Globular icicles.

Lake Mendota, today at 1:53 p.m.

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

How are you feeling about the impending Trump administration?

You have to pick one:

Oh, no!

Bring it on!

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Two smart, insecure, witty singles meet at a Manhattan tennis club, consciously couple, measure their lives in psychotherapy sessions, find lobster humor in the Hamptons and disagree about whether Los Angeles is beyond redemption."

A summary of "Annie Hall." 

From the obituary for Marshall Brickman, "Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen’s Co-Writer on Hit Films, Dies at 85/The duo won an Oscar for 'Annie Hall.' Mr. Brickman went on to write Broadway shows, including 'Jersey Boys,' and make movies of his own" (NYT).

Also, he was a UW alum: "Marshall...  attended the University of Wisconsin, a school he chose casually because a friend was going there and seemed to like it."

And: "In 1964, Mr. Brickman played banjo as a member of the New Journeymen, a trio with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips. When Mr. Brickman left the group, the couple took on two new partners and created the Mamas & the Papas. That may have seemed like bad timing, but a few years later he and a friend were invited to Sharon Tate’s house in Beverly Hills and decided at the last minute to go to Malibu instead. It was the night of the Manson family murders."

In the late 1960s, Brickman was a writer on "The Tonight Show," and he created Carnac the Magnificent!

"This is firing the F.B.I. director.... It is extremely dangerous to have a change in an F.B.I. director just after a change in administration."

Said an anonymous "law enforcement official," quoted in "Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I./President-elect Donald J. Trump turned to a firebrand loyalist to become director of the bureau, which he sees as part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him" (NYT).

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.... 

In planning to remove Mr. Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up. That act led to the appointment of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who spent nearly two years examining the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia....

ADDED:

Do you guys even understand how amazing this Kash appointment is?!

Let me remind you pic.twitter.com/nLo4aIFuDF

— Defender of the Republic 🇺🇸 (@realdefender45) December 1, 2024

AND:

🧵 of MSNBC Meltdowns tonight over Kash Patel 🤣

“The most dangerous nominee we’ve seen yet to our democracy” pic.twitter.com/QRhzfFUNOT

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2024

PLUS:

This is Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI Director. The Deep State is f*cked. pic.twitter.com/cejy7hhioP

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 1, 2024

"It’s clear from this election that there are many voters, especially those hardest hit by rising prices, those who experienced the pandemic-era financial support slipping away, who voted primarily on the economy."

"We’ve seen in the United States and worldwide if you have to break pearls in half to be able to afford your groceries, that is going to be the top-of-mind issue when you go to the ballot box. Democrats win when voters know that we’re the ones fighting for them against those who will seek to rip them off to add an extra billion dollars to their bank account."

That's Ben Wikler, answering the question: "You have said for years that abortion rights is the issue that best motivates Democratic voters and best convinces Republicans to vote for Democrats. Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights?"

From "Wisconsin Democratic Chair Says He Is the One to Revive a Distressed Party/Ben Wikler, who has led the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, announced a bid to be national party chair with a platform to 'unite, fight, win'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I like Ben because I knew him quite well when he was a teenager. He's obviously got highly developed verbal skills. Not highly developed enough to keep me from noticing that he didn't confront the complexities of the Democrats' involvement with the abortion issue. They forefronted it, and he wanted them to forefront it.

Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights? What's the answer? The question required him to pick. Either it's no longer true that abortion is the Democrats' best issue OR the Democrats needed to push even harder on the abortion issue. But maybe leaping past a reporter's well-structured question and saying "It's the economy, stupid" in elaborate, elegant language is a good demonstration of the skill Democrats want in their chair.

ADDED: I spent a lot of time trying to ascribe meaning to "break pearls in half." A commenter — wild chicken — asked if that's "a saying in Wisconsin." And I got all involved:

I googled it when I was writing the post, and I considered elaborating on this figure of speech. I couldn't find any example of "break pearls in half" as a figurative expression. I did find out that pearls are *cut* in half for some purposes, but these were real, not metaphorical, pearls. What did Ben mean? All I can think of is Mickey Mouse, starving, and cutting one bean into slices.

Then I got a text from Meade: "Pills/Bad transcription by NYT."

For more laughs, here's Mickey:

"Pardon your son. Let the Republicans howl. Who cares?"

That's the top-rated comment at the Washington Post's article "Hunter Biden’s team issues a fiery defense ahead of sentencing, possible pardon/Judges are scheduled to sentence the president’s son for gun and tax offenses in December."

President Biden, we're told, "repeatedly said that he will not pardon or commute the sentences of his son." But, yeah, who cares? He was running for office, and he didn't even win on that promise. He didn't even lose. He got ousted by fellow Democrats who thought he couldn't win and then they lost. Worst loss ever. Ignominious. And he's still got to drag his ancient body through 7 more weeks of this "presidency" nobody thinks he can do anymore. Surely, he can do one thing — that thing maybe he can't even remember promising he wouldn't do — and pardon his only living son, the scoundrel Hunter. Who believes promises these days? Everyone promises anything and everything to get elected. Is he supposed to drag himself through his last days on Earth — his post-presidency days — with his son in prison? Is he supposed to satisfy himself instead with the hollow, icy honor of posing as a weirdly scrupulous man who kept a promise not to pardon his son? Promise? Was there really a promise? Love. Family love. That's the greater thing. No joke.

UPDATE, later the same day: Biden pardoned Hunter. 

Eschewing an irritatingly newsy story, I looked back into my archive to confirm that I had eschewed it the first time around.

Chew on this, from 2019:

December 8, 2019

Part of blogging is choosing what not to blog.

There's one thing in the last few days that so many people seemed to think needed to be blogged (or tweeted or Facebooked) about, and I knew not to be part of the virality. It's nothing that involved anyone dying or anything evil, just something where I could see people were accepting a cultural con and doing free PR for somebody. There's an additional development that makes it more obvious that it was that sort of thing, but many people are doing another post about that. I'm pleased with myself for passing on this story, which I won't identify because that's my point. I didn't let myself be used in someone else's promotion. Didn't do it before, and won't do it now.

ADDED: I said "I won't do it now," when "now" was 4:57 a.m., but I will do it now, at 2:58 p.m., because the post did get people guessing, and I want to recognize the winner, who posted at 8:11 a.m.  The winner is dustbunny, who said: "The duct-taped banana art scam."