Lake Mendota — in the early afternoon.

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"'Looking at a girl totally naked is not exciting,' said Éric Stefanut, the communications director for the French Naturist Federation."

"Naturists, he explained, see new people naked all the time. 'So,' he added, 'it’s boring.'... When everyone in a room is naked, no one person stands out — although there were many body types among the visitors on Friday. There were tattoos and pierced nipples, ribs and fleshy tummies, bald spots and wispy beards. Scrotums and breasts swung wide. Some had cesarean scars.... Lucca Linke, 31, said she had thought about trimming her body hair. But why bother? Her friend, Kaja Baumgart, 22, agreed. She had worried that other guests would notice her tampon string. But soon, she said, she relaxed. 'Everybody is acting like normal,' she said. 'I can also be acting like normal.'"

From "At This French Exhibition, Check Your Clothes at the Door/A museum in Marseille, France, has a show dedicated to the history of social nudity. On a few special nights, visitors strolled around naked, too" (NYT).

It's art — purportedly — to take what is very interesting and endeavor to make it boring.

"While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

Wrote Henry David Thoreau, quoted in "Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year Is… Brain Rot" (NYT).

Thoreau published that sentence in 1854 — it's in "Walden" — but somehow, 170 years later, his word/phrase is the official Word of the Year. I'm just going to guess that Thoreau would consider choosing a word of the year to be a rotten-brain activity. 

Is this word-of-the-year-choosing "Oxford" really the same as the Oxford English Dictionary? The NYT says it's "the publisher of the august Oxford English Dictionary," but I look up the word in the OED, and I get:

Here's a tightly edited 9-minute montage of lavishing praise on Joe Biden for not pardoning his son.

All of it done, I presume, with an intent to influence the 2024 election. All of it bullshit. By the midpoint you'll have lost the capacity to take the phrase "rule of law" seriously:

One of the best supercuts ever.

President Biden won't pardon Hunter because Joe Biden is a man of great character! 🤣😂pic.twitter.com/lM8aTRGrq5

— MAZE (@mazemoore) December 2, 2024

My favorite nugget: "There's a kind of old-school, sort of flinty core to his conception of how you are to be in the system — how you are to be as a person, a moral person...."

Flinty core!

(I googled the phrase "flinty core" and setting aside a couple descriptions of a singer's voice everything was about wine, where I hear it as a fancy/bullshit way to this tastes like a rock.)

Democrats need to figure out if they ought to trash Biden for pardoning Hunter and build the strongest foundation for attacking Trump over the pardoning spree he's about to launch.

Yes, yes, of course, you Democrats can pose fussily and piously making distinctions between all the crimes Hunter may have done in the last 10 years and anything attributable to Trump's pardonees. Go ahead. Try. I see your efforts. They're so self-serving they underscore the essential problem: political favoritism.

Fine distinctions are confusing and hypocritical. You're going to say violating gun laws doesn't really matter? Then how are you going to pull off the call for more gun laws, which you know you're going to need for your usual political theater on the occasion of the next massacre? You're going to say a rich man's tax evasion is a measly offense and still hope to see us to respond to your cries for severe taxing of the rich?

No, no, your best move is to trash Biden. You already kicked him to the curb last July. No one remembers the show of honoring his statesmanship you staged at the Democratic National Convention. You've already lost the election and suffered a complete breakdown of confidence in your party. You need to rebuild the foundation. There's nothing to keep. Your party is a teardown.

Trump is about to take over and make a show out of throwing light on the deep state. Don't condemn yourself to defending every awful thing that may come out — which may include corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China that were blithely swept into Biden's pardon of Hunter. Trash Joe Biden now to position yourself to seem to welcome all this forthcoming bad news and to offer yourself as the staunch new party of reform. 

"In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me"/"And guess what, we broke them and now they’re whining like little children"/"Hitler knows that he will have to break us...."

This blog has a theme today.

The quotes in the post headline are from the first 2 posts of the day, below. The Bannon article has 2 more quotes about breakage:

• Spoken in a new interview: "Somebody’s got to break the system so somebody else can come in and build it. People have roles in life, right?"

• Spoken on January 5, 2021: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow."

"They’re all infesting the Cotswolds. F*** them. They’re not resilient … They had every advantage of state power. They had the high ground."

"And guess what, we broke them and now they’re whining like little children...."

Said Steve Bannon, from his house in Arizona, referring to Ellen DeGeneres and others who are relocated, out of fear of the Trump administration.

Quoted by Louise Callaghan in "Steve Bannon: Maga can rule for 50 years and Farage will be PM/For the firebrand Trump guru, beating ‘whining’ Democrats was just the beginning — at home and abroad" (London Times).

“We are so close,” he tells me. “We just need to see this through.” Trump may have won the presidency, but to enact the sweeping changes he wants to make — chief among them destroying the administrative state and deporting millions of undocumented migrants — he needs to move fast, with the support of his party.

"President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized."

Thanks to the NYT for stating the obvious point obviously.

The article, by Peter Baker, is "In Pardoning His Son, Biden Echoes Some of Trump’s Complaints/President Biden complained about selective prosecution and political pressure in a system he has spent his public life defending."

The prosecutions of Mr. Trump and the younger Mr. Biden were each handled by separate special counsels appointed specifically to insulate the cases from politics.... There is no evidence that Mr. Biden had any involvement in Mr. Trump’s cases.... But Mr. Biden’s pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes even as he seeks to install Kash Patel, an adviser who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s enemies, as the next director of the F.B.I. It will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.... 

Mr. Biden’s pardon will also give ammunition to Republicans who have contended that Hunter Biden was guilty of wrongdoing beyond the charges for which he was actually prosecuted.... The pardon Mr. Biden issued to his son specifically covers any offenses “which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024,” not just the tax and gun charges.... 

“There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” the president said. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

You can only cogently say "Enough is enough" about the things that lie within your own power.

Globular icicles.

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

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How are you feeling about the impending Trump administration?

You have to pick one:

Oh, no!

Bring it on!

 

pollcode.com free polls

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

A summary of "Annie Hall." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADDED:

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

Let me remind you pic.twitter.com/nLo4aIFuDF

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

AND:

🧵 of MSNBC Meltdowns tonight over Kash Patel 🤣

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

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2024

PLUS:

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

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 1, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more laughs, here's Mickey:

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

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

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

UPDATE, later the same day: Biden pardoned Hunter. 

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

Chew on this, from 2019:

December 8, 2019

Part of blogging is choosing what not to blog.

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

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

The lake at noon... freezing up.

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