"Maps Pinpoint Where Democrats Lost Ground Since 2020 in 11 Big Cities... where Kamala Harris got fewer votes compared with Joseph R. Biden Jr. and which voting blocs drove each city’s red shift."

Here's a free-access link to a detailed analysis at the NYT. Please spend some time understanding these maps. They're loaded with information, and the text makes it hard to discern what I think is the main trend: Harris generally lost ground among all non-white groups.

That article has 5 authors and no comments section.

IN THE COMMENTS HERE: There is support for the idea that the extra votes counted for Biden did not represent human beings at all, but were the fake votes of what was a stolen election in 2020. That's a notion that will not go away easily. Perhaps the new Trump administration will investigate and either uncover the fraud or prove it didn't happen, but Trump couldn't come up with much proof before January 6, 2021, and it might be a disaster for him to devote this new presidential term to questioning the legitimacy of the presidential term that escaped him. Concentrate on doing great things for the American people and ensuring that future elections are scrupulously accurate.

AND: Speaking of conspiracy theories, on another post this morning, Lem, the commenter, wrote: "Conspiracy theory Althouse is the best Althouse 😌." So if you're disappointed that I won't lean into the stolen-election theory, you can go over there and see what I had to say about Biden carrying the "Hundred Years’ War on Palestine" book.

"This simple two-by-two truthfulness matrix is a powerful tool for understanding politicians and how we react to them."

From "The Lies We Like: Voters Prefer Transparency to Honesty, but Should They?/We don’t have to start supporting honest people who transparently hold values we don’t share. But we do need to stop supporting transparent people whose commitment to honesty is lacking" by Robin Koerner (Foundation for Economic Education). 

The post was instigated by Lem, who commented on my last post — a post that got the tag "the blog has a theme today" — "Two posts a theme does not make." Now, there are 3.

You don't need to click through to the article to figure out that the person Koerner thinks we need to stop supporting is Trump. But whether you support Trump or not, it's useful to think about why we might like someone whose lies are transparent.

By the way, I see the words "Duplicity" and "Integrity," each on a corner of the matrix. But what words belong on the other 2 corners? "Boring" and "Exciting"? And too bad the words "Untruthful" and "Truthful" are misplaced in the vertical blue rectangle. That's confusing!

Nuance!

A clip from 2009, out of context, presented on the occasion of today's use of the "nuance" tag, one of my all-time favorite tags on this blog.

I think it's fun to take things out of context and fun to put them back in. Another example is in yesterday's vlog, where I was answering questions from readers. I threw in the line "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." I saw over at Lem's place, where some of my former commenters have congregated, that at least one aggrieved commenter assumed I was mad as hell at the commenters. I'll show you the actual context in a few minutes.

The original context for that "Nuance!" clip above is here: "The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle."

What emptiness are your jaws clamped around?

"I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory. It's human life that is real."

That's a hint about the context for my "mad as hell" outburst.

Here:

"Meade will read this Comment to Ann and Ann Will Sigh. It Could Have Been Hers."

"One woman's refuse out the car window is another man's idea of making amends."

Okay... that's another approach to the end of comments, somehow creating another place where the same commenters can congregate and comment like they did back here in the old days when I had comments. Contrast that to Henry's approach — in the previous post.

ADDED: Meade comments at the first link, riffing on betamax who'd said: "Naked Bob Dylan Robot says: There is Eskimo Pain Deep in my Mid-Western Vowels, rumbles, gurgles: all the Pigeons Will Come to Me."

Vowels and bowels of angel hair
And Eskimo Pie hassles in the air
And pigeons pooping everywhere
I've looked at blogs that way

But now I'm simply paranoid
The spiders make me so annoyed
The many words I couldn't avoid
Blogs got in my way

I've looked at blogs from both sides now
From front and back, from kòu and tóu
It's blogs' intrusions I recall
I really don't like blogs at all

"What does anybody learn? I'm not sure what the purpose of these teaching moments are."

Wonders John McWhorter, talking to Glenn Loury about the Paula Deen thing (which the NYT columnist Frank Bruni had declared a "teaching moment").



It's at least a teaching moment in the sense of: this'll teach you not to be the next teaching moment.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lem said: "I voted with my wallet.... and I don't have much. In fact, I have nuthing."

At the Wet Lettuce Café...

... because Lem wanted a café and because I think some of you might need a break from all the legalistic argle-bargle. And it was Lem who asked "Is Argle-Bargle another way of saying bullshit?" And the answer is most definitely yes, and as you know, I'm immensely interested in the concept of paraphrasing. In other words, I want to be the Professor of Paraphrase. And by the way, did you know that the song "Fly Me To the Moon," was originally titled "In Other Words"? And that Frank Sinatra sings the line "In other words, darling, kiss me" in these other words: "In other words, baby, kiss me"? Why does "darling" seem so old fashioned? Does anyone use the endearment "darling" anymore (other than sarcastically, as in "yes, darling")?

Okay, you get the message: Talk about random stuff. Be amusing and delightful. Or something.

"Things I Learned in My Twenty-Four Hour Althouse Comment Withdrawal."

From betamax3000 (at 12 midnight):

• the Shakes -- they Get Real Bad;

• Twenty-Four Hours is A Long Period of Time When You Deny Yourself;

• the Baby Spiders are Real;

• I Love the Commenters: Read All the Posts, All Day, Tongue Bound, and Realized in Retrospect that -- Perhaps -- I Occasionally Suck Too Much Oxygen From the Room;

• Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

• the Scientology "No Fear' Paradigm Crosses Neuropaths with Cruel Neutrality: when I get it Down to Four Paragraphs I Will Thrust it Sideways Into a Thread about Gabe Kaplan;

• it -- Technically -- is Not a Burning Sensation.

I do not discount the role of  El Pollo Raylan's summoning: "Beta come back!" — which took us to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.

Lem sighed relief:

I think I can say tonight that we are in Betamax debt. From now on it will be possible to risk loosing wifi knowing that it is a survivable non-event thanks to the courage and determination of one man. and his name is Betamax.

And:

Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

Its like Althouse politics, I think.

That's exactly right. And then betamax3000 said:

At the Metaphorical Althouse Denny's I want More hash Browns and Non-Dairy Creamer: I am building a Mountain.

And I say: This means something. This is important.



Loose the WiFi!

"I love when you talk dirty!"

A dialogue between 2 men in last night's open thread "At the Saturday Peony Café":

Palladian: A few years ago, "peony" was a very popular note in perfumery. Many perfumes used this note, which was generally done as a big, fluorescent, loud, fruity-flower odor of no particular interest. Givaudan makes 2-cyclohexylidene-2-phenylacetonitrile, an aroma chemical they call Peonile, which I always find hilarious. Say it: Peonile.

El Pollo Raylan: The name is apt. I see lots of structural rigidity in the linear nitrile portion which has a nitrogenous lone pair at one end. Then there's the cyclohexylidene portion which is quasi-floppy, but made stiffer by attachment to the olefinic core. The phenyl is of course rigid except for its rotational degree of freedom.

Palladian: I love when you talk dirty!

Also in the comments, a dialogue between 2 women:

Freeman Hunt: We had some new tile installed in our kitchen this week. One afternoon the installers washed their tools outside and left without coming back in. Because they did not come back in, they forgot to turn off their radio. The radio was across the newly laid tile that we were forbidden to walk upon. So we listened to popular, contemporary country music all that evening and for three hours the next morning. Heh. (That story is much funnier to people who know me in real life. I don't listen to anything in the background. Ever. No television. No music. Nothing. I only turn something on if I want to listen to it actively.)

Synova: I don't listen to "background" anything either. I can see you standing at the edge of the tile... yearning.

Freeman Hunt: "yearning"... Perfect word.

Intruding on this perfectly female dialogue was the aforequoted Palladian: "That's what a handgun and good aim are for."

Also in the vicinity was another man, Lem. Unlike Palladian, he wasn't commenting on the music and yearning, at least not directly. He just told his own story — "We went to see a new friend perform at a local establishment and I took a picture of a sign near the entrance" — and showed us this:

Another idea for delaying aging.

At last night's open thread, the Coal Café, our beloved commenter Lem got inspired to look for updates on that story from a couple weeks ago about the burned fire walkers:

I was looking for news of the bed of hot coal walkers we had fun with and how they might be "getting over it"... when Google gave me this..

Bed warmer... The term is also commonly used in the United Kingdom and Australia for a temporary sexual partner, or a relationship of necessity.

This is not to be confused with Shunamitism, the practice of sharing a bed, but not necessarily engaging in sexual relations, with a young maiden, in hope that the shared warmth and moisture would delay aging.

Clicking through on Shunamitism, I see that the idea was that "the heat and moisture of the young woman would transfer to the old man and revitalize him." The term, Shunamitism, goes back to King David, who had a young woman from Shunem (named Abishag) brought to his bed to keep him warm. 1Kings 1,1. And: "Among scientific physicians, both Thomas Sydenham (17th century) and Herman Boerhaave (18th century) prescribed shunamitism for their patients." That's quite a prescription, if you can get it.

ADDED: I'm imagining Shunamitism as a New Age front for a prostitution business.

Romney ad uses archival news footage and Tom Brokaw is not pleased.

Brokaw — who wants the ad withdrawn — says: "I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do no want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."

Extended use? The ad is 30 seconds long. And how does it "compromise" Brokaw's role as a journalist? Anyone can see it's the archival footage of the news from 1997, and the point of using Brokaw is that it makes it plain that this is the straightforward news of that time, not any pumped up, slanted presentation.

Unless...

... unless — ironically! — Tom Brokaw's role as a journalist is already — in the minds of viewers — compromised. I mean, when you look at this ad, do you think: Oh, there's that terrible left-leaning NBC News making what Gingrich did look as bad as possible? Or do you think: That's the regular, professional news as it appeared in 1997, informing us of some disturbingly bad things Gingrich did?

Obviously, Mitt Romney is using the clip on the theory that you'll think the latter, and therefore it boosts Brokaw's reputation as a neutral journalist. Brokaw's objection is self-undermining.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lem says:

I have the copy of the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't say anywhere anything that anybody can make Tom extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of his personal image.

At the Chocolate Chip Café...

... sit down and hang out.

ADDED: I should have called this the Levitating Muffin Café. (Lem: "Is it me, or does the muffin appear to float?" It's not just you!) This cafe, in case you are wondering, is in Leadville, Colorado. That's 10,000 feet above sea level, and I know high altitude affects baking, but who knew the stuff would come out this light.

Time passes slowly ....

That video is from one of our longtime favorite commenters, rhhardin, who says:

Approaching Turkey in the Straw diagnosed and awaited, video from Monday bike commute.

The business model is doubtful, with the kids safely indoors in modern times.

That's from last night's "café" post — the one with the orange flower — where another favorite commenter, Lem, transports us into a long car ride with his wonderful father:

Anyway.. I had a good time driving my dad.. for about seven hours.. he drove the rest.

I caught a sign in PA that said "where is the birth certificate?"..

We both happen to see it and when I finally did a half hearted ha ha (because I didn't get it right away) my father asked me what do you think?

..he eventually told me about what he calls the "American Concupiscence of Obama".

and of course he told me ther is a price to pay for that kind of thing.

He told me that "codicia" (lust) is not only a material, nor only a sexual mater the way people like to pretend.

The conversation was, I think, in Spanish.

He said that [like] any object of desire that is able to overcome fears, it is a (for lack of a better explanation) godlike.

According to my father.. the seemingly "impossibility" of Obama becoming president played right into his theme of "hope and change".. So that when it did happened (he became president) people assigned to it a divine like experience/intervention.. and now with the spill he is (unlike Bush) "uniquely qualified" to stop it.. or everything they believed is in jeopardy.

I wish I could put it to you all in the poetic way my father does.

When he spoke.. it was as if I already knew it.. It felt good.

For people to blame themselves for the spill is a stretch.. it is the only thing keeping Obamas hopes alive.

If people blame Obama.. in their minds (says my father) they might as well blame themselves.. specially if they voted for him (i said) ... and my father said after a pause that seemed jarring dislocated.. my father voted for Obama.

I didn't react to that.. (thank God) It would have been disrespectful to him.. the fact that he told me it was not so as to give me an opportunity to call it into question. I think it it was more to brace waht he had been telling me about.. "The American Concupiscence of Obama" had been real enough to carry him away like a Hoover Dam Relief.

Concupiscence.

I wish Lem could capture that poetry on video. I picture Lem's father as a YouTube wise man.

Some commenters told me that the flower photograph looks like a painting. I've been a painter in my time, and the truth is: It doesn't look like a painting at all. I said:

The reason this flower looks like a painting is because it lacks something that — ironically — I would put in if I were doing a painting of it. There are no black/gray shadowy areas demarcating the depths of the folds. It's just more orange. It's not what the brain thinks will be there, but it's what the camera sees.

You could look at that photograph and paint without thinking so much and thereby produce a painting that looks like a photograph. Artists have done that, creating the illusion that some photographs look like paintings. But it is, most assuredly, the other way around.





Time passes slowly up here in the daylight
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right
Like the [orange] rose of [late spring] that blooms in the day
Time passes slowly and fades away...

What we watched off the TiVo last night.

1. "Death Camp of Tolerance." (And no, we're not going to using "Lemmiwinks" as a pet name for our dear commenter Lem.) ("Death Camp" ≈ "death panels," no?)

2. "The Colbert Report," #05108 with Barbara Boxer. (Haven't watched Colbert in a while. He's less funny pretending to hate Democrats than he was pretending to love Republicans.)

3. "Trapped Under a Boulder." (This one never gets old. Well, what would you do if you were out camping amongst the Australian boulders and you had to pee in the middle of the night? Watch for the crawfish cameo.)

Jack Kerouac did not text.

I need to get some blogging up, and I actually have about 5 things I've been meaning to write, that is, after the completion of various Sunday morning activities, such as transforming the corn leftover from last night into breakfast and analyzing why I didn't quite replicate my mother's corn fritters. But somehow, I'm reading the comments over on Richard's blog — not even my own blog.

(I did read some of my blog's comments on my iPhone in the middle of the night, and I'd just like to say, Lem, I'm sorry no one was in the buckets of flowers with you last night to say, yes, we're your friends and thanks for telling us that you've found comfort here.)

Anyway, over at Richard's, Penny commented:

I just noticed your new blog header. NICE! I like it a lot. I do have one comment though. Pen authors need to watch out for what I will call "texting creep".

That refers to the quote in Richard's banner:

SCRIBBLED SECRET NOTEBOOKS, AND WILD TYPEWRITTEN PAGES, FOR YR OWN JOY... SUBMISSIVE TO EVERYTHING, OPEN, LISTENING... SOMETHING THAT YOU FEEL WILL FIND ITS OWN FORM. --JACK KEROUAC, FROM "BELIEF AND TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE"

Kerouac wrote "yr," long before anybody was indulging in rampant abbreviation for texting purposes. I'd read that quote in Richard's banner many times, but this morning was the first time I was moved to Google the quote. I wanted to make sure of what I was already sure of, that the abbreviation was Kerouac's. And the cool thing about that, for which I offer a penny to Penny, is that I found the whole context, "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose," which is written — Richard elides this — as a numbered list. I love lists, especially numbered lists.

(We've been eating salads from that 101 salads list, and, for example, #2 really is — as billed — "[a]stonishing.")

There are only 30 items on Kerouac's list, so it's easier to read than not to read. Nevertheless, I'll copy a few here, with commentary:

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

And don't even yell as if u were drunk outside yr house, especially at a cop.

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Consider it done! Since 2004.

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

I often write bottomless. Much more than topless. Because I like to write in bed.

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

K.

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

Would all the political bloggers please take a day to do exactly this? Then, if you can do it, do it all the time.

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea...
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

See? Blog!

And text, if u want 2.

"Someone's knocking at the door. Somebody's ringing the bell. Do me a favor. Open the door. Let 'em in.

That's the entirety of the lyrics to the cute little Paul McCartney song "Let 'Em In," from the 1976 album "Wings at the Speed of Sound."

Please familiarize yourself with the original recording.

Now, you are prepared to view the song and dance interpretation from the 1976 Miss America contest — with Bert Parks and 3 male dancers:

***

What long and winding road led me to that door? Back in last night's "rare opportunity" thread, I wrote:

Being tried for murder is a rare opportunity, as is ending your life in the electric chair.

Meade said:

I once had the rare opportunity to become King of England but I turned it down.

I chose romantic love instead.

Then Hollywood called and I said "no." At the time, keeping my private life private seemed like a rare opportunity I didn't want to give up.

Oh, I almost forgot - then I was asked to run for Vice President but I decided I wanted to spend more time with my family.

In hindsight, I'm glad I turned down that king gig. The pay wasn't all THAT great.

Then Lem said:

Good call Meade.

Greetings from Julio "If love calls on your door"

If love calls your door
let it find it always open
never close it, let'm in ...

Open up, don't get distracted
don't let'm go, dont miss it
you don't know when it will call again ...

If love calls your door
let it find it always open
tomorrow is another day, it's God's will ...

Let love be welcome
Today I will stay with you
For a Gifted night without end ...

I want to be more than your friend
it is all I ask
and that you give me a chance.

(painstaking translation by Lem)

"Gifted" — like "God" — is capitalized in Lem's view, and I accept that.

The open door... someone's knocking at the door...

If you'd left that door open somebody wouldn't have had to ring the bell. Maybe you just leave that door wide open — and let love walk in — but at least answer it. Maybe check the peephole first.

Wouldn't it be cool if Andrew would openly explore what might be complex feelings about heterosexuals — especially women?

I said.

And he said...

IN THE COMMENTS: Lem said:

I'm at work now, so I can't do much.. look up Sully's treatment of Condi Rice and the women of the Bush WH.

There might be something there we can use.

(Damn. I should have taken the day off.)

I love the smell of an intertube fight early in the morning.

Okay, kids. Marshall the evidence. Comb through Sullivan's blog for evidence of misogyny. I'm in a frontpaging mood! I'll even correct your typos (as I did for dear, sweet Lem).

David Axelrod, circa 1975.

(Via Ben Smith.) 

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O Cruel, needless misunderstanding. O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast..."

ricpic said:

Oscar Wilde lives! Sans wit. Sans soul. Sans everything.

Love all that literariness, but Psychedelic George hits what I was searching for:

Separated at Birth from Chuck Negron 3 Dog Night's lead singer.

(Idle Chuck Negron rumor.)

He also bears a resemblance to Mickey Rat of comix fame.

Lem said:

If you put a moustache on this man you will not be able to tell them apart. Actually, he looks more like Rasputin than the Son of Sam.... David Crosby....

We were talking about khat, and Kev said...

"I thought khat-blogging had kind of gone out of style lately."

I thought I'd do a post with a LOLcat, saying something on this theme, so I went to Flickr to find a picture of a cat, and I got pleasantly distracted by this comment on the photograph that I blogged yesterday. Screen grab:



See? The commenter — jjmadison — has a cat face avatar and his comment — "wow, all that on two packs of Splenda??" — continues the drug theme. Ah! My drug of choice is synchronicity. I'm high on it now. I'm even singing: Oh! Oh! Oh!

Not really, but I do have to shout above the din of my Rice Krispies.

Now, somewhat giddy, I do still want to make that LOLcat, and I search my Flickr photographs for "cat." But I haven't been good about labels over there, and the collection of "cat"-labeled photos seems a bit absurd. There's a latte with a foam cat face. A picture of a poster that says "Don't Shoot the Cat." There's the very young me with a cat and my same-age son with a cat:



[ADDED: Yes, Chris is holding a "Hilter cat" and we were just talking about Facebook groups like "G-D BLESS HITLER," but stay away from the Nazi synchronicity. The brown-shirt acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good.]

There are the pages from my Amsterdam sketchbook about the Cat Museum — the Katten Kabinet. There are some bat orts.

Most absurd, there is a set of LOLcats, made from photos taken of paused — pawsed — frames from the movie "La Dolce Vita."

What was that all about? Don't you remember back on August 11, 2007, when TRex said "Every time I look in over [at Althouse], something so weird is going on that I feel like I just bumbled on to the set of a Fellini film," and I was all:

"Im in ur hair/Lickin ur i"
"Im ur soul/gettin outta heer"
"Ur head/my roller coaster"
"Im ur/windsheeled wipurrz"

But these Rice Krispies were enough, and I don't want an egg at this hour. So I look to you, dear readers, to pick up Kev's khat-blogging theme and make some LOLcats. You can make them here, and you can email them to me at annalthouse (at) gmail (dot) com.

I'd love to pass out some of the Althouse blog drugs: frontpaging and tags.

And I'm hoping TRex will bumble over here and see that something weird is going on. And also that something crawls from the slime at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.

UPDATE: From Lem:



AND: From Zachary Paul Sire:



AND: From Palladian:



From Kev (who started all this):