Sunrise — 6:20, 6:41, 6:44, 6:45.

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"Buttigieg 'would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man,' Harris writes in a passage of her soon-to-be-released book...'"

"'But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. And I think Pete also knew that—to our mutual sadness.'"

From "The Running Mate Kamala Harris Didn’t Dare Choose/'I love Pete,' she writes in her new book. But picking a gay man would have been too risky" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

What kind of leadership potential is this? She made the wrong decision, admits to not daring, and all because she presumes that we, the people, are prejudiced.

To take her at her word, she declined to pick the running mate she thought was the best because she thought we Americans were being asked "a lot" to accept her. But it was hard to accept her when she'd been pushed forward because of her identity and not because she was the best. Then she decides that we louts wouldn't accept a gay man even though he was the best.

What were she and Pete mutually sad about? How simultaneously hostile to minorities and eager to promote minorities we terrible Americans are?

"The rebel commander and pioneering first President George Washington famously vowed never to set foot on British soil."

"And my five-times-great-grandfather King George III, for his part, did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders. Today, however, we celebrate a relationship between our two countries that surely neither Washington nor King George III could possibly have imagined. The ocean may still divide us, but in so many other ways, we are now the closest of kin.... The successes of the British Redcoats and of George Washington's Continental Army today stand shoulder-to-shoulder, brothers and sisters in arms, protecting the freedoms we both cherish...."

Said King Charles, at the extravagant dinner at Windsor Castle.

Gaze upon the ultra-posh scene and marvel. Watch the whole thing, with Trump speaking after Charles:

ADDED: Don't miss the elegant rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," beginning at 9:00. 

At 13:41, I believe the King is crying. Trump is reading a quote from the King himself, written in 1993, saying that he was "entirely motivated by a desperate desire to put the 'Great' back into Great Britain, in the finest tradition of British sovereigns."

"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION."

"I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Wrote Trump, on Truth Social, last night.

ADDED: "What the law says as Trump tries to designate ‘antifa’ a terrorist group/The U.S. has no legal way to designate domestic terrorist groups. Experts raised fears of political repression because 'antifa' is a broad ideology, not a group" (WaPo)(gift link).

“It’s essentially a kind of coalition politics of all kinds of radicals, from different kinds of socialists to communists, anarchists and more independent radicals,” said Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University and author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”

“Sometimes I compare it to feminism. There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are antifa groups, but antifa itself is not a group,” he said.

"South Park Delays New Episode to September 24 Because Creators 'Didn’t Get It Done in Time.'"

Headline at Variety.

Discussed here, at Reddit. A few of the comments:

• "Wow. This might be the first time in the entire run of the show that they didn’t get an episode done on time. And the show has been running for about 30 years. They have traditionally made each episode in 6 days. Wonder what it’s like behind the scenes."

• "The fact that these guys have been consistently knocking an episode out in like a week for the last 3 decades straight leads one to think something 🐟🐠🐡 goin on here."

• "Yeah, the Kirk thing probably [led] to a lot of changes and debate. They haven't been pulling any punches but they also aren't monsters."

"Brigitte Macron to submit photographs to court proving she is a woman."

The London Times reports.

“It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward,” the lawyer said. “It is a process that she will have to subject herself to in a very public way. But she’s willing to do it. She is firmly resolved to do what it takes to set the record straight,” he told the BBC. The court in Delaware would hear expert testimony that will be “scientific in nature.” Photographs would show Mrs Macron pregnant and with her three children, he added.

So... these are not nude pictures, just photographs in maternity clothing. Macron brought the lawsuit and is seeking damages, so she's responsible for her own predicament. I'm unsympathetic because she's a public figure. Object to the lies (and the truths) told against you and move on. 

At the bottom of the page:

"Le Slapgate" — I hadn't seen that expression before. Didn't know the "-gate" suffix — the all-purpose designation of scandal — had reached Europe, and it's funny to see it with "Le" — the all-purpose designation that we've got something French... French and masculine. 

"Who calls their dad 'old man'? It's 2025! That text looks like it was written by my 74-year-old boss."

TikTok is suspicious of those Tyler Robinson/"Tyler Robinson" texts."

"... conversations unbecoming to a Christian..."

I know the pain of losing loved ones to assassination. Charlie Kirk stood for life, faith, and truth—unashamed of Jesus. Now is not the time to attack him, but to honor his legacy, pray for his family, and ask: Where will you spend eternity? pic.twitter.com/p6zF34CNZD

— Alveda C. King, Ph.D. (@AlvedaCKing) September 17, 2025

Roseanne laughs.

pic.twitter.com/H8FnW46dNN

— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) September 18, 2025

Sunrise — 6:20, 6:41, 6:43.

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"I am leaning very strongly towards the theory that this text exchange was scripted as a way to absolve the boyfriend."

"It’s almost exactly what Walter White did at the end of Breaking Bad. This feels like a strategy they cooked up from watching too much TV."

Writes Matt Walsh, at X. And this is what I've been thinking. 

Why have people been taking these texts at face value?

The texts:

"Your movement seeks to remove rights from others. It is anti-truth and critical thinking, pro-violence, pro-dehumanisation of those who disagree with you..."

"... and you are so lacking in self-awareness you cannot see that you are precisely what you pretend to hate."

Said JK Rowling, at X.

"In dozens of focus groups conducted by my polling firm, young men identified three forces shaping their lives..."

"... economic displacement that keeps stability out of reach, institutional distrust born of broken promises, and a crisis of belonging rooted in masculinity... [Charlie] Kirk’s network transformed this frustration into political energy by linking stalled progress to a broader narrative of national decline and conservative resurgence. His message blended faith, family and MAGA-infused patriotism with a simple pitch: You don’t have to accept being worse off than your parents. Democrats, by contrast, rarely spoke to young men’s deeper questions about success, significance or belonging, leaving a gap Mr. Kirk knew how to fill...."

Writes John Della Volpe, in "What Democrats Can Learn From Charlie Kirk" (NYT).

"Republicans meet young men where they already spend their time; Democrats, more often, expect them to show up in formal political spaces that feel staged.... Young men... see Republicans as confident and direct, Democrats as scripted and afraid to offend. Mr. Kirk capitalized on that contrast by showing up on left-leaning campuses, taking tough questions and engaging head-on...

King meets President... and the ladies who carry pocketbooks meet the lady who carries only herself.

The wind kicks up as the King steps forward and all the many ladies' hats threaten to undercut the extreme dignity. The First Lady waits until she's duly shaken hands with the King before she reaches up — at 16:57 — to steady her headgear.

Stick around until 18:35, and you won't be sorry, unless you hate horses, white horses, arrayed in fairy-tale style.

It's the King's very best carriage, lavishly festooned with gold leaf, the very frippery Trump's haters deplore in the Oval Office. Their slogan plays in my head: No Kings!

At 23:13, I get the answer to the question that's been puzzling me: How do they keep the horses from shitting? (They don't.)

I had thought there was no music, that somehow silence was the soundscape for the event, but at 24:07 I see musicians and notice faint music. Perhaps there was music all along and a telephoto lens on the camera is creating the illusion that it is much closer than it seems. The faint music informs us of our great distance from these illustrious characters.

At 25:00, the music is (or seems) louder. It's "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about fighting the British. 

"Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed."

Said Sonia Sotomayor, quoted in "Sotomayor rebukes calls to 'criminalize free speech' in apparent swipe at Pam Bondi/The justice, in public remarks, didn’t name the attorney general, who has come under fire for comments to target people over 'hate speech'" (Politico).

And so ends the decades long push — by the left — to criminalize hate speech. Thanks, Justice Sotomayor!

Sunrise — 6:18, 6:39, 6:41.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Note the moon in the first picture.

"Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling."

Quipped the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, quoted in "Scott Bessent invokes deadly Hamilton-Burr duel when asked about threat to punch Bill Pulte in ‘f–king face’" (NY Post).

And here's the full punch-you-in-your-fucking-face quote: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

"There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."

Said Pam Bondi, quoted in "Bondi takes heat from the right after vowing to prosecute 'hate speech': ‘We will absolutely target you'" (NY Post).

Takes heat and deserves it.

Among the conservative commentary at the link there is this 2024 tweet from Charlie Kirk himself:

Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. 

And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. 

Keep America free.

"Two state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione... were dismissed on Tuesday, including one that had accused him of first-degree murder."

"Mr. Mangione, 27, is still charged with second-degree murder. The decision by Justice Carro is a blow to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Alvin L. Bragg. The prosecutors had argued that a terrorism charge was warranted because Mr. Mangione had targeted an executive 'of the United States’ largest health insurance company in front of the hotel where the company was about to conduct its annual investor conference' in Midtown Manhattan, which they said was 'widely recognized as the media capital of the world.' Mr. Bragg has said that the act was 'a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.'"

The NYT reports.

Mangione also faces charges in federal court in Pennsylvania state court. 

ADDED: Here's the NY statute showing what it takes for murder in the first degree: "(xiii) the victim was killed in furtherance of an act of terrorism, as defined in paragraph (b) of subdivision one of section 490.05 of this chapter...." Section 490.05 defines "terrorism" to include acts intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

"Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times..."

"... one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual 'mouthpiece' for the Radical Left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The 'Times' has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole. I am PROUD to hold this once respected 'rag' responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely 'smearing' me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts. They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal. The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW! The suit is being brought in the Great State of Florida. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

If your idea of America greatness doesn't include freedom of speech, it's not worth much.

And if you think the NYT is making an "illegal Campaign contribution" when it speaks about political candidates, you must want Citizens United overruled. 

"What do we do now?"

(Goodbye to Robert Redford, 1936-2025.)

Sunrise — 6:14, 6:34, 6:39.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I was working on a poem yesterday that had an epigraph from the poet Christopher Morley: 'No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.'"

"Sometimes you discover a sentence like that and say, 'I’m gonna put that on the top of a poem and see what happens.' Sometimes the epigraph is not just some cute afterthought but the reason why the poem started."

From a 2018 "Conversation with Billy Collins" (Booth), found because I was making spaghetti and remembering the epigraph, which I'd just encountered at the top of the poem "Vivace!"

I don't want to reprint an entire poem on my blog, but I will link to this other blog that did see fit to do what I won't do. You'll find the full text of "Vivace!" in a blog post titled "I Figured Out the Perfect Evening Activity."

"Is this an example of a type of journalism where you confront someone with a rumor and get a denial which is then the printable story, that X denied the rumor?"

I ask Grok, after getting it to summarize a Daily Beast article titled "White House Insists Stephen Miller Does Not Play With Dolls" (which I won't link to because it's behind a pay wall and even if it weren't, I don't think you should go there).

Grok: "Yes, this article is an example of a journalistic practice sometimes referred to as 'rumor-based reporting' or 'denial-driven journalism.'..."

Another prompt: "What are some examples of famous people who have been defined by rumors — the rumors stick as meaning something even when they are not proved or even regarded as likely?"

I expected Richard Gere and I got him... along with Walt Disney's frozen head.

"This show has become a sort of lighthouse show for people who want to believe that there are people in these hospitals who are dedicated, intelligent, compassionate, doing this kind of angelic work."

Said Noah Wyle, quoted in "'The Pitt' Defied Odds by Going Back to the Future/On Sunday, Emmy voters made a loud statement that there is an appetite for the kind of shows that used to dominate TV" (NYT).

I had never heard of this show, but apparently it's what people want these days. I'd watched "The White Lotus," which had a lot of nominations but won nothing. 

It seems that people are worn out and done with snark and irony. They want to be reassured that there are sincere, competent, hard-working people ready to help. (Note: Everything seems to relate to Charlie Kirk.)

Reminds me of "Hill Street Blues." Or... more on the subject matter: "St. Elsewhere."

"The two young men came up with the Monkees’ theme music on a walk to the park, and they developed a friendly but savvy relationship with the actors."

"They realized, for example, that by recording each member of the Monkees singing individually, they could avoid the actors horsing around and trying to impress one another. Musically, Mr. Boyce and Mr. Hart struck a fine balance between several imperatives. Study the Beatles, but don’t imitate them to the point of absurdity; catch the spirit of the ’60s in the use of Indian instruments and lyrics about 'the young generation,' but don’t be too challenging. Some veteran producers became frustrated trying to make the Monkees into a real band and gave up. Mr. Boyce and Mr. Hart persisted. 'To us,' Mr. Hart wrote, 'it was the chance of a lifetime.' Robert Luke Harshman was born on Feb. 18, 1939, in Phoenix. Bobby formed a lifelong relationship with the Hammond B-3 electric organ by playing it in the Pentecostal church his family attended...."

From "Bobby Hart, Who Helped Give the Monkees Their Music, Dies at 86/The hit songwriting duo he and Tommy Boyce formed in the 1960s was best known for the unexpectedly popular tunes of a made-for-TV band" (NYT).

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, & Hart with (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone, 1975
byu/NomadSound inMonkees

"Now, however, the new facial hair renaissance seems intrinsically connected to the current discourse around masculinity and the manosphere."

"There is little, after all, more redolent of manliness than facial hair, the visual expression of testosterone. It’s no accident that JD Vance is not the only member of Team Trump to have a beard. So do Donald Trump Jr., Commerce Secretary (and tariff warrior) Howard Lutnick and Senator Ted Cruz. In other words, beards are once again mainstream, which suggests their meaning is changing once again. Or even dissipating. As my colleague Jacob Gallagher... said, the scruffy look 'loses that masculine oomph when every guy seems to be doing the same thing.'"

Writes the NYT fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, in "What’s With All the Beards? More and more men seem to be putting down the razor and letting their whiskers grow. Our critic examines the history of the trend and what it might mean."

Is there anything less masculine than the phrase "masculine oomph"? Looking for "masculine oomph"? You can't get there from here.

As for "the current discourse around masculinity and the manosphere," what is most current is the idea of emulating Charlie Kirk. He was quite clean-shaven, so you may want to rethink your effort to right-wing-ize beards.

"From where does all this hatred, violence, and moral vacuity arise?"

"Why did the shooter inscribe his bullets with 'anti-fascist' messaging, cruel taunts, and trans jargon?"

Asks Victor Davis Hanson, in "Was the Current Madness Birthed in the University? America’s descent into violence and moral chaos—from Kirk’s assassination to suppressed crime truths—traces back to the toxic ideologies nurtured in universities" (American Greatness).

Is the hatred caused by the media... Or is the promulgator the Democratic Party and the Left... Or, finally, is the culprit for the madness found ultimately in the elite university?... Why, in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, are so many teachers, professors, and college-graduate bureaucrats so eager to gloat over and cheer his death?... Hundreds of thousands of students emerge from campuses not just indoctrinated with contempt for the Western tradition and American exceptionalism, and not just often thousands of dollars in debt from inflated tuition, but also poorly educated by the standards that once defined education. The working classes and high school graduates, supposedly the losers of our society, are not those who are dividing the country. They are not often advocating violence or trying to use any means necessary to overturn the established order. But so often the products of the modern university are doing just that....

Interesting... but Charlie Kirk's assassin dropped out of college after one semester. He'd been a promising student and won a scholarship to study engineering, yet he veered off that path quickly and into an electrical apprenticeship program. Wouldn't that put him in with the "working classes and high school graduates" —  "supposedly the losers of our society" who "are not those who are dividing the country"? Perhaps the assassin had contempt for the very "teachers, professors, and college-graduate bureaucrats" who have been "so eager to gloat over and cheer" his action. We don't know, do we?

The assassin is contemptible — a murderer. But whether his motive aligns with the ideology of the "teachers, professors, and college-graduate bureaucrats" who cheer and gloat, they are contemptible — quite independently. They need to stand in the light and take criticism for the ideas they've taught and enforced.

Joe Rogan is explaining the destruction of the hippie movement to Charlie Sheen....

"Just the provable actual facts are so nuts, that very likely Charles Manson was a CIA asset.... They had groomed him when he was in prison and taught him mind control techniques when people were high on acid, taught him how to be sober, but pretend he's on acid. And how to interact with these people that are on acid and shape their mind and even get them to commit murder.... Between 1960 and 1970 is like What?! This world is crazy. The music is crazy. The culture's crazy.... Everything is wild. It's very psychedelic.... They were like, We're losing control and power.... They actually pulled it off.... Oh my God, these hippies are murderous.... And our own goddamn government engineered it. They engineered, they stopped what was probably one of the most beautiful cultural shifts in this country's history that would've organically still kept evolving into other things that would've blossomed out of it.... that completely demonized any peace, love, and... any of that kind of movement. Those people became a real problem now, because you're now connected to Manson...."

The phrase in pink is contributed by Charlie Sheen. The rest is Joe. The 2 men are going on and on about conspiracies — and objecting to "this conspiracy theory pejorative" that "they" are "foisting" on us. And then — 2 hours after that clip above — they suddenly encounter the news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk:

The 2 men do not respond with freewheeling conspiracy notions. Sheen says, "Murder for having a different opinion from somebody else, different ideology from somebody else," and Rogan says, "Yeah." They read some of the instant chatter on line, and Joe says, "What a crazy take, like it might not have been someone assassinating someone for the wrong opinion."

Sunrise — 6:33.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"Yesterday, my 17-year-old niece left for Europe to go to college. And while she was packing, her mother, Amaryllis, my daughter-in-law, noticed that she had put a Bible in her suitcase."

"And Amaryllis was curious about it. And she asked her, and Zoe said to her, 'I want to live like Charlie Kirk.' There are millions and millions of kids around the country who he inspired who now want to live like Charlie Kirk and that's a great thing for our country."

Said RFK Jr., at The Prayer Vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Kennedy Center.

Watch the entire vigil here:

"Howdy boys, never a doubt you would get this invitation. You did it by believing. Really miss you guys..."

"... and I wish I was there. Things are good. The God Almighty picked me to be on this team up here, albeit [as] the third catcher. It’s a great league, no day games after night games. No shadows, but you got all the sticky you need to have up here. Told the big guy about you guys. Play hard every night. Not afraid to play for each other. He’s obviously very interested with the group with this uncommon goodness. I know you guys don’t really need me, but I’ll tell you guys … I’ll be on the headset every night watching. And don’t forget to take it all in, enjoy, and keep it light, believe in each other."

A message from beyond the grave, from Bob Uecker, to the Milwaukee Brewers, upon their clinching of a playoff berth (MLB).

"Next came Solórzano, who performed in a leather jacket, throwing his first snowball from a cocktail shaker—a blend of cedar, benzoin, and cardamom which conjured the smell of whiskey."

"To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass, he waved his towel with muscular grace, using it to represent (variously) lightning in a prairie thunderstorm, his dead lover’s body, and a bar tray that he used to deflect bullets. Between vigorous towel-waving sequences, he narrated his moral dilemma, of whether or not to take vengeance on his former best friend, an outlaw who’d killed his girl.... As the temperature surged to two hundred degrees, Solórzano slammed a snowball scented with black pepper and juniper tar onto the rocks, filling the room with a gunpowdery musk, and waved furiously, darting up and down the sauna stairs, tossing his towel in an elegant plume of white. The crowd went wild."

From "Sweating and Storytelling in a Williamsburg Sauna/Aufguss: a world championship for twirling a really hot towel" (The New Yorker).

Had you heard about Aufguss?

"Every other recent president has said that he saw his role as transcending partisanship at least some of the time, to serve as leader of all Americans..."

"... even those who disagreed with him. George H.W. Bush talked of ushering in a 'kinder and gentler nation.' Mr. Clinton vowed to be the 'repairer of the breach.' The younger Mr. Bush spoke of being 'a uniter, not a divider.' Barack Obama rejected the idea of a red America and blue America, saying there was only 'the United States of America.' Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for ending 'this uncivil war.' None of them succeeded at achieving such lofty aspirations, and each of them to different degrees played the politics of division at times. Politics, after all, is about division — debating big ideas vigorously until one side wins an election or carries the vote in Congress. But none of them practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump...."

From "In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission/President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans" by Peter Baker, in the NYT.

Who is taking an accurate measure of the consistency and ferocity of the divisiveness of the various Presidents?

My prompt to ChatGPT: "What are the most ferociously divisive things Presidents have said in all of American history? Give me a top 10, with just the quotes, not the explanations."

The list [NOTE: I did not verify the accuracy of these quotes. What follows is with ChatGPT gave me and the entire thing could be hallucination. Proceed with care!]

"Evaluations are also vulnerable to just about every bias imaginable. Course-evaluation scores..."

"... are correlated with students’ expected grades. Studies have found that, among other things, students score male professors higher than female ones, rate attractive teachers more highly, and reward instructors who bring in cookies. 'It’s not clear what the evaluations are measuring, but in some sense they’re a better instrument for measuring gender or grade expectations than they are for measuring the instructor’s actual value added,' Philip Stark, a UC Berkeley statistics professor who has studied the efficacy of teacher evaluations, told me.

From "How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University/'We give them all A’s, and they give us all fives'" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

From the last paragraph: "There’s another reason to keep them around. If universities ever did away with students’ ability to grade their professors, college kids—and their tuition-paying parents—might revolt." Isn't that how student evaluations came about in the first place? The students were revolting. 

"By the time she was a teenager, she had anorexia and worried she would 'never be skinny enough to love,' she said."

"At 17, she weighed 88 pounds, and a doctor told her that if she lost any more weight, she could die. She recalls thinking that death 'sounded quiet, it sounded calm,' she writes. 'I knew that if I died, I could stop trying.' Thinness felt safe, she writes, but it was actually the opposite: 'I was dancing with death and getting date-raped and drinking to excess and popping pills like Tic Tacs and exposing myself to all kinds of delicious abuse just to feel something.' She has been in remission from her eating disorder for many years, she said... She writes about an exploratory visit with a fertility expert... [T]he specialist, who treats other celebrities, brought up weight gain: She could 'get away' with putting on only about 20 pounds during pregnancy, including the weight of the baby. That would mean a smaller child, the doctor added, but if she wanted her kid to be taller later on, there was always human growth hormone."

From "At Least Zosia Mamet Can Laugh About It/In her new book, the actress turns her acid wit to Hollywood’s darker side and her own personal struggles" (NYT).

"[N]o matter the direction of the tragedy, the end result is the same — the right grows angrier at the left, and the left grows angrier at the right...."

"This line of thinking leads in one direction — rationalizing extreme measures in response."

Writes David French in "There Are Monsters in Your Midst, Too" in the NYT.

My ellipsis makes the repetition of the word "direction" seem awkward, but I wanted to highlight directionality.

Since I'm quoting so little of that column, I'm expending one of my gift links on it so you can see the context. 

At the Saturday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want.

"Once I’m out of this newborn haze I’ll start dating again. Like so many women, I’m at the crossroads: can I raise children alone, confidently?"

"Absolutely. Do I yearn for someone to hold me in this fourth trimester, hug me when the hormones crash, and stay? Without a doubt. Because in the end, what I really want isn’t just a baby. It’s someone who looks at me — hormones, scars, baby sick and all — and swipes right, no questions asked."

The last paragraph of "What’s it like to date when you’re pregnant?/When Lisa Oxenham, 49, decided to have a baby on her own, she didn’t stop looking for love. Cue mornings injecting IVF hormones, and evenings swiping the apps" (London Times).

"But one man — who did not agree with the protesters — decided he would occupy the central spot. To the consternation of the others, he invited people to come talk to him one-on-one."

I wrote on March 4, 2011, in "A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda."

This interlude in the Wisconsin protests came to mind as I was thinking about the death of Charlie Kirk and what his supporters might do without him. I think there is a method of engagement with people, showing courage and openness to the exchange of ideas, that is available to everyone, and it is what this one man did in 2011.

I wrote at the time: "I started to imagine Wisconsinites coming back to the building every day, talking about everything, on and on, indefinitely into the future. That man who decided to hold dialogues in the center of the rotunda is a courageous man. But it isn't that hard to be as courageous as he was. In the long run, it's easier to do that than to spend your life intimidated and repressed. That man was showing us how to be free. He was there today, but you — and you and you! — could be there tomorrow, standing your ground, inviting people to talk to you, listening and going back and forth, for the sheer demonstration of the power of human dialogue and the preservation of freedom."

"Charlie always believed that God's design for marriage and the family was absolutely amazing.... Over and over he would tell all these young people to come and find their future spouse..."

"... become wives and husbands and parents, because he wanted you all to experience what he had and still has. He wanted everyone to bring heaven into this earth through the love and joy that comes from raising a family.... My husband laid down his life for me, for our nation, for our children; he showed the ultimate and true covenantal love.... I honestly have no idea what any of this means — I know that God does, but I don't — but Charlie, baby, I know you do too. So does our Lord.... The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God's merciful love. But... if you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and in this world. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.... The movement my husband built will not die.... No one will ever forget my husband's name, and I will make sure of it. It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever...."

Said Erika Kirk last night.

"The Communist Party believes in building enormous projects to boost the economy and burnish political prestige."

Dan Wang, author of "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future," quoted in "China set to open world’s tallest bridge, expanding infrastructure push The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge can fit almost two Eiffel Towers under it and will be touted as evidence of China’s engineering prowess when it opens this month" (WaPo).

Last month, Premier Li Qiang stressed the need to “harness the exemplary and galvanizing role of megaprojects”....

Poor and inland provinces... have been the target of this effort as the central government has pushed a “strategic hinterland” strategy. Despite its isolation and relative poverty, Guizhou — roughly the size of Missouri — boasts an extensive infrastructure network, with 11 airports, tall bridges and new roads.

These megaprojects are “not bridges to nowhere,” [said Li Mingshui, a civil engineering professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu]....

ADDED: Why is the unusual word "hinterland" used? It's a word I sometimes use but only jocosely. I call my own location (in Wisconsin) a "remote outpost" and l sometimes say things like "here in the hinterland." It's funny to me to see it in the bureaucratic, leadenly serious context. I know it's translation from Chinese, so that might explain the oddness of this usage.

I invited ChatGPT to engage with my observation, and it said:

Sunrise — 6:29.

The vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison this evening.

The vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison this evening. pic.twitter.com/36fewdHDPQ

— Ann Althouse (@annalthouse) September 13, 2025

Video by Meade. Photo by me:

I was avoiding the sun in the tree shadow. Meade stepped into the light:

Another video:

At the vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison this evening — "How Great Thou Art": pic.twitter.com/pXVnC0tij6

— Ann Althouse (@annalthouse) September 13, 2025

"'Up arrow, right arrow, and three down arrow symbols'... appears to be a reference to a sequence of controller moves that unleashes bombs in the popular video game Helldivers 2."

"Another phrase on the cartridges, 'Notices bulges OwO what’s this?' is used for trolling, with roots in online role-play communities. Some of the other messages on the unfired cartridges appear more politically straightforward, including one that says, 'Hey fascist! Catch!'... Another featured the words 'Bella ciao,' an apparent reference to an Italian song adopted by the antifascist resistance during World War II. It is still sung by the Italian left and in other countries.... and it also appears in a recent Netflix series."

From "Here’s What Some of the Bullet Casing Engravings in the Charlie Kirk Shooting Mean/Many of the messages adopt the flippant, sarcastic chatter often found on online message boards and in-game chats" (NYT).

What Netflix series? ChatGPT tells me it's the Spanish drama-thriller series "Money Heist," which involves robbers in red jumpsuits and Salvador Dalí masks breaking into Spain’s mint and printing money. The use of the song suggests a connection between that money heist and the historical fight against fascism. The song "Bella ciao" originated "as an anthem of Italian partisans fighting Mussolini and the Nazis."

One must infer that the murderer envisioned himself as an antifascist hero. Presumably, he was able to see what happened to Luigi Mangione.

"I think what the enemy intended for evil, the Lord will use for good. We will see what the Lord does through it."

Said Jeff Schwarzentraub of the BRAVE Church in Denver, quoted in "Kirk’s Christian Supporters Mourn Him as a Martyr/'Charlie died for what he believed in,' said Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Oklahoma" (NYT).

I'm interested in the concept of Charlie Kirk as a "martyr."  I wrote post yesterday inviting people to contemplate Kirk as a "saint." If you're inclined to think that Kirk was too political to fit this religious conception, here he is in his own defense:

"If all this comes to pass, it will cement [Bari] Weiss as a key figure in shaping the national news environment, just five years after her much publicized resignation from the New York Times..."

"... over what she characterized as a censorious and hostile workplace. This came in the wake of the resignation of the editorial page editor, James Bennet, after a staff uproar over the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s opinion piece calling for military intervention against Black Lives Matter protesters.... If Paramount’s acquisition of the Free Press goes through, Weiss will probably be in a position to recruit a network of snitches and rightwing thought police, both from within existing CBS staff and from her own publication, ensconced throughout one of the four largest US media conglomerates. CBS staffers are reportedly 'apoplectic' at the news of her impending role.... When Trump first ran for office, Weiss positioned herself as a 'Never Trumper'.... [Later] she saw the left’s 'overzealous, out-of-touch, hysterical reaction to him' as 'extraordinarily authoritarian and totalitarian in its impulses'.... ... Trump could never operate in the kinds of spaces where Weiss has been able to flourish.... [S]he is uniquely well-suited to champion the prerogatives of those in academia, media, publishing and similar sectors who feel threatened by progressive social movements."

From "Disgruntled NYT journalist to ‘anti-woke’ power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?/After leaving the New York Times, she turned her Substack into an unshakable pro-Israel voice. Now as Paramount eyes acquisition of her company, Weiss is poised to become Trump’s ally among media elites" (Guardian).

"The apparent capture of a person of interest in the Charlie Kirk shooting, announced just now by President Trump...."

"A man in his 20s was taken into custody at about 11 p.m. local time on Thursday night by Utah state and local police.... Announcements of major arrests often come at orchestrated news conferences, but in this case, President Trump announced the arrest on Fox and Friends, and cautioned that his information was preliminary...."

Updates at the NYT just now.

ADDED: 

🚨BREAKING: President Trump says Charlie Kirk’s killer was captured with help from the assassin’s father and a minister.

“Somebody that was very close to him turned him in. And that happens when you had some of those good shots.”

“It was a minister and the minister went to a… pic.twitter.com/3BXvM7887d

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 12, 2025

Trump says that the man's father "got involved... and said we’ve got to go in. I understand it’s subject to change, but the facts are the facts. We have the person we think we’re looking for. They drove into the police headquarters, and he’s there now."

ALSO: People on X are focusing on this guy, who is awful whether he's the murderer or not:

This is the Prime suspect for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Skye Valadez debated Charlie not long ago, had a song called "Charlie Kirk Dead at 31" on his Soundcloud, uses She/her pronouns on Facebook. Lives in the area. pic.twitter.com/4EicRhfjoe

— Lozzy B 🇦🇺𝕏 (@TruthFairy131) September 12, 2025

MORE: I don't think the man in that video looks like the mugshot of the arrested man, Tyler Robinson.

"All I wanted was to grow up in peace, deal with my bodily changes and these pesky new zits without it being recorded. But my mother was omnipresent, her phone an extension of her arm … every little moment was mined for content."

Writes Shari Franke, "The House of My Mother," quoted in "Is It Abusive to Make Art About Your Children? It’s not quite #MeToo, but a spate of new memoirs is forcing a reckoning on what consent means when your parent is the artist" (NYT).

Shari Franke is the daughter of "mommy vlogger" Ruby Franke, who was ultimately convicted of child abuse. The article also discusses Sally Mann, the photographer we talked about a couple days ago, here.

Mann has her own memoir, in which she concedes, “I wanted attention for the work and the easiest way to get it was obviously to put forward the most attention-grabbing imagery.... To be an artist means you must declare a loyalty to your art form and your vision that runs deeper than almost any other, even sometimes deeper than blood kinship.... When I stepped behind the camera, and they stepped in front of it, I was a photographer, and they were actors and we were making a photograph."

There's this quote from Molly Jong-Fast: "In [my mother's] view, she did spend time with me — in her head, in her writing, in the world she inhabited. I was there. I may have felt that she was slightly allergic to me, but to her, she was spending time with the most important version of me."

By the way, did you know "Christopher Robin Milne resented his father’s use of his likeness in the Winnie the Pooh stories, and Peter Llewelyn Davies, the inspiration for 'Peter Pan,' seemed to live in a permanent state of rage at being associated with the character."

The article is by Parul Sehgal, who writes: "If the child’s perspective goes unacknowledged, and their compliance confused for collaboration, it might be because our focus has so often been elsewhere — on the needs and rights of the artist-parent, on the struggle to have domestic life and, specifically, motherhood, accepted as a subject worthy of study."

That feminist issue has overshadowed the childist perspective. Is "childist" even a word? Actually, yes, but this is the first time I'm thinking of it, and I had to check to see that I wasn't coining it.

Sunrise — 6:04, 6:36. 6:39, 7:04.

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"I saw a lot of rumors online today... that I canceled some sort of college tour. That's bullshit. I saw those rumors. They're false."

"I will be coming to college campuses, many of them this year. So will we all. I am sure, because we're Americans, and we're not going to be deterred. Charlie's voice is not silent. We're going to pick up that bloodstained microphone where Charlie left it. And to those who would intimidate, who would seek to stop us, who would seek to end free discussion, who believe that they have ownership over public spaces and can violently threaten and kill people who speak freely: We are not going to stop. And I have two words: Fuck you. We will not stop telling the truth. We will never stop telling the truth. We will never stop debating and discussing. We'll never stop standing up for what America is and for what she should be. And we will never let Charlie Kirk's voice die."

Said Ben Shapiro on today's episode of his podcast, "Unthinkable, Charlie Kirk, 31, Assassinated."

Today is 9/11, and Ben's statement makes me think of the idea that if we don't continue to live as freely and fully as we had before then we will be letting the terrorists win. 

Autumn edges in.

This morning at 7:

"I think what you look like is a standard poodle and I love standard poodles."

A model for a perfect husband, revealed in "My cool cancer story/A year after losing my hair and self image to cancer, I put on my $5,000 prescription wig and look at myself and say, 'THERE she is.'" (WaPo video, free access).

Charlie Kirk's pitch to students was "be a conservative because that will allow you to speak your mind, to truly be free, and to buck this oppressive system of liberalism all around you...."

"And it seems they were saying that the left at one point on college campuses was the counterculture, but around this time, it's pretty clear that it's just the culture in many of these campuses. And it feels like what's innovative about Kirk's pitches is that at this moment, conservatism can become the counterculture."

Says Michael Barbaro, on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Assassination of Charlie Kirk."

He's interviewing fellow NYT reporter Robert Draper, who'd written a profile of Kirk that was published last February, "How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right/Collecting donors, voters, TikTok viewers and high-powered friends on his way into Trump’s inner circle."

In today's podcast, Draper says:

"Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him."

"He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.... ... I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness.... It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended through bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine, and for the sake of our larger shared project...."

Writes Ezra Klein, in "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way" (NYT).

That resonates with something Meade just texted me:

"When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against… pic.twitter.com/Kq1Cbq744S

— DiploAct (@diploact) September 10, 2025

"Charlie is already in paradise with the angels"/"We take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at peace with God in heaven."

Said RFK Jr. and Donald Trump. 

Questions I asked ChatGPT:

1. Were they attesting to Charlie Kirk's sainthood?

2. If you had to argue that Charlie Kirk should be canonized what would you say?

3. Outside of the Catholic Church how is sainthood talked about?

Answers here.

ADDED: Those questions were posed to ChatGPT, not Grok, as I'd written before. Here, I've given Grok a chance.

AND: This post was written as a serious invitation to contemplate Kirk as a saint. He presented his efforts as for his faith. Asked how he would want to be remembered, if he were to die, he said: "I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing."

"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year..."

"... in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.... Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died — the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.... Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it's not even close...."

Said Trump in an address from the Oval Office last night.

My attention was called to that by this Maggie Haberman piece in the NYT: "At the White House, Trump’s Grief and Shock Turn to Rage Over Charlie Kirk/President Trump asked for updates and met with advisers in the Oval Office before recording a four-minute video in which he blamed rhetoric from the 'radical left' for the killing."

The headline prompts us to question Trump's basis for purporting to know what motivated the killer. Maybe we ought to wait until we learn more, and maybe the hateful rhetoric is coming from both sides, and maybe there are leftwing targets of violence. I'm imagining those on the left scurrying to prevent Trump and his allies from controlling the narrative.

I wrote that last paragraph based on the headline and drawing on my own expectations. Then I read the article and did not find what I'd thought I'd find. It is more of a straightforward description of the scene at the White House yesterday. We're told "the corridors... were quiet, as staff there absorbed news," and "Televisions affixed to walls in different rooms blared minute-to-minute coverage.... Some staff members appeared to have been crying."

The last sentence of the article makes me jerk my head to check the calendar icon in the sidebar of my computer: "The president was still on track for a visit to New York on the anniversary of the last significant event to unite nearly all Americans across parties: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."

It's a very somber day, not a day to strain to find a way to advantage your side. And yet, there is Trump in that video, forthrightly blaming the radical left. He didn't take a day or 2 off for reflection and what either is or looks like prayer. And that's a temptation to all on the left and all those pumping for Democrats to assert that the right is also responsible for the violence. Yield to that temptation and you might be the next Matthew Dowd.

See "Matthew Dowd Fired From MSNBC for Charlie Kirk Comments" (Variety). What Dowd said, probably feeling this was measured, accurate, and smart: "[Charlie Kirk] is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in."

Sunrise — 6:04, 6:31, 6:35, 6:38, 6:43.

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"The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead."

"No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

ADDED:

"We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!"

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

I asked Grok, "Did Charlie Kirk die?" For what it's worth, Grok answered: "No, Charlie Kirk did not die. He was shot and injured during an event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, and was taken to a hospital for treatment. While rumors of his death spread rapidly on social media, including X, no credible news outlets have reported his death, and the incident remains under investigation as a developing story."

I'm seeing apparent eyewitnesses on TV saying they saw him shot in the chest/neck with "gushing" blood. I note that it is taking a very long time to hear an update on Kirk's condition, and I don't think that is a positive sign. Looking at the video embedded above, I think it appears that he was shot in the chest.

ADDED: I’ve removed the video of the shooting and of the man who was detained and then cleared. 

"In January, the Texas police entered a group exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that featured [Sally] Mann, and they seized several photos from the 'Immediate Family' series..."

"... her landmark monograph of their three preadolescent children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia — in which the children appear nude. (None is more graphic than your average Christ child of the Italian Renaissance.) The police were prepared to bring charges of child pornography against the museum, even sending officers on a (broadly discredited) investigation of art museums in New York, according to the Fort Worth Report. A grand jury declined to bring it to trial, and Mann’s photos were later returned to Gagosian, her gallery. But to the artist and many journalists, the seizure seemed to bring a belated, QAnon-era fruition to the allegations of child exploitation that Mann has weathered since unveiling the photos in the 1990s..."

From "Sally Mann, in Her Golden Hour, Faces Fresh Culture Wars/One of America’s finest memoirists, in photos and in prose, is at the peak of her powers in 'Art Work'— and wondering if her pictures will survive" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see some of her photos, not the seized photos, and read the whole story).

"In her attic, Mann stared at a stack of the 150 unexhibited 'Black Men' prints, wrapped in opaque plastic. Downstairs, we clicked through scans of them: forearms, backs, hands folded, prayerlike. A photograph is two things, Roland Barthes said: what it says to the world and what it says to you. Mann has found herself hounded by that first way of seeing.

"One of the reasons women are generally more reluctant to use new technologies is that they’ve been socially conditioned to be more risk-averse...."

"[N]ew technology invariably involves risks: What happens if it doesn’t work and ruins a project? What happens if I use it and am then accused of cheating or being dishonest? Women may not consciously be thinking about these scenarios, but centuries of double standards and glass ceilings mean that we’ve grown accustomed to playing it safe. The only real way forward is to ensure that using AI does not feel like taking a risk. It has to feel like an unremarkable way of working: not unnerving, not intimidating, not sketchy, just necessary and obvious...."

Writes Josie Cox, in "The most radical act of feminism? Using AI/Women are far less likely to use AI tools like ChatGPT than men. But the tech is here to stay — and the disparity risks widening workplace inequalities" (London Times).

If women are risk averse, then the world should be made less risky? Or should women be incited somehow to take more risks? It's just the way we've been "socially conditioned," we're told. It's all those "centuries of double standards and glass ceilings." Can't we just be socially conditioned out of our unfortunate risk aversion? No, we're told the risks need to be removed. I'm skeptical. I think the author really suspects that women are risk averse by nature. Why not come out and say that? Risk aversion?!

ADDED: So I boldly approached AI and asked "If you had to argue that women are risk averse by nature, what would you say?"

"We have to be vicious just like they are. It's the only thing they understand."

Said President Trump, about the murder of Iryna Zarutska on the train in Charlotte. Trump presents the problem of violence as straightforward, easy to solve quickly if we simply have the will to go hardcore into law and order, with none of the liberal complexity.

Meanwhile, over at The Washington Post, there's "Trump blames Democrats for Charlotte stabbing. Records complicate the story. The case has sharpened partisan divisions about an intractable root of crime: how to treat the seriously mentally ill who pose risks of violence."

Is it really so complicated and intractable? WaPo urges readers to see "nuances" — basically the failure to deal with mental illness.

"'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized."

"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision."

Kamala Harris writes, quoted in "Harris admits Biden 'got tired,' denies 'conspiracy' to hide mental decline/'107 Days' reveals Harris felt unsupported by Biden staff on foreign policy and immigration issues" (Fox News).

How could it be recklessness? Everyone — "we all" — adopted a stock phrase to protect their own political interests and to avoid responsibility for depriving the country of a legitimate primary process and to foist her on us.

I guess it means something that she's calling herself and her confederates reckless. It is bad to be reckless, so she's admitting fault. It's just not believable that the fault was in carelessly disregarding the risks. It was coldly deliberate, and it would have been brilliant, I'm sure they all thought, if it had worked, and she'd won.

"Trump’s federal takeover of Washington ends today, after a 30-day period.... For Trump, the job is done."

"The capital city is now safe, so he says, his experiment a runaway success. He proved it by driving a single block in his motorcade last night for a dinner at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, the ultra-traditional dining room on 15th and H. 'I wouldn’t have done this three months ago, four months ago,' Trump told the press pack outside. 'This was one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now it’s as safe as there is.'... A group of women inside the restaurant filmed themselves shouting at the president — 'Free D.C., Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time' — and were swiftly ejected by the Secret Service. And the Google rating for poor old Joe’s is plummeting fast, thanks to a sudden and mysterious blitz of one-star reviews.... Trump and the GOP plan to keep hammering away hard on law and order, keeping the horrific murder of refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte front and center of their campaign...."

From the Politico "Playbook": "Donald dines out."

The dinner disrupters:

CODEPINK activists disrupted Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, and other cabinet members’ dinner.

They feast while Gaza starves.
Trump is the Hitler of our time.
Free DC. Free Palestine!
Stop terrorizing communities all over the world!! pic.twitter.com/dPLeWIwHLH

— CODEPINK (@codepink) September 10, 2025

Watch how Trump stands and smiles, taking the abuse for awhile, then waves his finger in a subtle get-'em-outta-here message. Seconds later, he flashes angry and orders "Come on, let's go." I imagine people around him learn to jump at the subtle gesture so they won't have to endure the swiftly approaching rage. All 3 stages are, I believe, political theater: 1. the patient smile, 2. the subtle finger wave, 3. The sharp, angry order. I don't think he was happy, then disapproving, then rageful. It's a routine and he's in control. That's where I place my bet.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but weak cases can do grave damage in the meantime."

"Look no further than the collapse on Tuesday of Michigan’s 'fake electors' prosecution against supporters of President Donald Trump for their actions after the 2020 election...."

So says The Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "The collapse of Democratic lawfare in Michigan/Dismissal of 'fake electors' charges bodes ill for cases in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Georgia."

The wheels of justice turn slowly? I've always heard Justice delayed is justice denied. Those "wheels" are not justice wheels if they turn that slowly. There's every reason to suspect that the slow turning of the wheel is intentional punishment. Torture wheels.

And what about the wheels of editorial opinion? Why has it taken The Washington Post so long to condemn the "fake electors" case? The last paragraph of the editorial gives away the game:

Democrats tried to use prosecutions as an adjunct to their political strategy in the run-up to the 2024 election. That has backfired spectacularly. There are growing signs that Republicans might be attempting the same destructive strategy by selectively pursuing criminal investigations against their opponents. They would deserve the same result.

And what if it hadn't backfired? What if it had worked spectacularly and the Democrats had won the 2024 election? Would The Washington Post be cheering the Democrats' staunch adherence to the "rule of law," it's tenacious pursuit of the principle that no one is above the law? 

Sunrise — 6:05, 6:34, 6:37.

Today begins the 7th year of going out to see the sunrise. Scroll down 2 posts to see the top 20 photos from year 6. 

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

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"A Michigan judge dismissed criminal charges Tuesday against a group of people who were accused of attempting to falsely certifying President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election..."

"... in the battleground state, a major blow to prosecutors as similar cases in four other states have been muddied with setbacks. District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons... said she saw no intent to commit fraud in the defendants’ actions. Whether they were 'right, wrong or indifferent,' they 'seriously believed' there were problems with the election, the judge said. 'I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,' Simmons said."

AP reports.

Look back on the 20 best of the year on this, the 6th anniversary of the sunrise project.

In chronological order, with a few notes, including my choice of the best single image from the year.

September 13:

September 14:

September 22:

October 23:

"She rekindled the relationship at the funeral" — for his wife of 56 years — "They started spending time together.”

From "Iran-Contra figures Oliver North and Fawn Hall secretly marry 40 years after scandal: report" (NY Post).

Hall had been married Danny Sugarman, the manager of The Doors, from 1993 until his death in 2005.

"But what if there was a missing layer, a lost generation of artists whose work ran hot-to-feverish in temperature and was driven by a Whitmanesque love of the human body and its longings?"

"This is the question raised with appropriate hippie optimism in 'Sixties Surreal,' an ambitiously revisionist exhibition opening on Sept. 24 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It brings together about 150 works by 111 painters, sculptors, photographers, collagists, cartoonists, junk assemblage-ists, and at least one Kabballah-ist, most of whom were pushed to the sidelines of the ’60s art scene for various unkind reasons...."

From "Roll Over, Warhol: Taking the ’60s Beyond Pop Art/A thrillingly revisionist history of the era at the Whitney Museum uncovers a current of art that sprang from eros and the uncensored minds of R. Crumb, Martha Edelheit and others" (NYT).

"Of the 111 artists in the show, 47 are women... On a recent afternoon, I visited the studio of Martha Edelheit, a little-known, twice-widowed Manhattanite, now 94, who is about to make her Whitney debut.... She was part of a generation of proto-feminists who painted explicit nudes. In 1965, she recalled, she had a show at the Byron Gallery in Manhattan. The New York Times critic John Canaday came in to look, only to politely explain to the gallery owner that he couldn’t review 'that obscene woman.' Stretching 16 feet wide, across three panels, ['Flesh Wall With Table' (1965)']... embeds a group of female nudes in the space surrounding her drawing table. Languid bodies sprawl from edge to edge of the canvas, snoozing comfortably, their flesh graced with a rainbow of color that progresses from delicate ivories and pinks to dense ceruleans and purples."

Suggestive!

"The truth is that Iryna had no real choice. If she avoided the seat in front of the Black man, she might look like a racist."

"She had no reason to fear him, after all, because she was sympathetic to the plight of racism in America and even had the words 'Black Lives Matter' and 'I can’t breathe' scrawled on a chalkboard in her room."

Writes Sasha Stone, in "The Girl on the Train/She escaped war in Ukraine only to find herself in the middle of a different kind of war in the United States."

"One woman wrote: 'With you, dear Jeffrey, I laugh like a little girl and feel like a woman.'"

"The next page in the book simply shows a hand-drawn heart, a brief message and a photo of a woman’s buttocks in a thong bikini. Another assistant described how Mr. Epstein transformed her life, from a 22-year-old woman who had been divorced and had worked in a hotel restaurant to a person who traveled the world meeting powerful people. Among them, she listed Mr. Trump, Mr. Clinton and 'brilliant scientists, lawyers and business men.'"

From "In Epstein’s 'Birthday Book,' a Celebration of His Lecherous Exploits/The book containing 50th birthday tributes to Jeffrey Epstein was released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee" (NYT).

I've been inside the museums and I've scrawled my way through many life drawing classes, and it's never occurred to me to refer to nudes as "suggestive."

But this morning I'm reading The New York Times....

A key congressional committee on Monday released a note and sexually suggestive drawing containing what appeared to be Donald J. Trump’s signature that was included in a book for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 — a drawing that Mr. Trump has insisted he did not create.

And The Washington Post...

... Democrats on the committee released portions of the book — including a suggestive picture and note allegedly drawn by President Donald Trump when he and Epstein were friends.

A nude is suggestive? A line drawing of a nude???

Cover your eyes, children, we're in the Henri Matisse gallery!

A quote from Henri Matisse: "I have always considered drawing not as an exercise of particular dexterity… but as a means deliberately simplified so as to give simplicity and spontaneity to the expression, which should speak without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator."

When Henri — or Donald — speaks without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator, what does he suggest?

When a nude purportedly drawn by Donald Trump is called "suggestive" in the NYT or the Washington Post, we're supposed to think that the message is... what? Rape this? 

"There Must Be More to Life Than..."

Sunrise — 5:59, 6:21.

Feel free to write about whatever.

A heads-up for tomorrow's sunrise post: It will be the 6th anniversary of this project and I'll be following the annual tradition of looking back over the sunrise photos of the past year and picking out my favorites. You might want to click the "sunrise" tag and scroll back and suggest away. Working just off memory, I think August 24 — the one I called a "TOP 1% sunrise" at the time — might have been the best sunrise of the year. But there are 6 photos of it, so... lots of narrowing down to do before tomorrow night.

"Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.. opined that race can be considered along with other factors in forming reasonable suspicion to stop someone for an immigration check..."

"... such as where people are gathering and what jobs they are working. 'To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a "relevant factor" when considered along with other salient factors,’ Kavanaugh wrote. The court’s three liberal justices sharply dissented. 'We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. 'Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.'"

From "Supreme Court lifts limits on immigration raids in the Los Angeles area/The raids sparked major protests in Southern California. President Donald Trump deployed troops from the California National Guard and Marines in response" (WaPo).

"This was a demise foretold. Fatalistic in the face of a parliamentary impasse, Mr. Bayrou had, even before the debate began, invited his entourage to a 'convivial moment'..."

"... or farewell soirée, this evening. With four prime ministers in the past 20 months, and a fifth likely to be appointed now, the fall of French governments, once unusual, has become close to mundane.... 'Domination by military force, or domination by our creditors as a result of debts that drown us, produces the same result: The loss of our liberty,' Mr. Bayrou said, to opposition cries of 'It’s not the same thing!' His appeal fell on deaf ears. The far right of Marine Le Pen and a group of left and far-left parties, holding a clear majority between them, rejected the freezing of welfare payments, cutting two national holidays and other austerity measures proposed by Mr. Bayrou. Ms. Le Pen, true to her National Rally party’s doctrine, suggested cutting spending on immigrants instead...."

From "French Government Collapses, Again, Deepening Paralysis/Prime Minister François Bayrou failed a confidence vote aimed at breaking an impasse over the budget, adding more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron" (NYT).