"Six days — six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power."
Said President Joe Biden, in his farewell address last night.
There's a big difference between "military-industrial complex" and "tech-industrial complex." Eisenhower's phrase warns about the government and not merely private business. Biden's phrase only warns about private business. The "abuse of power" Biden identifies takes place outside of government, and he looks to government as a victim of abuse by private actors — citizens, speaking — and, potentially, as a cure — government, regulating speech.
The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.
What about all the lies you told for power and for profit?!
We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.
What about your abuse of power squeezing the "social platforms" to follow the narrative that served your interests?
MEANWHILE: On the NYT home page, we see Trump swooping in as the savior of TikTok:
That's in The Washington Post. I wouldn't click on something with a title like that if it weren't in mainstream media. And Woodward has mainstream credentials. He was once a religion editor at Newsweek. And he's got a mainstream-sounding book: "Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics From the Age of Eisenhower to the Ascent of Trump."
"Both sides knew it was happening, but as the CIA’s Richard Bissell said, the plane was so light there was only 'one chance in a million' that it would survive a hit. So when Air Force Capt. Francis Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, everyone assumed that the plane was gone and the pilot dead. NASA put out a statement saying it was a weather plane that had gone off course. Only when the Soviets triumphantly paraded Powers and bits of the wreckage in Moscow did Washington realize the game was up...."
* I learned a new word. According to the NYT:
"To 'yassify' something... is to apply several beauty filters to a
picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its
subject — be that a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional
character or a work of fine art — becomes almost unrecognizably made
up.”
This morning, I'm pairing the famous RFK quote with the coat of arms of Greenland.
ADDED: Picture the map of the world with Greenland as the 51st state:
What a legacy for the real-estate mogul!
AND: If what they're saying about global warming is true, Greenland is the place to which the entire population of the United States could relocate. If we bought Alaska from Russia, why can't we buy Greenland from Denmark? We're already using Greenland for military purposes — there's an air force base — and our military protects Europe....
ALSO: The Mercator projection is like the wide-angle lens in real-estate photos on Zillow.
The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer's imagination, according to people familiar with the discussion, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory....
Some of his advisers have supported the concept, saying it would be a good economic play, two of the people said, while others dismissed it as a fleeting fascination. It is also unclear how the U.S. would go about acquiring Greenland even if the effort were serious.
It's a great topic for conversation. There's even potential for racial politics, I think. Trump seems to love the Nordic places (in contrast to "shithole countries")?
With a population of about 56,000, Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and while its government decides on most domestic matters, foreign and security policy is handled by Copenhagen....
U.S. officials view Greenland as important to American national-security interests. A treaty between Denmark and the U.S. gives the U.S. military virtually unlimited rights in Greenland at America's Thule Air Base. Located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it includes a radar station that is part of a U.S. ballistic missile warning system.
The U.S. has sought to derail Chinese efforts to gain an economic foothold in Greenland. The Pentagon worked successfully in 2018 to block China from financing three airports on the island.
People outside the White House have described purchasing Greenland as an Alaska-type acquisition for Mr. Trump's legacy, advisers said...
Greenland relies on $591 million of subsidies from Denmark annually, which make up about 60% of its annual budget, according to U.S. and Danish government statistics. Greenland is culturally and politically linked to Europe. Following World War II, the U.S. under President Harry Truman developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy it from Denmark for $100 million. Denmark refused to sell.
Truman tried to buy it! Trump endeavors to close the deal that was Truman's! If Greenland is draining $591 million a year from Denmark, they should pay us for taking it off their hands and taking care of it well and preventing China from acquiring dominance. But if China is so ambitious in Greenland, Denmark should wait for a good bidding war between the world's 2 superpowers. And every year gets us closer to the global warming disaster that will make Greenland the most desirable place on earth. In that light, Denmark should hold on as the landlord, charging exorbitant rents and until things become so catastrophic that Greenland is snatched away from them by military force.
At a dinner with associates last spring, Mr. Trump said someone had told him Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland, and suggested that he should consider buying the island, according to one of the people. "What do you guys think about that?" he asked the room, the person said.
The person described the question less as a serious inquiry than as a joke meant to indicate "I'm so powerful I could buy a country," noting that since Mr. Trump hadn't floated the idea at a campaign rally yet, he probably wasn't seriously considering it.
The person believed the president was interested in the idea because of the island's natural resources and because it would give him a legacy akin to President Dwight Eisenhower's admission of Alaska into the U.S. as a state....
PLUS: Kudos to the stable genius if he floated this idea intending to get his antagonists to declare it stupid and knowing that on further examination it would actually make enough sense to intrigue us to talk about this rather that whatever the hell we were talking about before this came up. I see WaPo is getting ahead of the curve with "Trump reportedly wants to buy Greenland. So did the Truman administration" (by Antonia Noori Farzan):
The "blindside" isn't anything he said or any startling new policy that brilliantly goes to the left (or to the right) of Kamala.
By the way — complete sidetrack — is it disrespectful to write "Kamala" (without the "Harris")? It seems we're getting awfully close to using just first names for all the candidates — Joe, Bernie, Pete. But do we hold back for the women? And if we do, is that bad for the women? I think we do hold back — though clearly we called Hillary "Hillary" — and that holding back expresses the idea that women are more sensitive and need protection. That perversely reinforces a sense that women are not tough enough to be President. Kamala Harris has the most distinctive first name of the entire group, and she has the most boring, generic last name.
I had to hit the down button 20+ times to get to the end of the Wikipedia list of famous people with the last name Harris. There are a lot of them, but it's actually hard to think of an interesting character with the surname Harris...
There's some risk going with the first name, but the men in the race are on a first-name basis, and haven't we been calling our Presidents by their first names? Oh, maybe not. Trump is Trump (and he used to be "The Donald"). Obama was Obama (and Barack is a very interesting name). I guess we called Carter "Jimmy," but that's not the example to copy.
What about Ike? That's the ultimate presidential nickname, but was that supposed to represent his first name or his last name? I realized I did not know and could not figure it out on the sounds. There's no "k" sound in Dwight or Eisenhower. I had to look it up:
Dwight David Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, the third of seven sons. His mother originally named him David Dwight but reversed the two names after his birth to avoid the confusion of having two Davids in the family. All of the boys were called "Ike", such as "Big Ike" (Edgar) and "Little Ike" (Dwight); the nickname was intended as an abbreviation of their last name.
Have I ever told you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?...
She often wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one fo them Bodkin Van Horn...
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed
And one Paris Garters/And one Harris Tweed...
Harris Tweed. Harris is interesting as a first name. Can you even think of anyone famous with Harris as a first name?
I've reached a deadend to my sidetrack, so I must proceed to the "blindside" and get out of here. The "blindside" is just that Buttigieg — Pete — is getting support in Kamala's home state California:
Democratic strategist Garry South says the growing buzz about Buttigieg’s success in wedging his way into California’s lucrative fundraising base has shocked many longtime politics watchers in the state.
“I think the amazing thing is that nobody is ceding California to Kamala Harris ... no one is abandoning California to the native daughter — which tells you something,’’ he says. “Why would he come out here and spend four days if he thought she had California locked up?“
Fundraising. Rich people in California. They're just fundraising now, not — like Trump — getting out there in rallies and stirring up crowds. If I were a rich Democrat looking to fund a candidate, I'd be watching Trump — look at the Panama City rally he just blew through in his spare time — and wondering who can match that intense, exciting campaigning?
Are the Democrats even doing rallies? I can't find full-scale rally with Kamala Harris on YouTube (not since her announcement rally from back in January). I see her at a fundraising dinner with the NAACP, but only a little clip, interrupted by an announcer saying that Kamala gave a "fiery campaign speech," but nothing actually fiery. I want to see the equivalent of what Trump repeatedly does, throws himself out there before a big crowd and really inspires them. Here's 2 minutes of Harris before a crowd from a few weeks ago. Where's a full-scale and recent campaign event? Why isn't this material out there? Is it being withheld?
Back at the Political "blindside" article:
Buttigieg’s May fundraising schedule includes four events alone Thursday in the L.A. area, including at the home of Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk. Co-hosts include actor Bradley Whitford and John Gile, who has been in LGBT leadership on the Democratic National Committee and served on the Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns.
“[Buttigieg] does interest me, because he’s so multifaceted,’’ says Melissa Rivers — the former star of the cult favorite show “Fashion Police” and Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” with her mother, the late Joan Rivers.
A Joe Biden supporter, Rivers notes that many of her Hollywood friends who have long expected to back Harris are feeling torn these days over their growing attraction to the newcomer mayor.
“It’s going to be very hard. If you don’t like that he’s gay, you’ll like that he’s a military guy,’’ says Rivers, who says she’s been deluged with fundraising invites. “If you don’t like that he’s a military guy, you’re going to like that he’s a mayor. It backs people into a corner because there’s nothing to attack him on.’’
Well, Politico got Melissa Rivers to chatter, but she's a Joe Biden supporter. What's she up to?
ADDED: Speaking of nicknames:
Looks to me like it’s going to be SleepyCreepy Joe over Crazy Bernie. Everyone else is fading fast!
The hardest word to remember when memorizing (and retaining the memorization of) "Jabberwocky."
Your experience may vary. Indeed, you may have chosen to memorize some other poem. But if, like me, you chose "Jabberwocky," as you go back and check to see if you still have the memorization down, isn't "whiffling" the hardest word to remember?
Interestingly enough, "whiffle," unlike some other words in "Jabberwocky," is a real English word — and not just a word that became a word because of "Jabberwocky."*
It means (according to the OED), "To blow in puffs or slight gusts; hence, to veer or shift about... To vacillate, to be variable or evasive.... To move lightly as if blown by a puff of air; to flicker or flutter as if stirred by the wind."
There's writing of "wyffling windes" way back in 1568. And The Nation wrote (in 1881), "Who like a manly man, will not whiffle, or quibble, or evade."
And the OED takes note of "Whiffle ball," "n. (a proprietary name for) a light, hollow, perforated ball used to play a variety of baseball." Example from 1970, a caption in Time: "[David Eisenhower] passing the afternoon playing wiffle ball on the south lawn of his father-in-law's White House." In happier times.**
David Eisenhower was 22 and he was the "Fortunate Son" of the Creedence Clearwater recording that played on the radio as he whiffled on the lawn.
I think she lost because she chortled while telling miners to learn to code.
Other words with OED entries that originated in "Jabberwocky":
"Bandersnatch" — "A fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature, of dangerous propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to flee from; later, used vaguely to suggest any creature with such qualities." Used by C.S. Lewis: "Always, at the critical moment, a strange knight, a swift ship, a bandersnatch or a boojum, breaks in."
"Galumph" — "Originally: to march on exultingly with irregular bounding movements. Now usually: to gallop heavily; to bound or move clumsily or noisily." Later example: "In the hall was a galumphing lass with a lot of jerseys and a po face," from "Friends in Low Places," a 1965 novel by Simon Raven. And I thought Garth Brooks thought up the bon mot "friends in low places." That's a riff on "friends in high places," which has been a stock phrase since the 17th century.
"Mimsy" — that's defined as "Unhappy" and appearing "Only in Carroll and later allusions," so it doesn't really belong on the list. It's no "chortle," that's for sure. But I'd like to suggest "Mimsy" as a name for Harry and Meghan's new baby. I heard they wanted something unusual. I know, Mimsy seems like a girl's name, but I heard they were looking for something gender neutral. So... just an idea for the Prince who can be President! Prince Mimsy! President Mimsy W. Windsor!
Look out! It's the wit of Amy Klobuchar. She'll never shake that eating-salad-with-a-comb story, so she's going with self-deprecating humor.
You never know. I once thought Donald Trump could never be elected President because his hair was so weird.
Maybe there's something mystical about hair — connecting celebrities to the people. I remember how The Beatles got to us with hair. And in politics, it does seem that the candidate with the best hair wins.
It might jinx you to come out and say it, of course. John Kerry, on his first day of campaigning with his veep choice, the ill-fated John Edwards, proclaimed:
"We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America. And we've got better hair. I'll tell you, that goes a long way."
That bulbous wig of a hairdo Kerry's been using to offset his lengthy face is good hair? That flappy, fine fringe accentuating Edwards' babyish looks is good hair? Please! For decades, I've been groaning about the outdated Beatle haircuts worn by aging Baby Boomers. Long hair is a young man's style that makes an older man look like an unattractive woman! Beatle styling, with combed down bangs in front, belongs in the 1960s--early 70s at the latest. It's as if 20 years from now, some guy were to run for President and wear his hair like this. I realize practically every man in Congress is making the same mistake of keeping the Beatle do alive, but could someone please tell these people how terribly estranged from any sense of style these men are? The only one of the current candidates with a respectable hairstyle is George Bush....
And George Bush won, so by my lights the candidate with the best hair did win in 2004, as in all the other elections, including the ones with our last bald president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The question of Trump's hair was immensely complicated in 2016, when his opponent was a woman whose oft-changing hair had been a matter of public inquiry for a quarter century. But she chose to forefront the hair comparison. She made a whole routine out of it with Jimmy Fallon...
She says (slightly garbling what must have been a prepared line): "Have you ever been able to let him touch — let you touch his hair?" And then: "Have you ever really touched it?" When Jimmy says no, she says: "You wanna touch mine?" Jimmy grabs a hank and gives it a sturdy pull. The gesture says: This is not a wig. And he shouts: "It's real! It's real!" He waves his hands about joyously and — with the band playing celebratory music – adds: "And it's got wave and it's fantastic, you guys, and it smells great!" He's laughing heartily and she's laughing heartily.
... and that led Jimmy Fallon — when Trump later appeared on his show — to grab Trump's hair the same way he'd grabbed Hillary's. And that normalized Trump's ultra-weird hair.
But back to Amy Klobuchar. That comb is the most famous thing about her, and she can't lose it. She's got to find a way to work with it. And the Democrats need a way to defeat the President with the absurd hair. Well, Amy's got the comb. If rock breaks scissors, and scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock, then surely, comb conquers hair.
Presidential summer vacations were different in the old days, no?
I found that photo because I was searching for pictures of how Mamie Eisenhower dressed as I was listening to Tom & Lorenzo's new podcast, which looks into Hillary Clinton's fashion and the fashions of various first ladies. They call Mamie "frumpy" and have a lot of other things to say, including that Jackie was actually not all that great — she wore Chanel knockoffs — and Nancy Reagan was perhaps better — though emblematic of a fashion decade (the 80s) that feels so alien to us today.
As for Hillary Clinton's $12,000 Armani jacket, they say women's clothes are expensive, you should expect a wealthy woman to wear expensive clothes, and Hillary would be criticized if she did not put plenty of attention into wearing the right clothes (with lots of shapewear underneath). Not that they like the cut of the jacket. They don't.
They also talk about Michelle Obama... and her famously bared arms. That's why I loved this picture of Mamie's arms.
Are Mamie and Dwight really playing Scrabble? I think they're just posing. Who starts off Scrabble with 5 words like that?
ADDED: Here's a collection of photos of Presidents on their vacations, beginning with Grant and including the Eisenhower photo above. And here's a collection of Presidents in their swimwear. My favorite:
Politico said: "CBS ends Democratic debate with seven minutes to spare" ("CBS brought in the second Democratic debate seven minutes under time... The candidates began their closing statements with more than 10 minutes to go until the scheduled 11 p.m. conclusion"). And various more incendiary sites said things like "Democrat debate so boring CBS ended it seven minutes early."
But I think it was planned. Look at the transcript. The moderator, John Dickerson, was doing commercial breaks like clockwork throughout the 2 hours. He even said "We've got to take a break or the machine breaks down." After that, he set up the "final segment," which wasn't "closing statements" (as Politico put it), but a focused question that precluded a canned statement: "What crisis have you experienced in your life that suggests you've been tested and can face that inevitable challenge?" When that was done, Dickerson didn't say good-night or act as though they'd ended early. He said, "All right, back with some final thoughts in a moment."
What followed was very weird, but obviously planned. With the candidates still on stage but the debate now "in the books," Dickerson brought out Major Garrett to report on the CBS "partnership with Twitter," which made it possible to identify "the most-talked-about moments for each of the three candidates." What got the most tweets?
It was Hillary Clinton, "when she defended her integrity on campaign contributions and mentioned 60% of her donors are women." I imagine there were lots of tweets of the ooh-Hillary's-mad variety or "Ouch!" Bernie Sanders's moment was "I'm not a socialist compared to Eisenhower." And Martin O'Malley's height of tweetability was also taking a shot at someone not on the stage, the phrase "immigrant bashing carnival barker Donald Trump." The candidates stood there smiling as the Major delivered the results. O'Malley, who seemed boyish throughout the debate, smirked and gave a thumbs-up. Yeah, I'd like to see him cop that attitude when Trump is there to punch back.
For some reason, CBS decided it would be cool to do a partnership-with-Twitter dance and that Major Garrett was the guy to twirl with Twitter. The candidates didn't opt to leave the stage. They put up with the absurd theater of saying who won.
And by the way, when I heard Major Garrett say that Hillary "defended her integrity on campaign contributions," my immediate outburst was "Assumes a fact not in evidence!"
"... to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, to divert the Gulf Stream and change temperate climates to frigid."
I see that Instapundit has: "CAVEAT: THESE ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO SAY YOU SHOULD PUT PEAS IN YOUR GUACAMOLE. For a Better Steak, Cook Directly on Charcoal. On the other hand, if it was good enough for Ike...."
I'd just like to say:
1. The NYT cooking section has figured out how to get action in social media.
2. Both the peas-in-the-guacamole and the steak-on-the-charcoal ideas trigger our instinctive aversion to putting things where they don't belong.
3. People want to cry out NO! and immediately tweet/blog/yell NO! without pausing to make the recipe. I once judged a recipe contest by just reading the recipes and imagining the results, so I'm not saying that's wrong. It's really just another way to put points ##1 and 2. But you can actually test the recipe.
4. Last night, Ike-like, Meade flung the steak directly onto the glowing charcoal. It came out just great!
5. No peas in the guacamole yet. I generally prefer fewer ingredients. But if you have extra fresh peas and that tub of guacamole you picked up at Whole Foods has started to feel like an obligation, why not? I've seen guacamole thrown into burritos at Chipotle. It's kind of stick-em, isn't it? And don't your peas need something to keep them from rolling around? When we were kids, we mixed them into the mashed potatoes. That kept them in place.
When's the last time we elected a Midwesterner President? Ford doesn't count. He wasn't elected. You have to go back to Eisenhower and by the time we elected him, he wasn't just from Kansas anymore. He was from The World — The World War. And Kansas isn't even really the Midwest I think of as the Midwest. It's too far south. When's the last time we had a President from the North that is not the East?
Here's a list the home states of all the Presidents. I was surprised to see that I could have said we have a President right now from the Midwest! It never occurred to me — even as I rewatched that Bloggingheads segment — to think of Barack Obama as a Midwesterner, despite his connection to Illinois. His demeanor and his accent don't come across as midwestern. I think of him as coming from Hawaii.
I think we've never had a President from the North that is not the East. We've had a lot of Presidents from Ohio, and in that video clip, where I'm talking about Scott Walker's chances as a midwestern-style person, Bob Wright gets fixated on Ohio Governor Kasich, but Ohio isn't what I mean when I say Midwest. Note that I have lived in Wisconsin for the last 30 years, so I have an idea of the Midwest (and the North), but I consider myself from the "mid-Atlantic region," born and mostly raised in Delaware — just about exactly at the place where the Mason-Dixon line would cross if the mapmakers hadn't switched to using a compass when drawing the head on the little man called Delaware....
I am an insider/outsider in the Midwest. I think I get the cultural style that one sees in people like Tim Pawlenty and Scott Walker who seem too bland for outsiders. I mean that I also get The Not Getting of It. It might help that my mother and her family were from Michigan. Bob is from Texas, which is a big place, so maybe that's why he blithely groups Wisconsin with Ohio. He also sneered at the notion that Delaware is the South. I forgot to ply him with the question whether Texas is the South, but we were running out of time.
This post has become a grab bag of issues, so I'll load in one more, because news broke as I was writing this: "Lindsey Graham officially launches presidential exploratory committee." In the Bloggingheads clip embedded above, I talked about the problem of a Southern accent for a Republican candidate and say I think Americans have trouble with Lindsey Graham because of his accent. But the discussion of Midwesterners is not so much about the accent — though it is a problem if it's too exaggerated (as in the movie "Fargo") — it's the modest, low-key, seemingly bland style. But that problem could be an advantage. People might be in the mood for modest blandness. Of course, Scott Walker's opponents won't accept that picture of the man. They demonize him. How do you demonize modest blandness? Oh, it's an old game here intra-Wisconsin.
I'm getting a late start this morning. Only yesterday — ah, yesterday! — I had my first post up at 6:21. It contained the memorable Drudge headline "Big Sis Wants to See Under Your Clothes." Today, the blog didn't get going until 8:45 (and that's Central Time). If I wanted a cover story — a story that you can't see under even with your National Surveillance X-Ray Robot Eyes — I'd say I needed to meditate for hours upon encountering — on the front page of the NYT — the equivalent of the old what is the sound of one hand clapping? zen koan.
Having achieved oneness, what is its sound? In other words, how does it reverberate? How does it go out into the world and function? If we're just being "one" with our own hand, what have we accomplished? If it's all about our own private experience, it's nothing but a hand job!
If it's a hidden hand, how is it seen? Some unnamed entity/entities are seeing, but they are hidden by the hidden hand of the headline writer using the passive voice. The passive voice is evidence of the unseen hand of another hand job for President Obama.
The leaves of the newspaper are trembling with the wind that passes through, and thus do we "see" the unseen. But what is this wind? The underlying article, written by Peter Baker begins like this:
Here's the NYT article that appeared on the 50th anniversary of the execution.
The available evidence now suggests to historians that Julius Rosenberg did in fact spy for the Soviet Union. The evidence against Ethel Rosenberg, however, is considered flimsy at best. But whatever they may have done, it is far from evident that they had handed Moscow the key to its first atomic bomb, as charged at the time.
The couple remain a special case. The United States has had many spies over the last 50 years, including some believed to have done great harm to American interests. Not one was put to death.
The Rosenbergs were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War. In imposing the death penalty, [Judge Irving] Kaufman noted that he held them responsible not only for espionage but also for the deaths of the Korean War:
A pissing contest, or pissing match, is a game in which participants compete to see who can urinate the highest, the farthest, or the most accurately.
That's a more exciting game than a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. "Pissing contest" is an old metaphor used "to characterise ego-driven battling in a pejorative or facetious manner that is often considered vulgar."
Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have said of Senator Joseph McCarthy that he wouldn't "get into a pissing contest with that skunk." Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, used the same phrase in 1958 when asked why he had not responded to a statement by the French foreign minister that the French government had not been consulted about a crisis in Lebanon....
Consider the potential metaphorical use of a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. I note that it may work better in 2013 than pissing contest, since the reference is to an activity that — something Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles probably didn't think about — gives women equal opportunity.
In case you have trouble picturing women in a non-metaphorical pissing contest, Wikipedia — at the second link, above — recounts some Irish folklore:
In the story Tochmarc Emire several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow. The winner is Derbforgaill, wife of Lugaid Riab nDerg, but the other women attack her out of jealousy and mutilate her by gouging out her eyes and cutting off her nose, ears, and hair, resulting in her death. Her husband Lugaid also dies, from grief, and Cúchulainn avenges the deaths by demolishing a house with the women inside, killing 150.
Yet Mr. Gehry then went on to present changes that mainly affect the memorial’s bas-relief sculptures — changing them to three-dimensional statues – and did not alter the most controversial element. “I still believe that the sculpture of Eisenhower as a young man looking out on his future accomplishments is a powerful image,” Mr. Gehry wrote....
The image of Eisenhower as a young man is based on remarks he made in 1945 upon his return from World War II to his hometown of Abilene, Kan., where he referred to himself as having once been “a barefoot boy.” There is also a photograph at that age that Mr. Gehry said he drew upon.
Even by the standard of the day, the Eisenhower home on southeast Fourth Street in Abilene, Kansas, was small, modest, and-with six growing boys underfoot-crowded....
From their mother, Ida, Dwight and his brothers learned to cook, clean, iron, and sew. On Sunday, the boys were responsible for family meals entirely. David, their father, worked long hours as a refrigeration engineer at nearby Belle Springs Creamery. Still, there was never money enough. Ida recycled David's old clothes for the boys. To his embarrassment, Dwight sometimes had to wear his mother's old high-top, buttoned shoes to school or go barefoot. To earn money for extras, the Eisenhower boys grew and sold vegetables, door to door. For variety, they peddled hot tamales from their mother's Texas recipe.
Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:
Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)
It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)
Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.
It seems like the creators of the ad decided to play around with the name "Mitt," so they flipped it over to get "tiM," flopped it back so it's "Mitt" again, then put them side by side to get "tiM-Mitt," which sounds like "timid."
It some kind of palindrome!
And then what would happen if Mitt picked Tim Pawlenty as his VP? The brains of poets will explode. But what kind of an ear for poetry do we average Americans have? Perhaps it doesn't matter whether you notice. It's harder to defend against the subliminal effects. The words seep directly into your emotions. You get these uneasy feelings about the candidate, and you don't know why.
And then again, we do hear poetry in the language of politics: I like Ike... tricky Dick.... Even when you hear it and you can defend against it, you're hooked. You do like Ike. And Dick Nixon is tricky.
The last guy to be elected president without having won statewide or national office was Dwight D. Eisenhower...
De Gaulle?
... Gingrich is a devotee of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who meditated on the concept of “departure and return” — the idea that great leaders have to leave (or be banished from) their kingdoms before they can better themselves and return as conquering heroes. One of Newt’s heroes, the French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle, embodies just this kind of romantic narrative, having spent 12 years out of power before returning to lead his country.
Reagan?
So does Ronald Reagan, who traveled the country after losing his bid for the Republican nomination in 1976, then came roaring back to win it all four years later.
Nixon?
Unlike Mr. Reagan, who even in his lower moments retained a certain celebrity appeal, Mr. Nixon was humiliated and all but exiled after publicly self-destructing in 1962. He then retreated to the sidelines and watched as his party disintegrated, leaving a vacuum of leadership and gravitas on the right that enabled Mr. Nixon to make one of the great comebacks in political history.
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