Sunrise — 7:08, 7:18, 7:36.

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The intensely visual and emotional Trumpian view of the landscape of war.

From the transcript of yesterday's press conference:

We're trying to get the war stopped, that horrible war that's going on in Ukraine with Russia, Ukraine. We've got a little progress. It's a tough one. It's a nasty one. It's nasty. People are being killed at levels that nobody's ever seen. It's very level fields. And the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body. And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical. I've never seen anything like that. And rapidly. I get reports every week and it's not even… It's like just… They're going down. Nobody's seen anything like it. It's a very flat surface, a very flat land. That's why it's great farming land. It's the breadbasket for the world actually. But it's very flat and there's nothing to stop a bullet but a body.

"Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with 'star witness' Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge."

"Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication. Cassidy Hutchinson’s most outrageous claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee had knowledge that her claims were false when they publicly promoted her. President Trump did not attack his Secret Service Detail at any time on January 6. President Trump did not have intelligence indicating violence on the morning of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson falsely claimed to have drafted a handwritten note for President Trump on January 6. Representative Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson baselessly attempted to disbar Hutchinson’s former attorney...."

From "Chairman Loudermilk Releases Second January 6, 2021 Report" released this morning.

Is it too soon to add my "Biden pardons" tag?

"Trump files suit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and Des Moines Register.... Selzer published a poll days before the election..."

"... that said Kamala Harris was ahead by 3 percentage points. Trump ultimately won the state by 13 percentage points."

NBC News reports.

The suit, filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, says it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by double digits, a difference that his lawyers argue in the suit constitutes “election-interfering fiction.” The president-elect is making the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising....

Well, it's not just advertising. It covers "advertisement, sale, or lease of consumer merchandise, or the solicitation of contributions for charitable purposes." But still, it's hard to see how that could cover deceptions in the form of political polls — however dishonest — published — however corruptly — in the news portion of a newspaper. I'm not looking at the complaint, however. I understand the outrage, and maybe there oughta be a law, but how can it be the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act? Who was to be bamboozled out of anything? The Trump campaign? (That is: Come waste time and money in Iowa and stay out of those blue-wall states that will actually determine the election.)

"'Hookahs and music were banned from the beginning, said Yahia Naeme, the owner of the cafe..."

"... who said the ban had lost him business because many people used to come to his cafe specifically to smoke hookahs. 'If we can’t offer it, they’ll get bored and go elsewhere,' he said. Other cafes in Idlib have skirted the law by offering hookahs in speakeasy-type environments behind closed doors. But Mr. Naeme did not want to risk running afoul of the area’s rulers...."

From "Cafes Can’t Play Music, but the Water Taps Work: Life Under Syria’s Rebels/The Islamists who now lead Syria have ruled the city of Idlib for years. Residents say they imposed some strict laws, but also heeded some complaints and improved public services" (NYT).

"As someone who practiced press law for more than twenty years, and served as a senior executive of news organizations for just as long, I was shocked by the decision of ABC News last week..."

"... to pay $16 million to settle Donald Trump’s libel case over George Stephanopoulos’s This Week broadcast in March. The shock came, and still lingers, because I—and every experienced press lawyer not involved in the case with whom I have discussed it—considered the case one in which ABC was likely to eventually prevail. The decision to settle has been greeted by a lot of commentary, but almost no reporting of new facts. Understandably, that’s generated a good deal of hand-wringing about corporations 'bending a knee' or gloating about the humbling of legacy media or an arrogant press getting its comeuppance. But such speculation does little to explain what happened...."

Writes Richard J. Tofel, in "Questions ABC News Should Answer Following the $16 Million Trump Settlement/The decision to cave and apologize has unnerved American journalists. The network owes them an explanation" (Columbia Journalism Review).

"In the manifesto, called 'War Against Humanity,' the author writes that they have 'grown to hate people, and society' and calls their parents 'scum.'"

"The author also writes that they acquired weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my father's stupidity' and describes wanting to die by suicide, but feeling like carrying out a shooting was 'better for evolution rather than just one stupid boring suicide.'"

Writes Newsweek, in "Natalie Rupnow's Reported Manifesto: What We Know" (about the school shooting that took place in my city yesterday).

The use of the word "scum" in a manifesto makes me think of "SCUM Manifesto," a 1967 feminist document. I discussed it back in 2017, when Facebook was banning some women who wrote about men as "scum." The "SCUM Manifesto" begins: "'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."

And yet, this new manifesto — what I'm seeing of it, anyway — uses the language of gender neutrality: "Humanity... people... society... parents." There is, however, "father." I see that Newsweek is using they/them pronouns for the killer.

Newsweek also reports President Joe Biden's hasty response: "We need Congress to act. Now. From Newtown to Uvalde, Parkland to Madison.... Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines...."

But when he pardoned his son Hunter for violating existing gun laws, Joe Biden attacked the prosecution as unfair and biased. One might have thought he'd refrain from calling for more gun laws when he so recently and conspicuously treated a gun law as not justifying enforcement. And yet didn't we all expect it — expect that next time there's a school shooting, Joe would indignantly cry out for more gun laws? #hypocrisy

Sunrise — 7:13, 7:20.

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Trump reveals something of what he knows/thinks about the drones (but declines to talk about whether he's received an intelligence briefing).

From a long press conference today: "The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don't want to comment, and I think they'd be better off saying what it is our military knows and our our president knows, and for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense. I can't imagine it's the enemy because it was the enemy they'd blast it out. Even if they were late, they'd blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don't want to tell the people, and they should, because the people are really — I mean they happen to be over Bedminster... they're very they're very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster. I've decided to cancel my trip."

He's asked, "Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?" and, unsurprisingly, he says, "I don't want to comment on that." But I think he has...

"When the topic turned to vaccines, the discussion was not about banning the product...."

"Kennedy spoke about the need for better study of the vaccine dosing schedule for newborns and the rise in chronic disease, while also rattling off statistics about the increase in autism rates despite multiple studies that have shown no link between vaccines and the disorder and World Health Organization estimates that immunizations have saved 154 million lives.... Here Trump redirected the conversation... while backing up Kennedy’s desire for more research.... He suggested to the drug company executives that they had nothing to fear from further investigation of the causes of autism, saying Kennedy could help put to rest vaccine hesitancy if no connection was found. The aftermath of the dinner, which ended by all accounts with surprising warmth on all sides, has become the stuff of mini-legend in the week that has followed. Trump called it 'a little unusual' in a recent NBC News interview. 'At a point I thought, I can’t believe I am doing this,' another participant said, expressing a sentiment echoed by others."

That's The Washington Post admiring Donald Trump!

The article is "How Donald Trump broke the ice between RFK Jr. and drug company CEOs/The president-elect’s choice for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is meeting with senators in Washington this week" (free-access link).

Do I need a new tag? Something like "Trump the Great Uniter"? Wouldn't it be funny... I mean, wouldn't it be nice if the old press template — Trump the Divider — failed? And who doesn't want it to fail?! Who doesn't want good things to happen?

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appears — one night only — in a performance of the Broadway show "& Juliet."

Nicely done!

"And and when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside — allies — they already see this as a resounding success."

"You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hegseth. Maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down. But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not going to tolerate dissent. They're not going to tolerate opposition to Donald Trump during his return to Washington. And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year. As Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish, the Trump team is sending out the message. Now, there will be a very steep cost if you go against Donald Trump."

Said Jonathan Swan at the end of today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue." 

The episode concentrates on the effort to win support from Senator Joni Ernst. You can listen to that. I won't summarize. I am blogging this because I want to say that when I heard the part quoted above, I thought: Sounds like "Master of the Senate." 

Makes me want to reread Robert A. Caro's great book about LBJ. (Commission earned.) 

I hope Trump gets his Robert A. Caro some day. 

"Pilloried by Democrats during his 2012 run, Romney has emerged as a strong voice for a bygone kind of politics."

Said Jake Tapper, introducing Mitt Romney on "State of the Union" yesterday.

Romney gave a long interview, and maybe you saw a clip of it, but I want to do my own edit:

ROMNEY: Donald Trump won. He won overwhelmingly. He said what he was going to do, and that's what he's doing. I mean, people are saying, oh, I don't like this appointment or this policy that he's talking about. But those are the things he said he was going to do when he ran. So you can't complain about someone who does what he said he was going to do. And I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts. I disagree with him on some things. But it's like, OK, give him a chance to do what he said he's going to do and see how it works out.... 

TAPPER:  Are you worried at all about being a target for retribution, you or members of your family?

ROMNEY: No, actually, I have been pretty clean throughout my life. I'm not particularly worried about criminal investigations.

"Nicola Guess is a dietitian and researcher at the University of Oxford. She also runs a private clinic and has worked as a consultant for food companies, including Beyond Meat."

I'm reading the fine print at the bottom of the New York Times article, "Why Ultraprocessed Foods Aren’t Always Bad," by Nicola Guess. 

The problem is that the category of ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless. It lumps store-bought whole-grain bread and hummus in with cookies, potato chips and soda. While many ultraprocessed foods are associated with poor health, others, like breakfast cereals and yogurt, aren’t.

Processing can also create products suitable for people with food intolerances or ones that have a lower environmental footprint. (Full disclosure: I have consulted for food companies that I feel make beneficial products, including Beyond Meat, which makes ultraprocessed meat alternatives that I believe are better for the planet.)...

So, there is also disclosure in the body of the text of the article.

I love the author's name, Nicola Guess. I have to guess about the usefulness of any of the assertions here.

Sunrise — 7:12, 7:09.

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"Holding space."

 Perhaps you're noticing this today:

Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for that CEO shooter, the abs, and that body"

The American left's creepy fascination with Luigi Mangione continuespic.twitter.com/CJbFoys6iN

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) December 15, 2024

That's Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for... those eyebrows, that body, the abs."

She's being funny... and inappropriate, and I'm not going to say anything more about how bad it is to drool over an alleged murderer. I want to discuss the phrase "holding space," which gained traction a week ago with this promotional interview for the movie "Wicked":

"People are taking the lyrics of 'Defying Gravity' and really holding space with that and feeling power in that."

I see there's a Wikipedia article, "Holding space":

"Holding space" is a psychology concept meaning towards creating a safe space for someone or something by being present for them, physically, emotionally and mentally without judgement.

"Some historians who follow the presidency say Biden has always shown flashes of anger when he feels underestimated."

"While they are far more fleeting than Trump’s brandishing of grievances, they have at times been unmistakable. 'There has always been this issue of resentment with Biden. He resented [former president Barack] Obama and crew for supplanting him in 2008 and for telling him not to run in [2016], and he has many other resentments,' said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who recently published a book on the relationship between presidents and CEOs. 'But can you imagine how resentful he is of the shifting narratives and the way he’s been pushed aside and manipulated and not treated fairly. So yeah, I can see him being resentful.'"

From "Biden touts his legacy, but frustration seeps through/The president is observing the traditions of a peaceful transfer of power, but his regrets and misgivings are evident" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Lots to talk about there, but I want to focus on "brandishing" — Trump’s brandishing of grievances. This is an article about Biden, his resentfulness, but Trump must be inserted, and he must be worse. Biden has  fleeting flashes of well-founded anger, but Trump has grievances, and he brandishes them. So Biden briefly displays resentment but Trump waves his resentment around like a weapon. 

Just yesterday, I was talking about the journalistic deployment of the word "brandish." Discussing a NYT article — "In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump/It was a week of frenzied activity as Silicon Valley billionaires and their companies brandished checks and compliments for President-elect Trump"  — I wrote:

"Last night, the runways at Stewart Airfield were shut down for approximately one hour due to drone activity in the airspace. This has gone too far."

A statement from New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

In mid-November, I directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate drone sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address this issue, and those efforts are ongoing. But in order to allow state law enforcement to work on this issue, I am now calling on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act.... Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.

"[T]he idea that today’s vaccines are overtaxing children’s immune systems is fundamentally flawed, experts said."

"Vaccines today are cleaner and more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did decades ago. What’s more, the immune reactions produced by vaccines are 'minuscule' compared with those that children experience on a daily basis, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges. 'That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,' Dr. Maldonado said. 'We are built to withstand that.'..."

From "Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No. Vaccines today are more efficient and contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system than some used decades ago" (NYT).

"In most states, children must be vaccinated against about a dozen diseases, a schedule that typically adds up to about 17 doses, administered before they begin kindergarten... Each of the shots contains about 10 antigens. Older vaccines packed a much bigger punch, having up to 300 times as many...."