okay. They're too stressed, not the normal amount of stress. But what he's saying is that parenting has become so difficult that it's become an urgent public health crisis.... And he does say parenting has always been something that brings both joy and challenge at the same time. But what's really different now is that we have entered this new era of parenting. Social scientists call it intensive parenting.... The basic idea of intensive parenting.... is that kids need to be sort of constantly educated and enriched and engaged.... And so that's, like, when you take a walk and you notice that the leaves are changing, you say to your child, look, the leaves are changing. Do you know what drives that? Do you know why that's happening?... So when this style of parenting started, it was certainly an upper middle class phenomenon, but a variety of research has shown that it has spread across the income spectrum, across racial groups...."

From today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily," "The Parents Aren’t All Right" (audio and transcript at Podscribe).

Happy Birthday to John Lennon!

I don't say happy birthday to John Lennon every year, but just by chance it happened that the first post of the day — "Both VP nominees are now participating in the old tradition of responding to questions written on an orange..."— contained the sentence:

"I struggle to resist re-telling the story of My Dinner With Bruce Springsteen."

The internal link goes back to a post from the first year of this blog:

Go back to the first post of today to see how that connected up. But rereading that old post — which has a Sean Lennon Ono tag (because I sat near Yoko Ono when she was pregnant with Sean) — made me want to check to see what Sean was writing on X today. I see:

What nice synchronicity! It was only by chance that John and Sean were born on the same day and only by chance that on this October 9th, the story of an orange rolled up the aisle of an airplane took me back to the story of My Dinner in the Vicinity of John and Yoko.

If I had to try to think of a meaningful connection, I'd say — as I've said before — I like that Yoko Ono book "Grapefruit."

The NYT creates a multicolored diagram of a Trump rally speech.

That's from "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally" (free-access link). It should be "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally Speech," because the article and diagram are only about Trump's speech, but there are, in fact, many elements to a Trump rally that are not Trump's speech.

There are the hours spent in line waiting to get in, during which Trump fans interact with each other. There are the further hours spent inside and waiting for the show alongside fellow Trumpsters, listening to Trump's playlist and dancing or talking. These people are hanging out at Trump's party, having fun.

How do I know that? Have I been to a Trump rally? No. But my husband has been to 3 Trump rallies (and I've watched quite a few on YouTube).

Both VP nominees are now participating in the old tradition of responding to questions written on an orange that a reporter has rolled up the aisle of the campaign plane.

ABC reports.

Walz did it first, responding to the question "Dream dinner guest?" His answer (written on the orange and rolled back (more than a day later)): Bruce Springsteen.

(I struggle to resist re-telling the story of My Dinner With Bruce Springsteen.)

Vance's reporters wanted in on this orange action and rolled him the question "Fave Song." Under the circumstances, I would have chosen "Let Me Roll It"...

But Vance rolled back — immediately — "10 Years Gone":

Thank God something light-hearted is happening on this overwrought campaign.

Rivers always reach the sea/Flying skies of fortune, each a separate way/On the wings of maybe....

Why did it take Walz over a day to think up Bruce Springsteen? If you were going to workshop the most politically opportune answer, assuming you'd pick a pop star, wouldn't you pick a pop star affiliated with a battleground state? 

I see that Kamala Harris, on Steve Colbert's show last night — see "The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert" (Guardian)— chose Miller High Life as the beer for the little exercise in relatability" and...

Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”

Walz could have said Bob Seger! What're his politics?  

Vance answered quickly, and his choice is a bit idiosyncratic, but that doesn't free him of any suspicion of answering what he thought was politically advantageous. He's a quick thinker, and he knows the assignment. But he's chosen British pop stars, and "Ten Years Gone" is not near the top of obvious Led Zeppelin songs.  It's #40 on Vulture's "All 74 Led Zeppelin Songs, Ranked." So there's a good chance it really is his favorite Led Zeppelin song.

Is Led Zeppelin his favorite band? The name appears 4 times in "Hillbilly Elegy." Here are 2::

Sunrise — 6:43, 7:06, 7:07.

The top 2 pictures are mine. The third one, with me in it, is by Meade.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Even when Musk decided to waste a chunk of his fortune on buying Twitter, so that he could restore accounts belonging to right-wing dissemblers such as Donald Trump and Alex Jones..."

"Tesla-lovers managed to feel pretty good about themselves. Since then, however, Musk has gone full MAGA. Among the highlights: he has endorsed the antisemitic 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory, wondered why no one tries to assassinate the Democratic nominee for president, and pledged to give Trump’s campaign $45 million a month....This past weekend, Musk showed up at a Trump rally and reiterated his belief that the country and its Constitution could not continue to exist if Trump weren’t reelected. Among my friends who drive Teslas, Musk’s name comes up a lot in conversation, like an embarrassing skin condition you wish you could ignore. Some manage ably to compartmentalize. A neighbor I see at the dog park rails against Trump voters but raves about his self-driving Model S.... Other Tesla drivers feel stigmatized and vacillate about selling their cars. One friend affixed a magnet to her Tesla that says: 'I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.'"

Writes Matt Bai, in "The left’s Elon Musk dilemma/Nothing I can think of has plunged liberal friends of mine into a kind of moral anguish quite like Tesla" (WaPo).

Oh, the struggles of Matt Bai's Tesla-driving friends! I wonder what other "moral anguish" problems roil their privileged lives.

But I had to laugh at the notion that Musk "waste[d] a chunk of his fortune on buying Twitter." Musk spent $44 billion. His net worth is $264 billion. What else could he have bought that could have provided him with anything like the satisfaction and power he gets from X? Waste?!

"About 3.3 percent of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2 percent are questioning their gender identity..."

"... according to the first nationally representative survey on these groups, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.... This small group of young people has drawn outsize and often harsh political attention across the country.... In the C.D.C.’s survey, transgender and gender-questioning students reported feeling worse than even cisgender girls, who have drawn national attention to a crisis in mental health among young people.... Previous estimates of the number of transgender teenagers in the United States were considerably lower than 3.3 percent..."

From "3% of American High Schoolers Identify as Transgender, First National Survey Finds/A survey by the C.D.C. found high rates of sadness, bullying and suicide attempts among transgender and gender-questioning teenagers "(NYT).

I was surprised to see the phrase "This small group." I think it's a very large group.

I was also surprised by the phrase "worse than even cisgender girls." 

"[CBS journalist Tony] Dokoupil met for an hour with members of the CBS News standards and practices team and the in-house Race and Culture Unit..."

"... which advises on 'context, tone and intention' of news programming. The conversation focused on Mr. Dokoupil’s tone of voice, phrasing and body language during his interview with [Ta-NeHisi] Coates.... Executives who discussed the interview on Monday’s call had asked staff members to keep their remarks confidential. But their comments were reported within hours by Puck, and The Free Press, the news and opinion site run by Bari Weiss, published audio recordings of the meeting.... Jan Crawford, the chief legal correspondent at CBS News, spoke up later on the call to say she did not understand why Mr. Dokoupil’s questions had not met editorial standards. 'When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account,' Ms. Crawford said. 'To me, that is what Tony did.' Ms. Crawford said she was confused as to how CBS correspondents should proceed. 'What is the objective standard for the rest of us when we are doing our own interviews?' she asked."

From "CBS Rebukes Anchor Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates/Executives said the interview, conducted by the morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil, had fallen short of network editorial standards" (NYT). You can see video of Dokoupil questioning Coates here.

"In 'Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts,' Oliver Burkeman... argues that we ought to give up a little more often, and more pervasively...."

"Many people, he argues, refuse to give up: they are perfectionists who strive ceaselessly to get control of their lives as workers, parents, citizens, and friends. Unfortunately, Burkeman writes, experiencing life 'as an endless series of things we must master, learn, or conquer' has the effect of turning it into 'a dull, solitary, and often infuriating chore, something to be endured, in order to make it to a supposedly better time, which never quite seems to arrive.' As a counterbalance, Burkeman advocates 'imperfectionism.'... [Y]ou should try less planning and more doing.... Should we, as a general matter, see giving up as a sign not of weakness but of imagination, acceptance, or wisdom?... I’ve set aside projects that can never be resumed, or friendships that will never be rekindled. I gave up on a troubled relationship with a relative who later had a disabling stroke, after which our bond could never be repaired. Sometimes we give up wrongly, or with devastating results; we might not even know the costs of what we’ve foregone...."

Write Joshua Rothman, in "Should You Just Give Up? Sisyphus couldn’t stop pushing his boulder—but you can" (The New Yorker).

Oddly, as I was writing this post, I got a text from my son Chris, pointing me to an article — "Ernest Shackleton’s 'Stunning' Footage Comes To Life 110 Years Later with Nat Geo’s "Endurance'" —  and I immediately spotted this:

"Shackleton is still considered a hero today because, although he lost Endurance to the pack ice, he never gave up, and through his incredible grit, courage and inspirational leadership saved all his men."

I watched Elon Musk's appearance at Saturday's Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but I couldn't remember what he said about what I want to know.

What I'd remembered was a lot of repetitious get-out-the-vote talk that anyone could say. What I wanted to know was why Elon Musk in particular supports Trump. Of course, I remember the grown-man-jumping-around-like-a-child business and the "dark MAGA" hat. But why is he for Trump? That might have some special persuasive power.

So I rewatched. Here's video of his appearance and a rough transcript. I've edited the transcript to fit it to the audio and to cut it down to the parts that might answer my question. 

First:

[T]he true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire....

So, one answer is that Musk was impressed by the way Trump behaved during and immediately after the assassination attempt.

Next:

The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms... they want to take away your right to vote effectively.... California... just just passed a law banning voter ID....

"Deranged Jack Smith is fighting for Lyin’ Kamala. LOST BIG IN FLORIDA! Justice Department is a political weapon. Never happened in USA before! MAGA2024."

Trump reacts — on Truth Social — to a legal commentator on CNN.

The commentator is Elie Honig, who put his opinion in a New York Magazine piece, "Jack Smith’s October Cheap Shot," which I blogged here, 4 days ago.

Watch the CNN interview:

🚨BREAKING:

A CNN legal analyst just DESTROYED Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan for what appears to be political motivation in releasing the 165-page brief.

A legal analyst, who has handled thousands of cases, stated that he has NEVER witnessed such an occurrence before. He also… pic.twitter.com/7a5ZHa3hmJ

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 7, 2024

"A quarter of registered voters still say they don't know you. They don't know what makes you tick. And-- and why do you think that is? What–what's the disconnect?"

Bill Whitaker asked Kamala Harris on "60 Minutes" last night (transcript, CBS News).

Vice President Kamala Harris: It's an election, Bill. And I take-- it seriously that I have to earn everyone's vote. This is an election for president of the United States. No one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support. You have to earn it. And that's what I intend to do. 

Bill Whitaker: Lemme tell you what your critics and the columnists say. 

Vice President Kamala Harris: OK. 

Bill Whitaker: They say that the reason so many voters don't know you is that you have changed your position on so many things. You were against fracking, now you're for it. You supported looser immigration policies, now you're tightening them up. You were for Medicare for all, now you're not. So many that people don't truly know what you believe or what you stand for. And I know you've heard that. 

Here's her big chance to dispel these doubts. But she gives us absolutely nothing but a determination not to answer: 

Vice President Kamala Harris: In the last four years I have been vice president of the United States. And I have been traveling our country. And I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground. I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds. And what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus. Where we can figure out compromise and understand it's not a bad thing, as long as you don't compromise your values, to find common-sense solutions. And that has been my approach.

We are a diverse people? Is she suggesting that if her own mind can hold so many diverse opinions, then she somehow represents the consensus this country needs?! She doesn't have to believe any one thing. She just can entertain various ideas, and then, once she has power, she'll use "common sense" to work out the answer? 

I can’t believe I’m saying this.

60 Minutes just ended Kamala Harris’ campaign

This is excruciating

pic.twitter.com/TPNNSA4M3G

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 8, 2024

Sunrise — 6:07.

If you want to get up to speed on the official Nutter Butter page on TikTok...

... you can click on videos at the cookie's account — here — or you can read the NYT article "Nutter Butter, Are You Good? An Investigation. The cookie sandwich brand’s videos — funny, disturbing, fever-dreamlike — rack up tens of millions of views. The secret is lots of lore without much sense, the campaign’s strategists explain."

The NYT interviews the ad artists:

"If [Trump] also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women's rights in this country, then he is welcome on 'Call Her Daddy' anytime."

Said Alex Cooper in the intro to her podcast with Kamala Harris, which you can stream in many places. I like Podscribe — here — because you can listen or read (and search) the transcript.

Cooper got a lot of criticism from regular listeners, because the show has not been political. It's a podcast, for women, about sex and relationships, and some listeners felt betrayed when she seemed to shed her political neutrality. But now she says Trump is welcome too. Maybe he'll take up that offer!

I listened to the entire show, by the way. Of course, it's a softball interview, a complete safe space for Harris, so we don't get to see her tested under pressure. We never do. 

Harris was able to display her concern about sexual violence. I wanted to quote this part:

"After a year of the terrible, terrible conditions he has suffered, I don’t know if he will want to continue living as he did before. But if he does, it’s all waiting for him when he comes home."

Writes Idit Ohel, in "A Year Ago Today, Terrorists Stole My Son/My oldest child went to a music festival. Then Hamas murdered his friends—and dragged Alon into Gaza" (Free Press).

"Seventeen pornographic film actors on Monday announced that they had launched a $100,000 ad campaign on porn sites warning that Project 2025.... wants to ban pornography and imprison people who produce it."

"The online ads will run in the states that will decide the presidency: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.... Vice President Kamala Harris is losing to former President Donald J. Trump among men, but younger men might be winnable — and pornographic websites are among the most heavily trafficked on the internet.... Mr. Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, saying he knows nothing about it or the people involved in its creation...."

The NYT reports.

If you're genuinely concerned about censorship, why would you choose the Democratic Party as the one to trust? 

"FEMA called me and told me they wanted to inspect my house then called me back to say they couldn’t drive around the ‘road closed’ sign. They weren’t allowed."

Said Chelsea Atkins, 38, of Bat Cave, North Carolina, quoted in "FEMA abandons devastated NC town residents because they can’t drive around ‘road closed’ sign: ‘Nobody’s been bringing in supplies except civilians'" (NY Post).

Atkins said FEMA called her to arrange an inspection of her house on the Broad River rendered uninhabitable by the storm, but that they never showed up because the road was closed — the very same road The Post successfully traversed on its way to Bat Cave.

The road is treacherous, but navigable. It’s littered with downed power lines, and whole sections have collapsed. One portion of Highway 9 is entirely washed away, forcing traffic to navigate a huge chasm through someone’s front yard....

Well, then, it wasn't just misplaced rectitude about a "road closed" sign. It's more important to avoid new accidents that require emergency services than to move forward with the inspection of damage that has already occurred. The Post headline is needlessly inflammatory.

"[O]blivion is restorative: we come apart in order to come back together. (Sleep is a case in point; without a nightly suspension of our rational faculties, we go nuts.)"

"Another is the notion that oblivion is integral to the possibility of personal evolution. 'The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning,' Foucault writes. To do so, however, you must believe that the future can be different from the past—a belief that becomes harder to sustain when one is besieged by information, as the obsessive documentation of life makes it 'more fixed, more factual, with less ambiguity and life-giving potentiality.' Oblivion, by setting aside a space for forgetting, offers a refuge from this 'excess of memory,' and thus a standpoint from which to imagine alternative futures. Oblivion is also essential for human dignity. Because we cannot be fully known, we cannot be fully instrumentalized. Immanuel Kant urged us to treat others as ends in themselves, not merely as means.... [O]ur obscurities are precisely what endow us with a sense of value that exceeds our usefulness.... The modernist city promised anonymity, reinvention. The Internet is devoid of such pleasures. It is more like a village: a place where your identity is fixed...."

Writes Ben Tarnoff, in "What Is Privacy For? We often want to keep some information to ourselves. But information itself may be the problem" (The New Yorker).

The article is mostly about the book "The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life," by Lowry Pressly (commission earned).

ADDED: Here, I made you an "Oblivion" playlist:

Heinz apologized for this ad. What did it do wrong?

Good luck finding anything wrong there. You have to first guess at how it could be misread, then see why that could be understood as a problem.

At X, you can see the misreading and the consequent outrage in motion.

For an overview of the path to apology, read "Heinz apologises after ad featuring black family sparks anger online/Firm accused of stereotyping in advert spotted at Vauxhall and Manor House tube stations in London" (The Guardian).

Here's the apology, which resists blaming the viewer for the misunderstanding: "We always appreciate members of the public’s perspective on our campaigns. We understand how this ad could have unintentionally perpetuated negative stereotypes. We extend our deepest apologies and will continue to listen, learn and improve to avoid this happening again in the future."

They can't say hey, idiots, the bride's dad is the man on the left. 

Ironically, it's the white groom who doesn't have a dad in the picture. I think Heinz got into trouble by trying too hard to display a correct vision of diversity.

Sunrise — 6:47, 7:04, 7:06, 7:07.

Meade sends his first photo from the Trump rally today at the Dodge County Airport in Juneau, Wisconsin.

"Gays for Trump"/"Veterans for Trump."

Meade is waiting in line (and may join the comments):

I don't know what was your favorite part of Trump's Butler rally yesterday.

Perhaps it was the moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, a silence broken by an opera voice, singing live, "Ave Maria"....

But maybe it was for you, as it was for me, the return of opera, after Trump's long speech and his concluding dance to "YMCA," when he beckons the opera singer — Christopher Macchio — back onto the stage and remains on stage and listens through the performance of 5 songs, not all opera songs, but all delivered operatically: "Nessun Dorma," "Hallelujah" (the song Leonard Cohen's estate complained about Trump's using in 2020), "America the Beautiful" (including the lesser-known fourth verse, the one with "alabaster cities"), "How Great Thou Art," and "God Bless America." 

Who does that? Who subjects a present-day audience to that much unexpected opera? Especially after they've been confined for 4+ hours. Especially with the almost-assassinated former President looming there, swaying, through the whole thing. The operatic interlude finally ends, and a brash and incredibly annoying pop song plays — something I can tell is called "Gloria." No, no, not the Van Morrison "Gloria." It's this awfulness. A good choice if the message is: Time to get out here.

It's my understanding that Trump loves music and likes to be the one to choose the music, and he just assumes people should hear what he wants to play. You can take that as a metaphor if you like.

"You can go to your camper and do whatever you want. I even get television in there.... The camper taught me how to watch TV.... I go to YouTube."

"Anything. And everything. There’s so many things on YouTube. You’ve got Ibsen, you got Chekhov, you got Strindberg. All on the internet. I even like TikTok when I see it from time to time.... TikTok. Yeah. I saw, like, a 14-year-old girl who was deaf, her whole life, and they do something with her, and she actually starts to hear for the first time! How 'bout that? And sometimes the dogs, they rescue them. You watch the guy go in there and bring this beautiful, sad dog back to, uh, being somewhat — aware of things.... Well, I love that stuff!"

Said Al Pacino, quoted in "The Interview/Al Pacino Is Still Going Big" (NYT).

I'm quoting from the recording. The transcript is edited down a bit and it misses some of the feeling. I thought the interviewer, David Marchese, rushed by some of the best material Pacino seemed to want to hand him. For example, when Pacino spoke of the beautiful, sad dog becoming aware, Marchese intruded with "You're such a softy," categorizing Pacino's feeling as shallow sentimentality as opposed to some more subtle existentialism.

And one of the topics was Pacino's nearly dying of of Covid.

SNL takes on the VP debate... and, yes, we get to see Dana Carvey as Joe Biden again.

And I love Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz...

"After mostly avoiding interviews as her campaign began, the vice president will hold several this week, including with Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and the hosts of 'The View.'"

A funny subheadline at the NYT — funny because if she's just going on Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and "The View," Harris is still avoiding interviews. That those are the 3 interviews the NYT names makes it obvious.

The headline is "Harris Will Appear in a Whirlwind of Interviews, Most of Them Friendly."

Most of them? Who's the unfriendly interviewer she dares to face? I am really appalled by the timidity. She needs to prove she's strong and can stand up for us. 

I noticed that article because I went looking for Kamala Harris articles on the front page of the New York Times. You'd think she'd make more news!

There's also this Susan Faludi thing at the top of the right hand column, sitting atop a musing about celibacy:

So let's stare slack-jawed and cross-eyed at a rose. Mmmm. America's protector, eh?

Yeah, that kind of was my question about Kamala Harris when I saw that she dared to speak to Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and the hosts of "The View."

So let's see if Susan Faludi makes the case for KH as a protector. Much of that column is generic: Women have not, traditionally, been regarded as the protector. Some of it is an attack on Trump. Let's skip to something specific about Harris: