Sunrise — 6:45.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

President Trump speaks about the tariff case in terms of shame and pride.

It was a legal opinion about the meaning of words in a statute and 6 justices went one way and 3 went the other. Trump would have us think of the Justices as children within our family, 6 of whom brought embarrassment to us and 3 of whom made us proud. I find such talk inane, but it might influence some people, that is, it might work as propaganda.

Have a listen:

Excerpt: "I'm ashamed of certain members of the Court — absolutely ashamed — for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. I'd like to thank and congratulate Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for their strength and wisdom, and love of our country — which is right now very proud of those justices.... The Democrats on the Court are... frankly, a disgrace to our nation, those justices. They're an automatic no no matter how good a case you have — it's a no. You can't knock their loyalty. It's one thing you can do with some of our people.... What a shame.... They are very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It's my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests...."

He made it about shame and pride and loyalty. What evidence does he have that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests?

"Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive."

Said JD Vance, last year, quoted today in "Bench Presses, Pull Ups … Kid Rock? The White House Had a Very Manly Week/President Trump’s top cabinet officials are pumping iron in public" (NYT).

The Vance quote appears near the end of the article, right after: "Mr. Trump’s latest masculinity proclamations sum up this administration’s hard-line approach to maleness, where the most powerful men in the country can just relax and be men who appreciate other men — in a strictly manly way, of course."

Right after the Vance quote, we get: "All of this hints at a powerful political current that politicians like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump instinctively know how to channel."

The article ends with 2 quotes from law professor Joan C. Williams: "One of the only arrows in [Trump's] quiver is being the man" and "Picking wars all around the world, that’s what’s really going on."

It's not fair to judge the NYT article — by Katie Rogers — without watching this for context:

BawitMAHA https://t.co/npFlS2NxTo

— HHS (@HHSGov) February 17, 2026

ADDED: "Let’s Talk About RFK Jr.’s Workout Pants/Our health secretary is a jeans guy, and he knows it" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

Alysa Liu — and her 4 siblings — are the children of a single father who had them through surrogate mothers and anonymous egg donors.

"Arthur Liu was born in the small mountain village, Mingxing, in China’s Sichuan Province... In 1989, Arthur participated in the Tiananmen Square protests.... After immigrating to the United States, Arthur Liu studied law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.... Arthur Liu brought Alysa Liu to her first ice skating lesson when she was 5 years old.... 'I spared no money, no time,' Arthur said.... 'I just saw the talent.'... ... Arthur participated in his daughter’s training aspects by watching her practices and tracking the speed of her jumps with a radar gun.... When Alysa Liu announced she was retiring from ice skating in April 2022, she did not talk to Arthur Liu before making the decision. 'I didn’t really ask [my dad’s] opinion when I decided to retire. After all, it’s my life'.... When Alysa decided to make her return in 2026, she shared that her dad is less involved with her skating career. 'He’s a great father, I just didn’t want him to be as invested in it as he was before'...."

From "Who Is Alysa Liu’s Father? What to Know About Olympic Gold Medalist’s Dad Who Welcomed 5 Kids Via Surrogate" (Us).

Us is written on a really low level. Fine. But don't tell me this is "What to Know." There's obviously a deeper dimension. I want to know. What happened to the other 4 children? Were they pushed into any sport? What did they do while Arthur was spending so much time aiming a radar gun at Alysa? Were they all conceived as designer babies, then tested to determine who had the talent and who deserved attention and money showered on them? Should a single man be able to buy his way into fatherhood for 5 children? What does Alysa really know and how does she really feel?

ADDED: I'm just noticing the weirdness of the expression, "I spared no money, no time." We understand it to mean that he spent endless time and money, but if you stop and think about it, it seems to mean the opposite, that he gave no time or money. It does make sense if you understand "spared" to mean, held back for myself.

AND: I'm seeing this NYT article, "In Her Big Olympic Moment, Alysa Liu Celebrated Her Freedom/Competition can wreck a figure skater, but Liu and other Olympians shed the pressure and delivered transcendent performances focused on artistry." The word "father" appears nowhere. I searched for "Arthur" and got only "MacArthur Park," the song she skated to. Apparently, no on wants to touch the father problem. The Olympian parents are always devoted and earnest, watching hopefully from the stands.

"Perhaps you’ve noticed.... Amid all the cars that are parked headfirst, a seemingly increasing number have instead been backed in."

"These dissenters face out, like getaway drivers in a bank robbery ready to make a clean escape. Some people, myself included, find the move annoying. William Van Tassel, the manager of driver training programs for AAA... said that perhaps it was because they were following AAA’s updated guidelines.... My own theory is that reversing into a space is a response to the ambient anxiety in our society, akin to privately noting the exits in a movie theater. In a nation of rampant gun violence, backing in so you can quickly get out provides a sense of security.... [Van Tassel] cited a 2020 study from the journal Transportation Research that found, among other things, that the pull-in, back-out maneuver had a higher crash risk. Since pedestrians are most likely to be found walking in the major lanes, not in a parking space, it’s safer to back into the area with fewer people.... But I can’t bring myself to join in, and I don’t fully accept the safety argument. Since 2018, new vehicles sold in the United States have been federally mandated to have backup cameras, which can assist in reversing out of a spot without plowing into someone...."

I'm reading "Do You Back Into a Parking Spot or Back Out? An exploration of what’s driving a change in America’s parking lots" (NYT).

Those who do back up — is it for safety? Do other people believe it's for safety? As the male author of the NYT article says: "My wife suspects they’re mostly men showing off." Ha ha. That's what I think too. And by the way, I've always been quick to suspect that people are just showing off. I was much worse about that when I was much younger. I can honestly say that when NASA put a man on the moon in 1969, I thought they were showing off. I looked away! The moon landing was a very big thing; backing into a parking space is a very little thing. In things big and small, I am ready to disrespect the achievement as a matter of showing off. A lateral thinker will therefore ask: What's bad about showing off? Where would we be without it?

Sunrise — 7:04.

There was thin snow in the air, but nothing to show for it on the ground. So much for the warnings of 2 to 6 inches. It was a little blustery, and we were the only ones out there, witnessing the nonappearance of the sun and immersed in lively conversation.

"What's another way to say 'lively conversation'? I don't like the cliché" —  I asked Grok, knowing I'd get nothing useful, just trash like "electric back-and-forth," "crackling exchange," "vibrant sparring," and "kinetic banter." Or maybe if I'd thought of one of those by myself, I'd like it. That's the trouble with help-seeking. What you get is tainted with irritating helpfulness.

"What's another way to say 'irritating helpfulness'?" — "patronizing eagerness," "meddlesome benevolence," "grating do-goodery," "insufferable solicitude," "cloying caretaking," "smothering support," "irksome officiousness," "fussy do-gooding," "tedious tutelage"....

"What's another way to say 'write about whatever you like in the comments'?" — "Say the thing you’re actually thinking," "Ramble freely—no judgment zone," “Vent, rave, or tangent away," "Comment like nobody’s watching (but we are, and we want it)," "I’m genuinely curious what’s crossing your mind—tell me," "Unleash your brain dump"....

It wasn't that cold out there, but look at the glamorous furs I wore:

Why Conan O'Brien says Trump is "bad for comedy."

"Well, years ago, when I was at Harvard and working on the Lampoon, we would try and think of magazines we could do a parody of. And there was one magazine we always knew we couldn’t parody, which was the National Enquirer. If a magazine has, as its cover, 'Elvis Still Alive, Marries Alien and They Have a Baby That’s a Three-Speed Blender'—if that’s what the real magazine’s coming out with, you can’t do a comedic take on that. It’s very difficult, or I think impossible, to do. And I think Trump—if he were a magazine, it’s the National Enquirer. There’s a lot that’s so bombastic and so outrageous and so unprecedented that how do you—'Oh, I’ve got a great Trump impression, and I have him saying this.' Well, that’s not crazier than what really happened yesterday. So I don’t know how this is funny."

Quoted in "Conan O’Brien Is Ready for the Oscars/The comedian and television host talks about the decline of late night, the death of Rob and Michele Reiner, and why he loves when things go wrong onstage" (The New Yorker).

In other words, Trump is already funny, so it's obtuse to build a joke on top of that.

Gavin Newsom and the 7 Women.

From the London Times.

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, a fellow with the measurements of a Disney prince who once behaved, by his own admission, “as a single guy who happened to be mayor” of San Francisco rather than the other way around.

"It's about what happens when you let athletes be themselves and put their own joy first..."

Explaining the Alysa Liu story:

Trump loses the tariff case.

"The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda. The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers...."

NYT link.

Here's the opinion, Learning Resources v. Trump. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh are the 3 dissenters. The Chief Justice writes the opinion of the Court for Parts I, II–A–1, and II–B. His opinion for Parts II–A–2 and III is joined by Gorsuch and Barrett, who also file concurring opinions. Kagan has a concurring opinion joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, and Jackson has a concurring opinion. 

So there is a lot of complicated reading to do.

ADDED: From the Opinion of the Court:

"The Teddy [bear] craze was followed by a moral panic, as crazes involving kids inevitably are."

"Students in a New York University sewing class were forbidden to make Teddy bears, lest they 'breed idleness among children.' A Catholic priest in Michigan went further, preaching that if little white girls were allowed to play with 'the horrible monstrosity' instead of dolls, they would fail to develop their maternal instincts and doom the race to suicide...."

From "The Race to Give Every Child a Toy/For most of history, parents couldn’t buy their kids dolls, action figures, or the like. Then playtime became big business" (The New Yorker).

Before the Teddy bear, the toy market did not exist in the sense that it does now. For much of the nineteenth century, dolls were made at home from corn husks, clothing scraps, and the like, or produced from expensive, fragile bisque porcelain and kept high up on shelves to be admired by grownup collectors, not pawed by clumsy kids. Most children had marbles, hoops, balls, and little else. Few people bought toys from stores. The success of the Teddy bear changed that...

Here's the book under discussion: "Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America" (commission earned).

"President Peña of Paraguay is here.... Young, handsome guy. It’s always nice to be young and handsome."

"Doesn’t mean we have to like you. I don’t like young, handsome men. Women, I like. Men, I don’t have any interest."

Said Trump — at the Board of Peace event yesterday — quoted by The Daily Mail in "CNN host caught in hot-mic anti-Trump slip up as her colleagues rush to cover for her."

The inane headline refers to the way Sara Sidnar, on hearing that quote, said — and this is the whole quote from her — "What?"

Is that even anti-Trump?! Doesn't everyone say or at least think something along the lines of "What?" when they hear that?

I think we can hope for a lip synch from Bransen Gates. It's excellent material for him:

Trump gets out ahead of Obama on the subject of aliens — extraterrestrial aliens.

Yesterday, Peter Doocy prompted Trump with the same question Obama recently answered: "Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?" 

Trump did not answer the question asked:

 

Trump focused on Obama's behavior: "Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that."

The reporter's mind cranked quickly through the implications: "So aliens are real?!!"

Trump: "Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't have an opinion on it. I don't talk about it."

There's a lot going on there. Trump continued to try to put the focus on Obama's behavior.

"... president... jailed for life for leading insurrection...."

Full headline, in The Guardian: "South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection/Ex-leader sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour over failed martial law declaration in 2024."

The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order. Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote.” In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society....

Sunrise — 6:52, 6:52, 6:58.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Gonna go to the place that's the best..."