A dark sunrise — 7:23, 7:24.

"See, one, one of the weirdest things is if you are on the wrong side of their ideology, like if you are aligned with Trump, like RFK Jr is now all of a sudden."

"I've seen like people on the left that are trying to dismiss a lot of the things that he says about additives in food, about atrazine, fluoride in the water, all these different things. Because now they're connecting not having toxins in your food with a right wing idea.... It's so bananas. Like even being healthy fitness, fitness, they're connecting fitness with a right wing idea."

Said Joe Rogan, 48 minutes into his 3+ hour podcast with JD Vance. It's an excellent conversation, and I was particularly interested in what Joe said, because he's been cagey about which side he's on. You can hear that he's concerned that he's getting classified as right-wing.

Later, 2 hours and 7 minutes in, Joe says this about Kamala Harris:

"If you’re not prepared to be sent to a federal prison as a political prisoner, then you’re not worthy to be in this movement, and to step forward and try to save your country."

"You have to understand: they want to put you in prison and they will put you in prison. If you can’t accept that, then you don’t know what they represent. They talk about President Trump, 'He’s gonna do this, he’s gonna do this,' look at what they’ve done."

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "Steve Bannon’s First Show Out of Jail Should Be a Huge Warning/Steve Bannon is back—and more dangerous than ever" (TNR)(noting that Bannon "failed to elucidate" that "he broke the law").

"This winter, I’ll try to prune more gently, and I’ll probably fail. Perhaps the trees will begin to move incrementally back toward pre-human growth patterns."

"Maybe, decades from now, the next human occupant of this land will give up on them entirely and 'prune them with a spade,' as my dad likes to say. Until then, I’ll stand expectantly under the Belle de Boskoop, which by this time of year should be dropping dozens of big, russeted apples on the ground. It has vigorous, almost uncontrollable branches, and we’ve pruned it hard every year in an attempt at sculpting its form. But it reaches ever upward, each lateral proudly unburdened by fruit. If it never crops, it’ll still be here: the Bartleby of my garden, quietly, stubbornly, declining participation in the grind."

Writes Manjula Martin, in "The Rebellion of a Fruitless Apple Tree/As the rest of our culture thrives on overexposure, why shouldn’t a garden have the right to retain an air of mystery?" (The New Yorker).

I'm blogging this article simply because we have apple trees that don't bear fruit. It's a topic that hits close to home, but I was also delighted to see Bartleby, one of my all-time favorite literary characters. Now, I can't help but feel that commenters will zero in on the word "unburdened," which has been said way too many times in the 2024 election cycle. This post was supposed to be a break from all the election blogging. It's about apple trees.

"And the postmortems after a Trump victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday..."

"... that seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as 'garbage.' They’d emphasize and dwell on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened. They’d be postmortems like no others, because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020 campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us, stopping Trump demanded it.... There’d be recognizable elements of that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate? What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner, to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?... What if that incumbent hadn’t held on so tightly for so long? That’s no doubt part of why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign trail on behalf of Harris.... And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom."

That's Frank Bruni, over at the NYT, with his pre-postmortem, in a piece called "Biden’s Stake in This Election Is Like Nobody Else’s."

"That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom" — What can can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom? The goodness of Biden and the good that he's done for us, I guess. Absurdly, this is the second day in a row that I'm musing over a confusing metaphor of something that seems to be floating on water. Of all the things worth getting fervent and desperate about, Biden's feelings are low on the list. I think the American people should be quite angry at Biden for what he did to the procedure of choosing a President this time around. Too damned bad if he's sad about it.

"Although Vice President Kamala Harris recently acknowledged that Iran is a 'destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East'..."

"... the Biden-Harris administration’s dealings with the regime in Tehran have been marked by inadequate military action, ineffective diplomacy and inconsistent sanctions enforcement, enabling Iran to continue funding terrorism, attack U.S. interests and threaten Israel’s survival. In contrast, the Trump administration’s 'maximum pressure' policy showed that well-enforced sanctions could cripple Iran’s economy and significantly weaken its malign activities — without harming American consumers or triggering a spike in global oil prices. The next president should restore that policy...."

Write Jeb Bush and Claire Jungman in The Washington Post — "Why we should return to ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran/The Trump administration policy showed that well-enforced sanctions could cripple Iran’s economy."

"Although Harris acknowledges the Iranian threat, her reluctance to back a stronger stance is puzzling. If Iran is truly the United States’ greatest adversary, avoiding a comprehensive strategy that could neutralize the threat is illogical — particularly when Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are weakened, and Israel, our key ally, is fighting for survival."

Pre-postmortem, Part 2: "Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win."

A headline at The Hill.

“People are nervous and they’re trying to cover their ass and get a little ahead of Election Day,” one Democratic strategist said of the sniping. “It’s based on anxiety, stakes and the unique nature of this cycle."

“We didn’t have a traditional process for this election. We didn’t have a primary. People just had to fall in line,” the strategist added, saying “it’s not surprising to me” that some of the blame game is happening even before Election Day....

“[Harris] is going to look real silly for not picking Shapiro,” one former aide in the Obama White House said....

[E]ven before Garbage-gate, there were whispers that Biden would be responsible for a Harris defeat....

For Pre-postmortem, Part 1, see the previous post. 

"This is pre-postmortem. They know it's lost."

I say from across the room, as Meade plays today's episode of the NYT Daily, "Black Voters and the Democratic Party: One Family’s Story."

In our reporting, we called dozens of black men across Georgia and heard story after story like this of people who are frustrated with their prospects right now, especially their place in the economy....

You can listen to the whole thing. I'll just say this is what prompted my remark, from a man talking about how his mother would be disappointed to know he hesitated to vote for Harris:

"I'm someone who has been raised with understanding the importance of voting, with understanding how many people sacrifice for us to have this right. To participate in the process. And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate like Kamala Harris, you know, it, it kind of goes against what my people have decided. Majority of my people have decided that this is, you know, what we're doing. And for me to vote against Harris would be a little bit of a betrayal."

I've only used the word "pre-postmortem" once before on this blog, but I've been thinking it a lot in the last couple weeks. The prior usage was on October 14th, in a post titled "When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was... wearing sweatpants and a hoodie..."

I chose this article to blog first this morning, but it was one of the many headlines I saw that made me want to create a new tag, something like "pre-postmortem."

At the Coot Café...

... you can talk all night.

No sunrise photo today, but we were out there on the shore of Lake Mendota at 1:48, watching the coots.

Making the most of Biden's "garbage" remark, Trump arrives at his Green Bay rally wearing garbage worker's gear.

He also rode in a garbage truck from the plane to the arena:

"Nick Newman had replied to a tweet a few weeks back asking me what movies I would recommend. I told him to try The Unknown with Lon Chaney and go from there."

Tweeted Bob Dylan today.

I love that Bob Dylan tweets and how great he is at. The best.

Here's the starting point, so get started, and let me know what comes next:

It takes place in a circus, and "The circus is in town" is a line from "Desolation Row," giving special meaning to this response to Dylan's tweet, which takes us to a video that uses "Desolation Row" to prove that Dylan is the funniest person alive:

"There are basically only two major continents. Antarctica and everything else..."

"... since South America is connected to North America through Panama, North America is connected to Asia through the Bering Strait, and Asia is connected to Europe, Africa and Australia through the Urals, the Sinai and Indonesia, respectively."

From "How Many Continents Are There? You May Not Like the Answers" (NYT)(free-access link so you can read the definitions and so forth).

I've quoted the position of one geologist, but another says that there could be a third continent, Zealandia, which might not be sufficiently connected to Australia to deserve inclusion in the everything-but-Antarctica continent. There are also geologists who say 6 or 5 or 8 or 9. Just don't say 7.

"Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties."

"That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them. Directly behind the villa is a six-bedroom mansion.... When in Austin, he often stays at a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away.... One of the mothers, Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink... has moved into one of the homes with her children. But Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, who is the mother to three of his children, is in a protracted legal fight with Mr. Musk and has so far steered clear. The third mother is Mr. Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, with whom he has five living children, all in their late teens or older. There is room in the Austin compound if they were to visit, though he is estranged from at least one of those children.... Mr. Musk has said that I.V.F. is a more efficient way of having children because it allows parents to control parts of the process, according to a person who understands his thinking.... In 2021, without Ms. Boucher’s knowledge, Mr. Musk donated sperm to Ms. Zilis, who became pregnant with twins through I.V.F.... That same year, the billionaire and Ms. Boucher were expecting a second child also conceived via I.V.F. but carried by a surrogate.... Further complicating matters, Mr. Musk took a name that he and Ms. Boucher had chosen for their daughter — Valkyrie — and gave it to one of Ms. Zilis’s twins...."

From "Elon Musk Wants Big Families. He Bought a Secret Compound for His. As the billionaire warns of population collapse and the moral obligation to have children, he’s navigating his own complicated family" (NYT)(free-access link).

I wonder what kind of "control" he is doing with IVF.

"[Ex-White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly has always seen the role we shared, that of White House chief of staff, differently than I."

"We both knew we were the only ones in the West Wing whose job it was to tell the president things he didn’t want to hear. But... I saw the role as one that would enable the president to be as successful as possible in fulfilling the agenda that got him elected. Kelly saw the job as that of a self-appointed overseer, charged with protecting the country against a president that those same people had elected...."

Writes Mick Mulvaney, in "I was Trump’s chief of staff — ex-aide’s Hitler claims are deranged" (NY Post).

The New Republic says "Joe Rogan Offers Pitiful Defense for Why He Won’t Interview Harris."

Paige Oamek objects to Joe's insistence that the podcast be done in his iconic Austin, Texas studio. The campaign wanted him to travel to her, and that was in the context of also demanding that they go no longer than one hour. That is, there were 2 elements of what makes Joe Joe to be removed. It would no longer be her on the Joe Rogan podcast. It would be Joe Rogan installed in a Harris campaign environment and used to the extent they found him useful. 

But Oamek doesn't display much understanding of what Joe does, that is, what makes him, by far, the most popular podcast. You've got to go long. And you've got to be a guest in his space, vulnerable to opening up. Trump went over 3 hours. You had the feeling of getting to know him in a new way. The YouTube video alone has 40 million views, and many people watch or listen on other platforms. Harris was offered that opportunity, but she didn't want to do that. Her people wanted her to do something much more closed and boring and Joe chose not to lend his name to that fakery.

Criticizing the mayor's "All Chicagoans" mode: How do you decide when to dispense with specificity.

Why not mention WHY the victim was shot (because he was Jewish)? Why not mention WHERE the victim was shot (en route to a synagogue)?

Any Mayor who cannot be bothered to acknowledge the antisemitism of a hate crime against a Jewish man heading to a synagogue is unworthy of the… pic.twitter.com/HMP64Ra3oO

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024

I was sent that by someone who said, "Something that looked this much like a hate crime against a black person would not be answered with a statement that is equivalent to saying all lives matter."

Background: "Jewish leaders demand hate crime charges after man shot on way to synagogue" (Fox 32 Chicago)("Police returned fire and wounded 22-year old Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, now charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and aggravated battery but not a hate crime. The victim, an Orthodox Jew, wore traditional Jewish clothing at the time of the shooting").

And the shooter yelled something — something the police don't want to say:

An undocumented individual from Africa opened fire on an Orthodox Jew and police officers in Chicago, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

When asked the police what did he shout, “um um, we can’t get into it um nothing we can bring as evidence as a motive at this point…” pic.twitter.com/YMe1zzTvOW

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 29, 2024

"Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage."

"He's talking about the border patrol, he's talking about nurses, he's talking about teachers, he's talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President. And I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said. We are not garbage. We are patriots who love America and thank you for running Mr. President."

Said Marco Rubio to Donald Trump, on stage at Trump's rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania last night. Click the video below, which is cued up to the spot. Trump appears to be hearing this news of President Biden's statement for the first time.

Trump reacts: "Wow. That's terrible.... Remember Hillary? She said 'deplorable' and then she said 'irredeemable.' Right? But she said 'deplorable.' That didn't work out. 'Garbage,' I think is worse. Right? But he doesn't know. You have to please forgive him. Please forgive him! For he not knoweth what he said."

I believe that last bit was an attempt to evoke the words of Jesus: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

Trump continues: "These people. Terrible terrible terrible — to say a thing like that, but he really doesn't know. He really, honestly, he doesn't. And I'm convinced that he likes me more than he likes Kamala. Convinced. But that's a terrible thing."

It was a terrible thing to say, but you can see that Trump knows that Biden's rhetoric — like Hillary's "deplorable" — was an excellent gift to his campaign. And it came just as Kamala Harris was delivering her big closing-argument speech that was supposed to reach out to all Americans and to characterize her as the one who, unlike Trump, embraced everybody.

Here's the NYT article about that: "Harris’s Mission: Disqualify Trump, but Extend a Hand to His Voters/Kamala Harris, in her closing argument to voters, acknowledged an inescapable political reality: Donald Trump is not a fringe figure within his own party or the nation" (free-access link):

Sunrise — 7:02, 7:25.

Goodbye to Teri Garr.

The brilliant comic actress died today, at the age of 79 (from complications of multiple sclerosis).

From the NYT obituary: "Onscreen, Ms. Garr’s outstanding features were her eyes, which could seem simultaneously pained, baffled, sympathetic, vulnerable, intrigued and determined, whether she was registering a grand new discovery or holding back tears...."

ADDED: Here's my son John's tribute to Teri Garr, at Facebook.

Any Trump signs in Madison?

Yes, and this house takes the cake:

We did the "in-person absentee" voting today at the library.

I texted from the line to someone who's been reading that 1120-page "Truman" book:

Pre-dawn — 6:53.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Speaking of secrets, Harris knew Biden was physically and mentally impaired and kept it a secret. The F.B.I. knew the Hunter Biden laptop was real..."

"... and kept it secret. They also knew Russia collusion was fake and kept that a secret, too. It appears that all those secrets didn’t matter to the media because they all helped Democrats. But this one might help Donald Trump, and now they care? By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one."

Said Mike Johnson to the NYT, quoted in "Trump Hints at ‘Little Secret’ With House Republicans, Setting Off a Panic/The former president seemed to delight in fueling speculation about what he is cooking up with House Republicans, prompting Democrats to worry about election fraud. Speaker Mike Johnson refused to explain."

This relates to what Trump said at the MSG rally, addressing Johnson: "I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret — we will tell you what it is when the race is over."

Is there really something here — something worth panicking about? Or is this just childish drama? It made me think of a tune I remember from childhood. Perhaps you know it. It goes with the word "I know something you don't know."

"'[Musk] believes that if Trump wins Pennsylvania, he wins the election. He’s told us that repeatedly. He’s treating this almost like it’s a business deal'..."

"... said one Trump adviser. 'He knows if he loses this election, he’s screwed. The regulations, the attitude of a new Democratic administration, the animosity they’ll have for all the money he’s spent to help Trump — it’s a big business bet for him.' Musk has argued that a victory by Harris 'would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.' Trump, in turn, has publicly endorsed Musk’s goal of accelerating a human mission to Mars.... 'Get ready, Elon, get ready,' Trump said at an Oct. 19 campaign rally. 'We gotta land it. We gotta do it quickly.' But Musk also casts his new involvement in politics as a moral crusade — to fight back against liberal social policies, protect the U.S. Constitution and oppose the 'big government machine.' 'If the Kamala machine wins, then we’ll see, I think, severe censorship,' he said at one recent rally. 'That’s why I think this is the last election.'"

From "Elon Musk is the October surprise of the 2024 election/The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and owner of X, has interjected himself into a presidential race like no other titan before him" (WaPo)(free-access link, my last of the month, so use it well).

I wouldn't just follow Elon Musk, but Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. are all on the same side. They are such different individuals, and they are all strongly for Trump. 

"Robert Zemeckis’ film 'Here' is an object lesson in how to take a touching idea and make an extremely annoying movie out of it...."

"… a single camera sits in one spot for the entirety of the film as the action jumps back and forth through time.... Starting off as an old man, [the Tom Hanks character] walks into a sunlit modern living room only for the shot to fade away to the era of dinosaurs…. [I]n a bid for self-protection, Zemeckis and co-writer Eric Roth unconvincingly force in some diversity. In the future, when the Youngs have left, we see glimpses of a 2010s black family, the longest of which shows the dad telling his son how to talk to the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Almost nothing else is learned about them except that their housekeeper gets COVID. Hundreds of years in the past, an indigenous couple wordlessly flirt, have a kid and die in the 2,000-square-foot meadow where the Young home will eventually stand...."

From the NY Post review of "Here."

Let's read WaPo's "note from our owner": "The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media."

I need to force myself to read this — by Jeff Bezos. He kept WaPo from publishing an explicit endorsement of Kamala Harris, who is all too obviously implicitly endorsed by WaPo every day. So I'll live-blog my reading of it. Let's go....

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

He's calling it a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles that must be followed, even if the polls don't go your way. 

People don't want to shout out their own name, but Kamala Harris seems to have thought it would be a cool way to demonstrate that "It's about all of us."

They were loudly chanting her name, and she instructed them to shout out their own name, the idea being, I think, to unleash a hilarious, heartwarming cacophony:

This might be the most awkward moment ever, the second-hand embarassment is real pic.twitter.com/ObaMKPR9c3

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) October 29, 2024

But she got silence. She still pretended she'd received the desired response, and declared the conclusion to be derived from the demonstration that hadn't happened: "It's about all of us."

Apparently, individualism is not in vogue... or not something her people feel good about expressing loud and proud.

If I followed the method of the elite media and the Democratic Party, I would call it fascistic. The crowd showed that it only wanted to be unified behind the identity of the adored leader.

ADDED: I feel the strong need to republish a post I wrote in September 2018:

Sunrise — 7:03, 7:15, 7:31, 7:33, 7:42.

"Why is Donald Trump going to win? The people he's about to defeat have no idea."

"And they're panicked. They have no idea why people like Donald Trump, and their first theory was, well, Donald Trump is evil, so half the country is evil.... How much easier would it have been just to pause for 20 minutes and ask yourself honestly, in some silent place: Why do people like Donald Trump? And if they had been honest enough... they would have come up with the two main reasons.... The first reason that people like Donald Trump is because he likes them.... Affection is something you can't fake.... And the second reason that people love Trump... is because he's liberated us in the deepest and truest sense. And the liberation he has brought to us is the liberation from the obligation to tell lies.... If you want to enslave people — if you want to degrade them — force them to tell lies. And they have: They forced us to lie about everything at gunpoint, effectively they put people in prison, for refusing to lie...."

Said Tucker Carlson... and to my ear, this was the best speech at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally yesterday:

ADDED: This had a big impact on me because — as I told you many years ago — I had a dream about Trump in 2015, "long before I had any idea he'd become President... in which I was talking about Trump, then saw that he was there listening in on me," and I hugged him and "thanked him, effusively, for teaching us to have the courage to speak freely.... At the time I had that dream I wasn't consciously aware of liking Trump at all, so the dream made a big impression on me. There was something about Trump that I thought was tremendously helpful, and I really wanted to tell him."

"[Ketanji Brown] Jackson is not alone among Justices in telling her life story."

"There is a long tradition of memoirs, notably William O. Douglas’s 'Go East, Young Man,' which is famously colorful and perhaps factually dubious, and his 'The Court Years'; 'The Memoirs of Earl Warren,' published posthumously; Sandra Day O’Connor’s 'Lazy B,' written with her brother, about growing up on a ranch... and John Paul Stevens’s 'The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years'.... [Ketanji Brown Jackson's new memoir] belongs to a modern mini-genre of personal memoirs written much earlier, by sitting Justices. Clarence Thomas pioneered the form, with 'My Grandfather’s Son,' which appeared in 2007, sixteen years into his tenure... followed by Sonia Sotomayor, with 'My Beloved World,' in 2013, four years into hers. The pace has picked up. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have books in the works, too. It is almost as if, along with the judicial robes and clerks, newly confirmed Justices are issued book contracts. The advances alone may be the point. Thomas got a million and a half dollars. Sotomayor has built a franchise... that has earned her close to four million dollars. Barrett’s deal, worth a reported two million, was the subject of an open letter of protest.... Jackson’s contract is not public... The salary for an Associate Justice is about three hundred thousand dollars; there are caps on how much the Justices are allowed to earn for outside work, but book earnings are exempt."

Writes Amy Davidson Sorkin, in "What Can Memoirs by Supreme Court Justices Teach Us? We’re primed to read Justices’ accounts of their lives for clues to their jurisprudence. Should we?" (The New Yorker).

This seems to call for the old Samuel Johnson quote: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

And to answer the question in the article title: No. 

"Taking pictures of the same things over and over can emphasize the rhythms of existence."

"Every evening, on the way home from work, I pass the same red-and-white fire hydrant, which is set into some reedy bushes on a little promontory overlooking a harbor. I often stop to take a picture of it: its red registers as warmer in summer and cooler in winter, and its white adopts the yellow of scorched grass in late summer and fall.... I think with some regularity of a remark made by the British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr, who once told an interviewer that the meaning of life was 'enjoying the passage of time.' Everyday photography, with its implicit emphasis on what recurs, makes enjoying the passage of time a little easier.... [N]o, you’re not likely to wring transcendence out of the mundane on a regular basis. You can, however, learn something about yourself and your world by doing or attempting to do these things. Even amateur hour becomes golden hour, sometimes."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "What Can You Learn from Photographing Your Life? Pictures of the mundane can capture much more" (The New Yorker).

I regularly go out at sunrise, and when I go, I always take photographs. But then I also, with almost equal regularity, go out for a second walk, and I rarely take photographs. But I did take one yesterday — the forest at noon:

Trump likened to a lion and to Elon Musk's rocket.

In this ad, tweeted last night by Elon Musk:

pic.twitter.com/aVk3rLClpT

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2024

I have to just try to imagine the people who get all jazzed up by music and montage like that. Here's something — also pro-Trump and heavy on the A.I. — that I saw yesterday and found more appealing:

Joe Rogan would like to have a conversation with Kamala Harris "like a human being — that's all I want to do — that's literally all I want to do."

"I want to know what is it like to be — I don't even give a fuck about all all stuff she's talked about about policies and all these different things. We all know her positions.... Who are you? Who are you?... I would be willing to talk about anything other than politics.... If there was some certain things they didn't want to talk about, like fine, I don't care, let's talk. I want to know who you are. I can find out who you are if we can talk about sports.... I want to talk to her like a human being...."

Who are you? Who are you?... Yes, we all have that question. 

Elite media reacts to Trump's MSG extravaganza by zeroing in on Tony Hinchcliffe (Kill Tony).

I never take the bait anymore when headlines say things like...

• "As Trump courts their vote, comedian at his rally makes racist jokes about Latinos and Puerto Rico Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made crude jokes about Latinos having babies and called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage,' drawing a rebuke from several Republicans" (NBC News) 

• "Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks/A pro-Trump comedian’s racist diatribe drew widespread condemnation" (Politico)

• "Anti-Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally spur outrage as Bad Bunny supports Harris/The artist’s gesture of support came as a number of speakers at a Trump event in New York made racist and disparaging comments about Puerto Ricans and other Latinos" (WaPo) 

• "A Trump Rally Speaker Trashed Puerto Ricans. Harris Reached Out to Them. Her campaign moved swiftly to highlight that even as a speaker at Donald Trump’s rally in New York made offensive remarks about Puerto Rico and Latinos, she was visiting Puerto Rican voters in Philadelphia" (NYT)

I started watching the rally at 4 Central Time — when I put up a post — so I hadn't seen the Hinchcliffe routine in real time. My first instinct was to watch the entire 12 minutes of his routine. Here. You can use the Althouse method of determining what somebody said. Listen to him, in context:

It seems to me that Hinchcliffe made some deliberately offensive jokes:

• "There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico."

• "I think that Travis Kelce might be the next OJ Simpson."

• Purporting to see a black friend in the audience: "He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun. We carved watermelons together."

• "Wars. It is unbelievable what's happening right now. It is incredible. Ukraine versus Russia. Israel/Palestine. It's like bad soccer games. Who even cares?"

It was as though he was challenging the crowd to guffaw and give Trump opponents the opportunity to accuse them of racism or whatever. He just went ahead and told those jokes.

He had 2 defenses ready to insert where needed. One was the conventional comedian's ploy of openly talking about how his jokes are failing. The crowd is tough. Or: This is the wrong crowd for this kind of material (which ought to absolve the Trumpers of agreeing with whatever racism inheres in those jokes (but won't)).

The other defense is to follow the offense with a sharp shift to a declaration about the importance of freedom of speech. This is the old Lenny Bruce move that takes risks. It was very hip and cool when Lenny Bruce did it, but it's hard to bring the whole world along with you if you try that. Ask Michael Richards. And Lenny Bruce paid for it in his own time. 

It isn't really fair to deploy this comedic approach at somebody else's event, especially when it's really important and you know that person has antagonists who are standing by waiting to pounce on any material they can use to call him a racist. But maybe Trump wanted this kind of attention-getting edginess. Hinchcliffe has his fans. I bet Barron Trump is one of them. I've heard Trump say, more than once, that he takes advice from Barron about which comedians young people love.

Hinchcliffe had another comic move. With a foundation of failed jokes before the tough crowd, he was in position to comment when the crowd finally, genuinely responded with real spontaneous laughter at one of them. Here's that joke:

"It feels good in here. The other side's got a lot of crazy endorsements. Swift, Eminem, Leo DiCaprio, Beyonce. Every day the Democratic party looks more and more like a P Diddy party."

He said: "Oh oh okay okay — that's what you guys want all right. Heck yeah...."

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:32, 7:44.

In case you'd like to comment on Trump's Madison Square Garden rally...

... here's the live feed:

JD Vance versus Jake Tapper.

NEW: JD Vance shuts down a very emotional Jake Tapper over CNN’s constant coverage of hoaxes.

Tapper, who was very emotional throughout the interview, sat as Vance roasted CNN for their biased coverage.

Vance: Ask yourself a basic question about network integrity. You guys… pic.twitter.com/0Ce84sWrH3

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 27, 2024

And this montage works as a fact-check on Tapper:

 

BREAKING: JD Vance called out Fake Tapper for the lies he pushed about Russiagate earlier this morning

Tapper denied telling any lies

So here are 3.5 minutes of Jake Tapper spreading Russiagate conspiracy theory pic.twitter.com/qeiFMtimx9

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 27, 2024

"Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it. Take our quiz."

You're not in reality until you're for Harris, The Washington Post informs you before you've even taken the quiz. 

But I'll supply you with a free link anyway: here. Let them prove to you what you really want.

Is it anti-democratic to believe that voters don't really know what they want? There's some higher knowledge of what is really wanted that is beyond the reach of the voters... but not beyond the reach of The Washington Post.

Hey, this quiz is 5 days old! Why is it in the top right corner of the WaPo home page?

Is there so little new news that can work to encourage readers to vote for Kamala? Searching the entire front page, I find "See how people like you vote," "Polls are tied, voters dig in and Harris, Trump scratch for any advantage," "Michelle Obama implores men to support Harris to protect women’s health," "To understand the U.S. economic success is to love Harris’s plan," and — my favorite — "Harris talks increasingly about her faith but walks a careful line."

"You know how polls are done. Oh, I'm gonna get myself in trouble, but, so I really don't believe too much in 'em...."

"These pollsters, they charge you a lot of money... half a million bucks to do some stupid poll. They interview like 251 people. I don't think they interview 'em in many cases.... I think they sit there, they make a deal, they get a half a million bucks and they say, Trump's leading 51 to 49. They announce it and everybody says, oh oh.... I think that they probably don't always poll. Some of them probably never poll.... I don't know of one person in my whole life that ever got called by a pollster...."

Said Donald Trump, talking to Joe Rogan the other day.

"But I shouldn't say that 'cause I'm doing very, you know, really well in the polls..... But no, I honestly believe that there's probably a lot of fraud. I had a poll Washington Post/ABC in the Hillary thing on Wisconsin. They had me down 17 points the day before the election. I knew it was wrong because I had a rally. I had 29,000 people at a racetrack. And it was like zero degrees. Wisconsin.

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Wrote C.S. Lewis, quoted by David French, in "Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being 'Never Trump'" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, so you can see for yourself what 4 lessons French learned.

But I liked the C.S. Lewis quote in the abstract. It's so abstract! The "highest reality," eh?

And now, this blog has a theme today: reality. This is only the second post of the day, but the first post was about a NYT column called "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?"

Is there a sense — at the NYT and elsewhere — that reality is at stake, that it's out there, eluding us, and we need to struggle to get a grip on it, and we are losing?

I am reminded of Trump's saying — on the Joe Rogan podcast — that when he became President, "it was very surreal." But: "When I got shot, it wasn't surreal. That should have been surreal. When I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew exactly where I was hit.... I knew exactly what happened.... With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience.... And all of a sudden I'm standing in the White House, and it was very, very surreal...."

I am reminded of Elon Musk's "There's no truer test than courage under fire."

And: "Reality, what a concept!"

A NYT columnist wonders about "Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it" and it makes me question whether Eminem did endorse Harris.

I'm reading "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?" by Jessica Grose:

Obama casually rapping a few bars of “Lose Yourself” got a lot more attention than Eminem’s brief speech. But in this tight election that could be decided by a few swing states — including Michigan — I wonder if Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it, will be the most consequential one that Vice President Harris receives.

What was special about the way he made what Grose is calling his "endorsement"? Reading the transcript and rewatching the video, I realized that Eminem did not make an endorsement at all — not of a candidate anyway. What Eminem endorsed was freedom of speech. That's where he put his Michigan clout:

"So look I wrote down a few things I wanted to say...."

He's a wordsmith, and he tells us he wrote it down. That means these words really matter. This is text. It's been crafted.

"I'm here tonight for a couple of important reasons."

There will be 2 reasons stated. Let's find 2 reasons and not hallucinate additional reasons.