Democrats attempt to teach themselves how to speak with American men.

Joni Ernst serves up death, apology, sarcasm, and Jesus.

Against all odds, Joni Ernst has made it worse pic.twitter.com/aElIudNmZG

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) May 31, 2025

I had to go back to this after reading about it because I had clicked it off in disgust thinking it was an genuine effort to make a "sincere" apology.

For background: "Joni Ernst posts sarcastic apology video following comments that 'we all are going to die'" (Des Moines Register): "The Iowa Republican's original comments came at a town hall in Parkersburg on Friday, May 30, while she was answering a question about cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump's tax package that the Senate is poised to consider. During Ernst's answer, someone in the audience interrupted her to shout, 'people will die!' Ernst replied by saying, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.'"

Sandhill cranes take a long lunch.

From the driver-side window, Meade takes a 24-second video:

 

After our hike, riding home, 2 hours later, I take a 24-second video from the passenger-side window at exactly the same spot:

One might casually and shallowly dream of needing to eat constantly, just to maintain a healthy weight. Perhaps you'd love to take a pill that would put you in this predicament. But imagine living like this!

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

"This dude’s the last guy I want to tell us about 'we lost our way.' You’re the guy who lost.'"

Said Tim Walz, talking about himself, in "'I Didn’t Get It Done': A Reflective Tim Walz Wants to Make Good/Last year’s Democratic vice-presidential nominee has thrown himself into a robust atonement-and-explanation tour, though aides insist there is no grand strategy" (NYT).

The unusually pink sunrise — 5:05, 5:07, 5:16, 5:17, 5:25.

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Joe Biden speaks to the press — a bit mumblingly — for 3 1/2 minutes.

"You can see that I'm mentally incompetent, I can't walk," he wisecracks. "And I could beat the hell out of both of them," he says — about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the co-authors of that book about Biden's decline.

Another addition to the list of quotes of Biden threatening to or bragging about beating somebody up — "If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," etc.

By the way, I'm seeing reports that Tapper's book — despite the onslaught of publicity — isn't doing very well. I know I won't buy it. I think he shouldn't be rewarded for sitting on the information, apparently in the hope of helping Democrats win the election, and now trying to profit from revealing it. And it's absurd the way he's been going around acting as though he has just learned that journalists ought to do journalism and report events as they happen without toadying to the powerful.

AND: Why does Biden lean into the faces of female reporters? I think it's a grandpa move that has worked to delight little girls. The femaleness of the reporters makes them more like little girls to him than like what they are, adults engaged in professional work. He can't help it, just like he can't help threatening to "beat the hell out of" male antagonists. 

"I’m having little adventures, but yes, not on social media."

"I am painting, I am drawing, I’m doing photography. I’m climbing mountains and going on very long walks. I’m having little adventures, but yes, not on social media. I don’t think it’s something that would particularly serve my life, and I’m quite happy that I don’t have it."

Said Mia Threapleton, quoted in "Wes Anderson’s Newest Star Finds Inspiration Everywhere (Even a Napkin)/Mia Threapleton is Kate Winslet’s daughter but she’s intent on making her own way in Hollywood. That includes her deadpan nun in 'The Phoenician Scheme'" (NYT).

I hope young people today see that, but they'll only see it on social media.

Why did Elon Musk choose to be seen — in the Oval Office — with a black eye?

It must be considered a CHOICE, because — if it was a real black eye — he could have had a makeup expert conceal it completely and undetectably. If he didn't have a real black eye, then he could and did have a makeup expert create one for him.

So I think he wanted to send a message. Perhaps: This job has battered me, but I stand by my man. Perhaps: I'm a fighter, and I can take the blows... fight fight fight.

ADDED: Or maybe just: Here, go down this rathole. It means nothing, you puny idiots. Boy genius is mystifying you again. 

"I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations... This is something that cannot be forgotten!..."

"I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions."

Wrote Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks/The president has grown increasingly angry at court rulings blocking parts of his agenda, including by judges he appointed" (NYT). 

The article is by Charlie Savage, who says:

While Mr. Trump was out of power, a schism emerged between traditional legal conservatives and MAGA-style lawyers.... During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump had essentially made a deal with the conservative legal movement. In exchange for its support, he would outsource his judicial selections....

"Was it all bullshit?" — Trump asked, about Elon Musk's promise to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget.

We're told in "Inside Trump and Musk’s Complicated Relationship/The president and his aides have sometimes expressed frustration with Musk, but his advisers say the two remain close" (Wall Street Journal)(no paywall encountered).

We're also told Trump has called Musk "50% genius, 50% boy" or perhaps it was "90% genius, 10% boy."

More substantively:

Musk clashed with senior White House officials, as he made dramatic government cuts without consulting others, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and senior officials in the communications office, aides said. For several weeks, top Trump aides regularly learned from news reports or cabinet secretaries what DOGE was doing—even when the cost-cutting department laid off hundreds of people or sought sensitive data from agencies, according to the aides. He also clashed with personnel aides over vetting of some of his staff, some of the people said, believing the White House shouldn’t control his team at DOGE....

I assume that's a misplaced participle and that the phrase beginning with "believing" modifies "He." Don't they have AI to fix things like that?

Anyway, the person who could promise to cut $1 trillion was the person who envisioned himself with vast, unchecked power. Was it all bullshit? Not if you let him do it. Then it wouldn't be bullshit, though it might be crazy. Even on Trump's scale of sane to crazy.

Let me cherry-pick this:

Trump grew irritated in April when he learned Musk was getting a top-secret briefing at the Pentagon on China.... He said Musk getting the briefing was a conflict of interest, two administration officials said. Trump told aides that Musk, who has space contracts, shouldn’t be working at the Pentagon....

And here's some interesting material about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election:

White House aides were... dismayed at how involved Musk became in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, because they believed Brad Schimel, who was backed by Musk and the state’s Republican party, wasn’t going to win, and the race was becoming a referendum on Musk and Trump. Musk was dismissive of those concerns, saying the polling he commissioned showed Schimel had a chance. Trump became annoyed after doing a town hall with Schimel, telling advisers that he was done with him because Schimel couldn’t answer questions cogently about abortion, according to people familiar with the matter....

Of course, Schimel lost.  

"I was trying to make a heart for him. I was too late."

Said Robert Jarvik, quoted in "Robert Jarvik, a creator of the artificial heart, dies at 79/He was the lead designer of the Jarvik-7, a controversial plastic and metal device intended to permanently replace an ailing human heart" (WaPo).

A handsome, tousle-haired man whose interests ranged from skiing and weightlifting to poetry and theoretical physics, he cited a personal motivation for his work on the device: His father, a physician, had died after open-heart surgery in 1976.

The first artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, was implanted in 1982. Perhaps, like me, you remember the name and occupation of the recipient: Barney Clark, a dentist. When he awakened from the surgery, he said to his wife, "I want to tell you, even though I have no heart, I still love you."

The artificial heart never became a replacement for a real heart. Didn't you think it would, if you were around, reading the news 43 years ago? Artificial hearts are only used as to keep people alive while they wait for a heart from a human donor.

Jarvik, the "handsome, tousle-haired man," also posed in Hathaway shirt ads — like this one, complete with the company's trademark eyepatch. He also posed in a Lipitor ad that got criticized as misleading because Jarvik was "not a cardiologist" and — though the ad depicted him rowing — "apparently, not a rower."

Jarvik was married to Marilyn vos Savant, the woman who's been famous for decades for supposedly having the highest IQ. (She scored 228 on the Stanford-Binet test when she was 10.)

Sunrise — 5:19, 5:26, 5:28.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Billionaire Elon Musk stunned the White House press corps Friday by sporting a black eye to an Oval Office event to mark the end of his 130 days in the Trump administration."

The NY Post reports.

Oh.. ha ha... I see he made the joke I was about to make: He "wasn’t anywhere near France."

"Sixty-four years ago, Connie Francis recorded 'Pretty Little Baby' as one of dozens of songs in a marathon recording session..."

"... that yielded three albums within two weeks. It did not, at the time, feel like a song that had the makings of a hit, so it landed on the B-side of the 1962 single... that was released in Britain. Since then, it was more or less overlooked. Then came TikTok... Over the last few weeks, 'Pretty Little Baby' has been trending on the social media app — it has been featured as the sound in more than 600,000 TikTok posts and soared to top spots in Spotify’s Viral 50 global and U.S. lists — bolstered by celebrities and influencers, like Nara Smith, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian and her daughter North, who have posted videos of themselves lip-syncing to it. The ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog used the song for a clip on TikTok in which she said Ms. Francis had long been her favorite singer...."

From "As ‘Pretty Little Baby’ Goes Viral, Connie Francis Is Joining TikTok/With a forgotten song becoming an unlikely hit, the 87-year-old singer is happy to be back in the spotlight" (NYT).

Interviewed, Francis said she didn't even remember recording the song, but, listening to it now, she pronounced it "cute." I remember when that kind of thing was the current music...

"Today, parents still have obligations to their children. But it seems the children’s duties have become optional."

"'With parents and adult children today, the adult child feels like, "If you failed me in your responsibility as a parent" — in ways, of course, that are increasingly hard to define— "then I owe you nothing as an adult child,"' says [psychologist Joshua] Coleman. Which means that it now often seems like having a child entails an enormous amount of financial, emotional and spiritual investment, with a hovering possibility that your children will cut contact with you after they reach young adulthood and the increasing likelihood that they will hold you responsible — not only for their suffering and struggles but even for your decision to bring them into the misery-inducing world in the first place.

Writes Michal Leibowitz, in "Why Millennials Dread Having Babies" (NYT).