At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Again, no sunrise picture. It was cold and overcast. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I hope you'll still support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

As long as I'm talking about apologies...

"George Stephanopoulos and ABC apologize to Trump, are forced to pay $15 million to settle defamation suit/ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a Trump presidential foundation and museum" (Fox News).

The defamation had to do with the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit. Stephanopoulos incorrectly asserted "Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury."

"This is unacceptable and disturbing. The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates..."

"We sincerely apologize that these personalized plates were not properly rejected during our review process. The use of hateful language is not only a clear violation of our policies but also a violation of our core values to proudly serve the public."

Wrote the California Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted in "Family that owns Tesla Cybertruck with ‘LOLOCT7’ plate says its meaning was misconstrued" (Washington Times).

"How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump."

Headline at The New Republic. Article by Greg Sargent. Subheadline: "Trump wants to turn the FBI into something so draconian that the political press many not grasp it until it’s too late. And Republican senators are already giving themselves cover to go along with all of it."

Is it "surrender" if you're on his side?

I see I have an old tag "Trump's swamp draining." I'll use that for this. I created it in 2016 but never really used it in the first Trump administration.

"If you think of the United States as a football field, all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1,000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one-inch line."

Said John Tierney, quoted in "No, Recycling Will Not Save the Environment/Despite what you may have heard, many 'recyclables' sent to recycling plants are never recycled at all" (Reason).

The article is from 2 years ago, but it presents a video that I've been seeing tweeted and blogged this week, and I didn't remember seeing it before. That one-inch line visual really stuck with me. If it's correct, the answer is so obviously landfills, and people who think we're running out of space to just pile up our trash have been wildly misled.

"The comment from the Feds is absurd. These are car-sized drones that have flown over New Jersey, New York, and military bases in Virginia."

"If the Feds know who is doing this, they should say so. If they don't know, they should say that. To say that they 'pose no threat,' but we can't tell you what they are is the height of bureaucratic arrogance."

That's the most sensible comment at the WaPo column "New Jersey needs to get a grip. But our drone defenses need work. There’s no need to panic about drones." The column — not the comment, the column — is by Max Boot.

And here's the statement from the Feds the commenter is reacting to: "We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus."

And then there's this:

Yes father, use grok to generate an image of the New Jersey drones delivering McDonalds to that fat slob Chris Christie.

Perfect, now post it on 𝕏 https://t.co/gvnetk4faA pic.twitter.com/JbRCvjRgDo

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 14, 2024

"The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation."

Tweets Trump.

"I love Italy."

Me after my 4th breadbasket at Olive Garden pic.twitter.com/zHrF2iJv1d

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 13, 2024

"But what is lost in this lionization of one of the most notorious terrorists in American history is that for Mr. Kaczynski..."

"... the desire to kill came first, and the ideological justifications followed. Lonely rage defined him, and he spent far more time tormenting his neighbors than he did on his grandiose plans to bring down industrial society. He killed dogs for their barking, strung razor wire across dirt bike paths and fantasized about murdering a neighboring toddler. The manifesto and its carefully constructed veneer of Luddite and anarchist philosophies were a con to lure others into his world of despair and hatred.... He callously identified the environmental movement as being the most socially acceptable justification for his crimes, even though he privately denigrated environmentalists in his journals, and proudly littered, poached and illegally logged on national forest land around his cabin."

From "What Do You Say to a Young Person Who Admires the Unabomber?" by Maxim Loskutoff, who wrote a novel about Ted Kaczynski, "Old King."

In the future, evildoers will be able to use A.I. to produce a carefully-constructed-looking manifesto that organizes their chaotic facts into what seems to be a coherent philosophy.

The answer to the question in the column title is tell these students...

"Before I read 'The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins,' it hadn’t occurred to me that saxophonists must watch what they eat so as not to have 'an accidental elimination' while playing."

"Before I read Robert Hilburn’s biography of Randy Newman, I didn’t know Newman was kind of lying in interviews when he said his song 'Short People' was about prejudice. 'I just thought it was funny,' he said. 'The Art of Dying,' a posthumous collection of writings by the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, came out this year. He was ill with cancer when he compiled it. He wrote: 'I swatted a fly the other day and thought, Outlived you.'"

Writes Dwight Garner, the NYT book critic and my favorite garner, in "Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading/Jennifer Szalai, Dwight Garner and Alexandra Jacobs look back at the books that 'offered refuge from the wheels grinding in our heads'" (NYT).

"I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme..."

"... but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in 'The Third Man,' is supposed to be cultural ferment: 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?" (NYT).

I got totally sidetracked by "dispensation." Here's my interaction with Grok that convinced me that Douthat didn't make a weird word choice. It's an excellent word choice, and I enjoyed reading about the religious meanings of "dispensation," including

What the NYT is saying today under the heading "Trump Transition."

On the front page of the NYT website right now:

 

1. "Trump’s Night-Owl Tendencies Set Stage for After-Hours Diplomacy." When you click through, the  headline becomes "Trump’s Transition Business Largely Happens After Night Falls." I prefer the front-page headline because it focuses on Trump, the person.

Headline writers blithely omit "a" and "the," but there's a big difference between "the polio vaccine" and "a polio vaccine."

The Washington Post splashes this in our face: "RFK Jr. ally filed petition to revoke FDA approval for polio vaccine."

I suspect that many readers experience alarm — Oh, no, it's crazy to take away the polio vaccine! — and read no further.

But it's not the polio vaccine. It's a polio vaccine. From the text of the article:

An ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. petitioned the government in 2022 to reconsider its approval of a widely used polio vaccine, which is credited with staving off a debilitating virus that can result in permanent paralysis.

The petition is about one polio vaccine, not all polio vaccines. 

Aaron Siri — a lawyer with a history of seeking to expand exemptions to vaccines — asked the Food and Drug Administration to suspend or withdraw approval of Sanofi’s polio vaccine for children.... In the 2022 petition, [Siri] raised questions about the safety of the polio vaccine and argued for more studies to be conducted.

I've added the boldface. That "the" in "the polio vaccine" refers to Sanofi's vaccine, and if you go to the link on "petitioned the government" you'll see Sanofi's vaccine distinguished from other polio vaccines.

The Washington Post has a subheadline with the word "the":

At the Friday Night Café...

You can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise picture today. Too cold! But I hope you'll still support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage."

 Said JD Vance, quoted in "Daniel Penny accepts VP-elect JD Vance's invite to be his 'personal guest' at the Army-Navy game Saturday. "

Peter Thiel talks to Piers Morgan about Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione.

It's an interesting discussion, but many people are getting hung up on Thiel's very awkward, disfluent manner of speaking:

Morgan shows Thiel a clip that Luigi Mangione shared on social media. It's a clip of Thiel himself, and Thiel says it's the first time he's heard about the alleged killer's interest in him. In that clip, Thiel says:

"Crystal Mangum, who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of rape in 2006, has confessed that her allegations were false."

"After more than 18 years, Mangum made this admission during a podcast interview. She is currently serving a prison sentence for an unrelated murder charge, and due to the statute of limitations, she cannot be charged with perjury for the false accusations. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs."

Grok summarizes at the moment.

She's in prison for murder now, and she's waited until the statute of limitations has run on the perjury she now says she committed. 

The charges against the lacrosse players were dropped long ago, and each of them won $20 million for the persecution they suffered. The confessing looks like this, in case you want to form an opinion about why she's doing this now:

More than 18 years after the Duke lacrosse allegations, Crystal Mangum admits that she made it all up. pic.twitter.com/TPQ3jc8oEv

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) December 13, 2024

"Though Mr. Biden has the prerogative to confer broad immunity with what are sometimes called safe harbor or protective pardons, doing so now on a large scale would be difficult to achieve..."

"... at least with any principled consistency.... [E]ven the broadest presidential pardon couldn’t fully protect someone Mr. Trump was determined to harass. His IRS could engage in selective audits. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division could scrutinize someone’s business. Without the protection of the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, congressional Republicans could subpoena beneficiaries of the pardons. The hearings that followed would be perjury traps — and Mr. Biden’s pardons could not cover future crimes. Conservative prosecutors in Republican-run states could try to contrive local charges...."

So writes the Washington Post Editorial Board, in "Biden should rule out preemptive pardons/Trump might target his enemies, but get-out-of-jail-free cards are unnecessary and imply guilt."

And I'll just put this here:

Oh Gary, how could you do this to me? 🥹 pic.twitter.com/OoooQI77ZS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2024

"This is civilization ending philosophy where really bad ideas are being smuggled in under the guise of civil rights...."

"So they take a very distorted view of what black is. Black is, you listen to this type of music, you dress in this way, you study these courses, you have these political views, and we have created what a black person is. And if you don't fit into that box, it doesn't, you are not real. This is destroying the identities of hundreds of millions of people who have different ethnicities. They're all black, different cultures, different languages.... We did so much to get rid of stereotypes and now the stereotypes are coming back except now they're coming back as a norm to be enforced rather than something to be laughed at.... So I hate critical race theory...."

Said Kemi Badenoch, in the new episode of the Bari Weiss "Honestly" podcast, "Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (transcript and audio here).

Badenoch, who grew up in Nigeria, now leads the Conservative Party in the U.K.

Despite being called a “race traitor” for opposing DEI, UK Conservative Party leader @KemiBadenoch is not backing down.

“These are civilization-ending bad ideas.”

“It is not real equality. It is not even promoting the well-being of minorities. It is a way for the left to… pic.twitter.com/C83dVySxc3

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 12, 2024

"Many women start struggling with new facial hair growth later in life.... Some said they had made friends or relatives promise to pluck their hairs for them..."

"... if they ever ended up in a hospital or a care facility. 'We made a pact: When we were old and maybe unable to care for ourselves, each of us would make sure that hairy ugliness wasn’t noticeable on the other,' said Debbie Russell, 68. But there is the possibility of finding peace with age, too. 'To me, my facial hair feels like a part of my gender identity, and since menopause I have a little goatee now, which I shave,' said Mitzi Cowell, 60, 'but I dream of the day when I can just grow it out, braid it.'"

From "Is Facial Hair the Last Taboo in Women’s Beauty? Millions of women regularly remove it. Does it have to be that way?" (NYT).

Also: "Women with facial hair have been documented throughout history, often in ways that make current attitudes seem modest. (Take, for example, Annie Jones, P.T. Barnum’s bearded lady, who was billed in his circus as a 'freak' — a term Jones protested.)"

From that link about Annie Jones: "Annie Jones was born in Virginia in 1865, reportedly exiting her mother’s womb with her chin already covered in hair.... Jones was not even a year old when her parents first pushed her into P.T. Barnum’s exhibition in New York City. The tiny girl was billed as 'The Infant Esau'.... As time went on, the 'Infant Esau' grew into the 'Esau Lady' and, eventually, the 'Bearded Lady.'"

"She was accused of saying in a conversation at a conference in March that the university was 'controlled by wealthy Jews'...."

"She was also accused of saying that Jewish students were 'wealthy and privileged' and not in need of her office’s diversity services, and that 'Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,' according to the documents, which were part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.... Ms. Dawson had been in charge of an office that oversees efforts to mentor and retain racially, culturally and economically diverse students.... Ms. Dawson’s lawyer, Amanda Ghannam, denied that she said anything antisemitic.... 'The university has clearly, blatantly violated Ms. Dawson’s First Amendment rights.... It’s deeply troubling that they would escalate the situation to termination based on one conversation in somebody’s private capacity'...."

From "D.E.I. Official at University of Michigan Is Fired Over Antisemitism Claim, Lawyer Says/The official, an administrator of multicultural programs, was accused of making antisemitic remarks in a conversation. Her lawyer said that the school fired her this week, and vowed to sue" (NYT).

At the Swan Lake Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise picture today. The "feels like" temperature was well below zero. The swan picture is from the 7th. Anyway... please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"By the way, do you want hors d’oeuvres or anything?"

Said Trump, quoted in "Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s 2024 Person of the Year Interview With TIME." 

I corrected the spelling of "hors d’oeuvres." TIME wrote "hors d’Oevres." I think it's funny, both Trump suddenly offering hors d’oeuvres and TIME, which would probably jump at any chance to portray Trump as dumb or lowly, not managing to spell "hors d’oeuvres" correctly in a written transcript. Come on! If there's one spelling you've got to know you need to check before publishing, it's "hors d’oeuvres." 

This is my second post today about Trump tending to the food needs of his guests. Isn't that nice?

ADDED: It's also funny that he used the phrase "hors d’oeuvres." Why wouldn't everyone, by now, just say "appetizers"? Maybe to someone paying close attention to catering, hors d’oeuvres conveys food to be taken up with the fingers and not needing a plate. It's outside of the meal, not the first course of a meal. One might stick to the silly old phrase for precision, but I like to think Trump used it to be disarming to his guest, the TIME interviewer, to create a spelling challenge (which TIME failed), and to call out to onlookers like me who are listening for verbal music.

"The report... includes details that will almost certainly fuel the 'fedsurrection' narrative that has been growing on the right and amongst Donald Trump supporters..."

"... The false notion that the federal government was responsible for instigating the attack.While the review found 'no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,' the inspector general's office said that there were 26 confidential human sources in Washington on Jan. 6. None of them were 'authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6,' the inspector general said. A total of four FBI confidential human sources entered the Capitol, according to the inspector general, including one who testified during the Proud Boys trial in which several members of the far-right group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. A total of 13 confidential human sources entered the restricted area around the Capitol, the IG report said, while the remaining 9 never entered the Capitol or restricted area...."

From "FBI missed 'basic step' when gathering intel in the lead-up to Jan. 6, DOJ watchdog finds/Investigators found no evidence of undercover FBI employees at the Capitol, but the presence of FBI informants could further fuel right-wing 'fedsurrection' conspiracy theories" (NBC News).

ADDED:

For those keeping score at home, this was labeled a dangerous conspiracy theory months ago. https://t.co/gNJPUuRp5U

— JD Vance (@JDVance) December 12, 2024

"Trump Allies Appear Before Judge in Wisconsin Election Interference Case/The case is one of five related to 2020 election interference that are proceeding even as Donald J. Trump prepares to return to the White House."

The NYT reports.

Three of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies appeared before a judge on Thursday in Wisconsin in a criminal case related to 2020 election interference.... The defendants in Wisconsin... are all expected to plead not guilty to the 11 felony charges. They include Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin native who devised a plan to deploy fake electors for Mr. Trump in swing states that he lost in 2020, and Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign adviser who played a major role in carrying out the plan. The third defendant, James R. Troupis, is a Wisconsin lawyer who circulated the fake elector plan within the Trump campaign....

In Wisconsin, the three defendants were charged in June with a single count of forgery-uttering, a felony that carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. On Tuesday, the office of Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s attorney general, brought 10 new forgery-related charges in an amended complaint, claiming that the 10 Wisconsin residents who were recruited to be fake Trump electors in 2020 were deceived into signing an election certificate that was sent to Congress....  

Meade was on the scene and recorded this video of Troupis speaking in his own defense outside the courtroom:

Time didn't have much choice: Trump is the "Person of the Year."

Here.

It's a very long article. Excerpt:

Trump’s political rebirth is unparalleled in American history. His first term ended in disgrace.... He spent six weeks during the general election in a New York City courtroom.... An assassin’s bullet missed his skull by less than an inch at a rally in Butler, Pa., in July.....

Trump has a ready explanation for his improbable resurrection. He even has a name for its climactic final act. “I called it 72 Days of Fury,” he says as the interview gets under way. “We hit the nerve of the country. The country was angry.”... While Democrats estimated that most of the country wanted a President who would uphold the norms of liberal democracy, Trump saw a nation ready to smash them, tapping into a growing sense that the system was rigged....

Whether Trump can actually fix the root causes of Americans’ anger is another question....

To many Americans, his defiance in the aftermath of the shooting—rising bloodied, fist in the air, chanting “Fight!”—made him an inspirational figure for the first time. “A lot of people changed with that moment,” Trump tells TIME, sipping Diet Coke from a glass at Mar-a-Lago....

Much much more at the link. 

"Timmerman said he had sneaked into Syria from Lebanon on a 'religious pilgrimage' to Damascus. 'I heard the word of God,' he explained."

"He ended up in a prison in the Syrian capital known as the 'Palestinian Division,' and was held in a separate ward until Monday morning, a day after rebels took over the capital and freed thousands of inmates. 'It was a chaotic scene. I had my prison clothes on, and another prisoner was with me. I was walking to Jordan,' he said, stopping to rest every night in a farm. A local guard in Zahayabeh said he came across him in the morning. 'He didn’t speak much Arabic, so I took him home. He told me he wanted to go to bed. When he woke up, he asked for a fried egg and a boiled egg. I gave him both and some pickled eggplant too, and then I called you,' he said, turning to a member of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group that has taken over Damascus. 'And then, the media attacked.'"

From "US ‘pilgrim’ Travis Timmerman found after seven months in Syrian jail/The discovery of the American in Damascus raises hopes for the family of Austin Tice, the journalist who was kidnapped by Assad’s regime in Syria in 2012" (London Times).

"Britain is to ban indefinitely the use of puberty blockers for young people under 18 with gender dysphoria, except in clinical trials..."

"... the government said on Wednesday, making permanent a set of temporary restrictions put in place earlier this year.... The country’s National Health Service stopped the routine prescription of puberty blocker treatments to anyone under 18 as treatment for gender dysphoria following a landmark review into gender identity services undertaken by Hilary Cass, one of the country’s top pediatricians. Her report, published in April, concluded that gender medicine was operating on 'shaky foundations' when it came to the evidence for some medical treatments, including prescribing hormones to pause puberty or to change physical characteristics.... Young people who already had a valid prescription for puberty blockers before a certain date this year — depending on where they live — will be able to continue to receive them...."

From "U.K. Bans Puberty Blockers for Teens Indefinitely/A freeze placed this year on their use to treat gender dysphoria will remain in place for young people under 18, except in clinical trials, Britain’s government said" (NYT).

"[F]ew on the populist right view Trump as the genuine article—they tend to politely describe the president-elect as a 'transitional figure'...."

"Still, most of those I interviewed shared the view that Trump will likely squander his populist goodwill with tax cuts for billionaires and other anti-populist agenda items during his term. This should produce an opening for the populist left, but there remains a deeper and perhaps more intractable problem: The GOP appears to be locking into place a multiracial coalition of the non-college-educated. These are voters who may prove easier for liberals to lose than to win back. If the Democrats have any hope of once again being the party of the working class... they need to recognize that Americans are desperate for meaning and community...."

Writes Tyler Austin Harper, an environmental studies professor, in "Is This How Democrats Win Back the Working Class? Embracing populism could help the party build a lasting political coalition — if the Republicans don't do it first" (The Atlantic).

"This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen people who have direct knowledge of how and why Mr. Trump salvaged Mr. Hegseth’s bid, at least for now."

I'm reading "Power, Intimidation and the Resurrection of Trump’s Support for Hegseth/The president-elect became convinced that letting Pete Hegseth fail would set off a feeding frenzy among senators. What followed was a MAGA swarm that helped salvage his bid, at least for now," by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in the NYT.

I'm giving you a free-access link so you can judge the quality of the sources, the likelihood of a senatorial "feeding frenzy," and the meaning of "MAGA swarm."

We're told that Pete Hegseth went "from dead man walking to a man with a real shot of being confirmed by the Senate" in what was "a test case of power and intimidation," where Trump demonstrated his "ability to summon an online swarm, even while spending minimal personal capital of his own."

"Everybody says this who meets with him, but like, he's, he's an incredible host. So we, we met with him at Bedminster Golf Club in, in New Jersey...

"... which is like, you know, absolutely beautiful, you know, we had a great time.... [What did Trump serve at dinner?] Oh, he said, he said what do you guys want to eat? And I, I just, I, for some reason I was just like, I, I, I, I know exactly what to say and I'm like, meat, I want meat. And so he literally ordered every meat dish. And, and by the way, he ordered every meat dish and nothing else. [There were no sides?] There were no sides.... It was all meat and it was glorious. There was so much meat. I don't think there was room on the table for sides. [Were there drinks or no alcohol?] There? It was a diet coke. He, he, he, he mainlines diet coke. And I was mainlining it right next to him."

Said Marc Andreessen — with questions from Bari Weiss in brackets — in this "Honestly" podcast episode. This is a great podcast. (Andreessen, to quote Weiss, "got his start as the co-creator of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser... He then co-founded Netscape... [and] now runs a venture capital firm... [that] invested in Airbnb, Coinbase, Instagram, Instacart, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, Lyft and Oculus to name just a few.")

There's a nice "lightning round" at the end of the podcast. After asking about the food Trump, the "incredible host," served at Bedminster, Weiss asks: "Tomorrow you wake up and you're the DNC chair, what's the first thing you would do?"

Don't say "Christmas." Don't even say "joy."

A Grok summary, at X:

During a recent event at the White House, Jill Biden mentioned the need for 'joy' during the holiday season, a comment which some interpreted as a subtle mockery of Kamala Harris's previous campaign slogan 'sense of joy.' Jill Biden later clarified that her remarks were not meant to be taken as an insult, emphasizing that the audience was reading too much into her statement. The incident has sparked discussions about the dynamics within the Biden administration. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.

Here's the relevant video clip.

🚨 JUST IN: Jill Biden is now OPENLY MOCKING Kamala Harris’ “joy” line

The audience even knows what’s going on, and breaks out into laughter 😂

Anybody still think Jill Biden DIDN’T vote for Trump? 🤣 pic.twitter.com/8ePBuLQVKD

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 11, 2024

"Joy" is a Christmas word: "Joy to the World/The Lord is come"/"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It's a word that might be selected by someone who wants to avoid limiting her message to Christians. It seems more general, even as Christians hear it as specific to the Christian religion.

Jill also says "peace" and "light": "I hope that you all feel that sense of, you know, peace and light." 

"Peace" and "light" are also words that, for Christians, call to mind Jesus Christ. Jesus is "the light of the world" — "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Jesus is the "Prince of Peace" — "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

But Jill's audience, hearing "joy," thinks not of Jesus Christ but of a worldly power-seeker who used "joy" as a political brand that worked for a couple weeks and then was recognized as idiotic emptiness. Now, it's a laugh line.

Jill hears the laughing and flaps her arms about. Instead of holding steady and conveying the beauty and seriousness of the hope for peace and light and joy at Christmas, she emits a scoffing laugh and acknowledges that she too can hear what they hear, a reference to Kamala Harris.

Sunrise — 7:09, 7:18.

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.

"'He’s hot as shit, you must acquit' demanded one woman online, while others wrote: 'Free Luigi!'..."

"Among the viral posts on Twitter is a photograph of a woman privately messaging Mangione after his arrest, which has been viewed more than 3.2 million times. 'Baby, I know you don’t know me, but I will be praying for your entire exoneration and freedom from this point forward. In exchange, I’m begging you to start an Only Fans account,' she wrote. 'Fan cams' worshipping the 'Gen Z assassin' have also appeared on TikTok, with users uploading musical montages featuring images of him shirtless and smiling.... The reaction to the murder has forced American authorities to remind the public that 'this killer was not a hero'.... Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania... said... 'In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint....'" 

From "'The hot assassin': how the internet became obsessed with Luigi Mangione/The 26-year-old charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, has found support among social media users" (London Times).

Americans approve of Trump handling of the transition to the presidency.

According to a new CNN poll.

New CNN poll shows that Americans have confidence in Trump's ability to solve virtually every issue facing our country, and more confidence in America's future today than they've had in over 3 years.

Trump broke the mainstream media. Incredible. pic.twitter.com/taZncCJyNb

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 11, 2024

"'The Mod Squad' was one of the first prime-time series to acknowledge the hippie counterculture and an early example of multiracial casting."

"It centered on three hippies in trouble with the law, who avoid jail time by joining the police department and working undercover. Mr. Cole was cast as Pete Cochran, a wealthy kid who was kicked out of his parents’ house for stealing a car. [Clarence Williams III] played Linc Hayes, and [Peggy] Lipton played Julie Barnes.... In his 2018 memoir, 'I Played the White Guy,' Mr. Cole described turning down the role, because he did not want to play a character who ratted on troubled teenagers. 'It sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on air,' Mr. Cole recalled yelling the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling, during the audition. But his attitude was exactly what Mr. Spelling was looking for in Pete Cochran, he said. Ms. Lipton died in 2019, and Mr. Williams died in 2021...."

From "Michael Cole, ‘Mod Squad’ Actor, Dies at 84/Mr. Cole, who played the wealthy Pete Cochran, had been the last of the show’s three stars still living" (NYT).

I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture — but I don't remember watching the show...

"He’s a good-looking guy. He looked really, very handsome last night. Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that."

Who said it? And who did he say it about?

"A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by The Onion’s parent company to buy Alex Jones’ far-right media empire, including the website Infowars..."

"... ruling that the auction process was unfair. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said after a two-day hearing that The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, had not submitted the best bid and was wrongly named the winner of an auction last month by a court-appointed trustee.... Jones went live from a studio soon after the ruling and told viewers: 'We can celebrate the judge doing the right thing.' He had previously referred to the sale process as 'auction fraud' and a 'fraudulent sale.' Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a statement on X that the company... would 'continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.' 'It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case,' he said...."

NBC News reports.

"It was an announcement made amid a swirl of tabloid speculation: Kimberly Guilfoyle, a loyalist of President-elect Donald J. Trump and — more pointedly..."

"... the fiancée of his son Donald Jr. had been named ambassador to Greece. The timing of the move — early Tuesday evening — would have been unremarkable except for what preceded it: rumors that the president-elect’s eldest son was dating a socialite, Bettina Anderson. The new relationship was seemingly documented in a series of photos published earlier on Tuesday by the British tabloid The Daily Mail, which described them as 'incontrovertible proof the soon-to-be First Son has moved on' with a 'stunning '"it girl."'"

From "Amid Rumors of a Breakup, Kimberly Guilfoyle Is Appointed Ambassador to Greece/The announcement came as Donald Trump Jr. has been seen with the socialite Bettina Anderson in Florida" (NYT).

Don and Kimberly got engaged 4 years ago. I don't trust long engagements! What's supposed to be going on? Either you're getting married or you are not. Don't live in limbo. Are you testing commitment... by being half-committed?

"During the Cold War, we classified entire areas of physics and took them out of the research community—entire branches of physics went dark..."

"... and didn’t proceed. If we decide we need to, we’re going to do the same thing to the math underneath AI."

Said Marc Andreessen, on the podcast "Honestly with Bari Weiss."

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says he attended “absolutely horrifying” meetings where Biden’s government vowed to take “complete control” over AI technology:

“They basically said AI is going to be a game of 2 or 3 big companies working closely with the government… We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/REjkfgJkyV

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

Here's a transcript of the entire podcast. Excerpt, giving context to the quote above:

The vantage point at 6:53 — 25 minutes before sunrise.

The clouds were heavy so I thought I'd better get out there early, because that's when it was likely to be interesting, if it was going to be interesting. And that's how I ended up with such a dark "sunrise" picture today. There was no sense waiting out the 25 minutes until the "official" sunrise time. It was 24°. I ran back to the car and that was that.

***

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"Even when he's lying out of his teeth, he's lying in an authentic way."

Says Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, in what is my favorite moment of his long interaction with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show": 

"People can smell authenticity. They can feel it. And I think Trump is a disaster for the country. It's very clear he does not think before he talks. He just says it. And there is something that draws people towards him about that. Even when he's lying out of his teeth, he's lying in an authentic way."

I really do think that what people like about Trump is that they feel that he's saying what he thinks. Some of the things he thinks are not precisely true. They may be exaggerations or simplifications or things he's heard people saying — "They're eating the pets" — but we're seeing his thoughts. It's authentic in a way "that draws people towards him."

I also liked when Stewart said to Wikler, "It’s like wrestling a bear. You’re a giant man with a golden tongue" (at 9:54).

"It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada."

"I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all! DJT"

That's DJT, on Truth Social.

Out of all of "Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons in 2024," one stands out as not funny in the way it was thought to be funny back when it was shared.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons)

That's from August 21. 

You can check out all of The New Yorker's most shared cartoons here.

There's also this, from July 22, the day after Biden dropped out:

"Along with three quarters of a million other people, I’m a member of r/AmIOverreacting, a forum on Reddit devoted to the problem of potentially freaking out too much...."

"If anything, r/AmIOverreacting is a kind of reactivity buffer zone—a place where reactions can be mediated, and so slowed down. In that sense, it’s part of a larger, society-wide effort.... Mindfulness is another way of managing one’s reactivity. Broadly speaking, mindful minds seek to replace the question “Am I overreacting?” with the neutral observation that, yes, a reaction is happening. In the pre-baby mindfulness workshop I attended, our instructor told us to imagine our emotions as locomotives. 'You can watch the train leave the station without getting on board,' she said. She encouraged us to react to our reactions with nonjudgmental attention...."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Are You Overreacting? How to survive when provocations are a natural—and inescapable—part of life" (The New Yorker).

"García Márquez did not want Hollywood to make a movie from his book... because he could not picture English-speaking actors playing the Buendías..."

"... the family at the center of the novel. Nor could he see the epic story being squeezed into two hours — or three, or four, for that matter. And then there was the issue of magical realism... Onscreen... [t]he visual effects used to create such images in the past tipped at times into fantasy or horror, or just looked silly.... But in the decade since García Márquez died, much has changed... For one, the streaming giant could make a big-budget adaptation of the novel in Spanish... [and] could also make a series, not a film, giving the plot more room to stretch out. Finally, it could film it in the author’s native Colombia, with mostly Colombian actors.... The author’s family said yes, and the first season, made up of eight hourlong episodes, airs on Dec. 11. The second is in progress. García, the author’s son, said the family had agreed in part because they felt a series could produce 'the sensation of having experienced 100 years of life,' which is a hallmark of the book...."

From "How Netflix Made Magic Look Real in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’/The series, which will be released this week, adapts the novel for the screen for the first time. Even the author didn’t think it was possible" (NYT). That's a free-access link, so you can see the stills and video, along with passages from the much-loved book.

I hope the series is great, and I'd love to see more of the great long novels done as a series with many episodes.

"[Luigi Mangione] followed a variety of accounts befitting a typically online young man — self-help gurus like Andrew Huberman, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and 'heterodox' thinkers..."

"... such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, as well as Joe Rogan. His strongest interest by far is in the work of Tim Urban, a writer and illustrator popular with tech types who publishes science explainers and anti-woke political writing about how polarization is bad and rationalism can save the world. There was one prominent exception to his innocuous online trail, though. Early this year, he favorably reviewed the book-length manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, a fellow math whiz better known as the Unabomber, who killed and maimed people he believed had ruined the world with technology. 'It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,' he wrote. 'But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.' Mangione then quoted a 'take I found online that I think is interesting,' which ended by saying '"violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.' The manifesto found on Mangione is said to have stated 'these parasites had it coming.'"

From "What We Know About the UnitedHealthcare CEO Murder Suspect/An elite son is charged in the killing that also struck at corporate America" (NY Magazine).

Sunrise — 7:04.

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Also seen this morning: a bald eagle:

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not."

Wrote Dr. Seuss, in "The Lorax," quoted by Luigi Mangione at Goodreads.

Quoted in "Man Arrested After C.E.O. Killing Showed Interest on Social Media in Self-Improvement/Figures like Andrew Huberman, Tim Urban and the Unabomber feature in posts shared by accounts that appear to belong to the man arrested on Monday" (NYT).

Mangione is the "Man Arrested."

Daniel Penny acquitted.

The NY Post reports.

What are the downsides of granting blanket pardons of the sort Biden is considering?

Isaac Chotiner asks lawprof Rachel Barkow, in "Are Blanket Pardons for Officials on Donald Trump’s Target List a Good Idea?/As the Biden Administration considers granting clemency to officials singled out by Trump, a legal scholar explains the advantages and pitfalls of extending such protections" (The New Yorker).

Barkow responds:

That evocative word: groceries.

Trump: I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost, you know, who uses the word. I started using the word. The groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. pic.twitter.com/4hDzdJFrTz

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 8, 2024

Finding themselves alongside Kamala and Doug, Joe and Jill won't pretend to emit joy.

At the Kennedy Center Honors last night:

Jill and Joe Biden are refusing to even look at Kamala Harris tonight 😬 pic.twitter.com/qL6jftoLsu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 9, 2024

Trump doesn't want to be "like Joe Biden," who makes promises and then breaks them.

Here are 2 examples from yesterday's "Meet the Press" — transcript here — of Trump answering a question and weaving in a criticism of Biden. 

Was he just taking advantage of a perceived opportunity to take a shot at Biden, or does he have some genuine concern about not making any absolute promises that he might not want to keep (either because he respects the truth or because he wants to keep his options open and to deprive his opponents of the ability to attack him as liar (which they always do))?

EXAMPLE #1: Asked if he'd commit to refraining using executive action — without Congress — to restrict access to "medication abortions," Trump said:

Well, I commit. I mean, are -- things do -- things change. I think they change. I hate to go on shows like Joe Biden, “I’m not going to give my son a pardon. I will not under any circumstances give him a pardon.” I watched this and I always knew he was going to give him a pardon. And so, I don’t like putting myself in a position like that. So things do change. But I don’t think it’s going to change at all....

EXAMPLE #2: Asked if he's going to fire FBI director, Christopher Wray, he said:

Well, I can’t say I’m thrilled with him. He invaded my home. I’m suing the country over it. He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he — he’s done, and crime is at an all time high. Migrants are pouring into the country that are from prisons and from mental institutions, as we’ve discussed. I can’t say I’m thrilled. I don’t want to say -- I don’t want to, again, I don’t want to be Joe Biden and give you an answer and then do the exact opposite... so I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to say is I certainly cannot be happy with him....

Golden Globe nominations are out.

 See the list at People.com.

I don't care other than that "A Complete Unknown" is thought to be good. It's nominated as best drama motion picture and Timothée Chalamet is nominated as best male actor in a drama (in the role of Bob Dylan) and Edward Norton is nominated as best male actor in a supporting role in a drama (playing Pete Seeger). 

Tim will need to compete with the actor who plays Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," and Ed will need to compete with Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn in "The Apprentice." 

And I love seeing that Pamela Anderson is in the running for best "female actor" in a drama. She's got to compete with Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Kate Winslet — all famously great at acting in big dramas. You've got to root for the underdog there, but then there's one more nominee, Fernanda Torres for something called "I’m Still Here." I don't know anything about that, so... whatever... Pam or Fernanda. But I will watch Angelina Jolie in "Maria," because it's already on Netflix, starting Wednesday. That probably suggests it's not that good, but it costs nothing in time/money to take a look.

"Here comes Mr. Bob Dylan himself..."

The best part of this is how much James Austin Johnson looks like old Bob Dylan.

It's interesting that a woman plays Chalamet. That might have some verisimilitude, except that it made Chalamet much shorter than Dylan. In real life, Bob is 5'7" and Timothée is 5'10".

ADDED: Uproxx has an interview with James Austin Johnson about his Dylan imitation and links to this 2022 appearance on the Tonight Show where he sang "Jingle Bells" in Dylan voices from difference eras of Dylan:

James Austin Johnson sings “Jingle Bells” as Bob Dylan through the decades. #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/kuPegi5Dhw

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) November 29, 2022

The use of children in politics.

This kid has great instincts pic.twitter.com/FyYIADelrc

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024

I didn't blog this yesterday because I thought Trump's Fight, Fight, Fight cologne was just a joke.

It is funny, but the product is apparently real:

It's possible that the product idea was created in response to the glorious photographs of Jill Biden seemingly flirting with Donald Trump at the Notre Dame festivities in Paris. I see news articles from 2 days ago saying that Trump had just "launched" the product. So I'm thinking first came this hilarious idea for a fake ad and then came the idea that it can be an actual product.

Because, look, that bottle is completely basic — it's not shaped like an upraised fist — and the lettering is very plain and the product name is close to the first thing you'd think of.

It's like an episode of "The Apprentice." Here are these photographs of the President's wife adoring the former President. Your challenge is to design a Trump-branded product and to use one of the photographs in an ad campaign. 

The joke alone would have been great, but the idea of turning it into a money stream like this is brilliant. Now you know what to get your Trump loving dad Christmas... even though it's utterly well known that Dad never wants cologne.

Sunrise — 6:49, 7:01, 7:04, 7:11, 7:14, 7:23.

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"600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever."

"Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!"

Writes Trump on Truth Social.

The NY Post writes about that statement in "Trump calls on 'weakened' Russia to enact ceasefire in Ukraine after Kremlin ally Assad is toppled in Syria." Excerpt: "Trump, who has at times expressed a fascination with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, remarked about how feeble Moscow appeared in Syria after the shocking and swift fall of Bashar al-Assad, whom Russia backed with troops, aircraft and navy ships."

Tundra swans on Lake Mendota — yesterday at 1:30 p.m and today at 6:58 a.m.

"This time it’s real. He’s 50, free, a good man if I ever saw one, tough and gentle like in the old tire ads, and this is the big thing — grown-up."

That's the writing of a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Alice Munro, and that's not a flawed fictional character observed by a wise writer. That's Alice Munro expressing her own feelings in a letter, quoted in "What Alice Munro Knew/The Nobel-winning author’s husband was a pedophile who targeted her daughter and other children. Why did she stay silent?"

I didn't expend one of my gift links on that because I didn't think you'd want to delve into why she stayed silent. A more compelling question is: Why would we be able to continue to read her novels?

The article is by Giles Harvey, who writes: "Before the recent news emerged, my own opinion of Munro’s fiction could hardly have been higher. She seemed to have a more direct access to reality than any of her contemporaries, whose work, by comparison, could feel contrived and paper thin.... In the work Munro produced after learning what happened to her daughter, she seems to bear down on her horror and disgust with an implacable resolve...."

If only the Democratic Party could be more like a megachurch.

An idea thrown out by Barack Obama, speaking on "the power of pluralism," at the Democracy Forum in Chicago last Thursday:

[M]ega churches understand that belonging precedes belief. If you show up at one of these churches, they don’t start off peppering you with questions about whether you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. They don’t quiz you on the Bible. They invite you in, introduce you around, give you something to eat, tell you all about the activities and groups you can be a part of from the young adult social club to the ballroom dance group to the men’s choir which for those of you not familiar that’s where they put folks whose voices aren’t quite good enough to be in the main choir.... The point is megachurches are built around ‘let’s get you if here, doing stuff, meeting people, and showing you how you can participate and be active.’ It is about agency and relationships, it is not about theology or handouts. And they’re trying to create a big tent where lots of different people can feel comfortable. Once that happens, then they can have a deeper conversation about faith in a way that folks aren’t spooked by....

The ideas are creepy and offputting, so hold off on the ideas and give people a place to sing and dance and socialize. 

"Syrian rebels topple President Assad, his whereabouts unknown."

A terse headline at Reuters. 

Syria's army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad's rule had ended.... Assad, who has not spoken in public since the sudden rebel advance a week ago, flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination earlier on Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters, as rebels said they had entered the capital with no sign of army deployments. His whereabouts now - and those of his wife Asma and their two children - remain unknown....

Thousands in cars and on foot congregated at a main square in Damascus waving and chanting "Freedom" from a half century of Assad family rule, witnesses said. The collapse followed a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East after many leaders of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, a lynchpin of Assad's battlefield force, were killed by Israel over the past two months. Russia, Assad's other key ally, has been focused on the war in Ukraine....

The United States will continue to maintain its presence in eastern Syria and will take measures necessary to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Daniel Shapiro told the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain's capital on Sunday. Before its defeat, Islamic State imposed a reign of terror in large swathes of Syria and Iraq....

Speaking of "whereabouts unknown"... where, if anywhere, is our President, the President of the United States?

Is Biden there at all?

Or is Trump already the acting President? No one stopped him from looking like the President yesterday at the French festivities.

If Trump is the relevant President, we already know his ostensible position on Syria: "THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT."