The Trump-Kim handshake happened.

It is beyond me to know what it means. I think it's beyond everyone else too, but the journalists had to do their thing, and I suppose I could read/watch their work and say something about them.

Reuters rolled out body-language experts:

Body language experts said that in the 13 seconds or so the U.S. president held on to the hand of Kim for the first time, he projected his usual dominance by reaching out first, and patting the North Korean leader's shoulder. Not to be outdone, Kim firmly pumped Trump's hand, looking him straight in the eye for the duration, before breaking off to face the media.

"It wasn't a straight-out handshake," said Allan Pease, an Australian body language expert and author of several books on the topic, including "The Definitive Guide to Body Language". "It was up and down, there was an argy-bargy, each one was pulling the other closer. Each guy wasn't letting the other get a dominant grip," he told Reuters by telephone from Melbourne.as the father and the little guy is the son."

Definitive guide, indeed. Pease sounds like he's talking about all the power handshakes he's ever seen, not the specific one that I saw on video. But points for using the word "argy-bargy."

It's a word I've used exactly once on this blog, back in 2005, just to say I "loved" it, when somebody else used it, and to express determination to use it again. I'd thought I'd blogged about Justice Scalia using the word, but the person using the word back in 2005 was the playwright David Hare. It occurred to me that Justice Scalia had used the word "argle-bargle," and that turns out to be correct. Here, back in 2013, he'd written "the real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow...." Does it matter what the legal issue was or is that something you feel you could say about any nonunanimous Supreme Court opinion? I see I thought it was such a useful embodiment of opinion that I made a tag for it — argle-bargle.

"Argle-bargle" means "Disputatious argument, bandying of words, wrangling" (OED). Trump's tweeting often has an argle-bargle quality, but his tweet for the Kim meeting is wordless. Form your own opinions of the body language:

pic.twitter.com/tJG3KIn2q0

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018

Cruz's specious "disenfranchisement" argument.

There are some wonderful liberties inherent in commenting as opposed to blogging. I had an idea I wanted to use to get the blog going this morning, and — reading around — I saw that my son John had set up a discussion on a post of mine, "The incoherent notion that the GOP convention must pick Trump or Cruz."

Though I hadn't yet overcome my new-morning inhibition and started this blog up again, my idea tumbled out over there. I said:

... Cruz is involved in seizing more than his share of delegates after the primaries. He's been quite successful at that, but how can he seek the benefit of those extra delegates he's finagled and then highhandedly argue based on democracy?

John responded:

Yeah, it's one thing if he can manage to get to a contested convention that way — but if and when he does, he can't use his delegate count to argue that we should choose him based on the will of the people. The only democratic choice will be Trump. Anything else will be an elite decision about who will be best in the general, and they can't expect to be taken seriously claiming it's anything else.

And I said:

Even if he wasn't out and about undercutting Trump everywhere in the delegate selection phase of the process (and changing the balance of delegates from what the primary voters voted for), Cruz should have a hard time pushing the "disenfranchisement" argument to get the open convention to pick him. Why, if Trump is rejected for failing to get a majority, should the guy who got even less have some special entitlement? The democracy argument only works for Trump, so why is Cruz making it? Because it's the best argument he's got! It's lawyerly. You can give him credit for patching it together and making it with a straight face, but the credit due does not include handing him the nomination. It's a specious argument and it should be recognized as such. I'm saying this now and maybe not that many others are saying it, but I think that's because the process of stopping Trump from getting to 1237 is still happening.

"Classic Linda Greenhouse awfulness."

Opines Stephen Bainbridge:

First, there's the implicit claim that she is able to divine the inner workings of [Chief Justice] Roberts' decision making processes. She knows what's in his "head" and "heart," as if she were some psychic shrink....

Speculating about what's really going on behind the argle-bargle in the written opinions is something we must do to avoid falling for propaganda. I use the term "argle-bargle" to remind you of what Justice Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion in the DOMA case, Windsor:

[T]he real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow, is that DOMA is motivated by "'bare . . . desire to harm'" couples in same-sex marriages.

And that's just what Scalia feels is acceptable within the rigors of judicial opinion-writing. We must feel impelled to pull apart the judicial verbiage that we sometimes call the "decision" to try to see The Decision, which is to say, the mental processes that actually took place in the minds of the judges.

Of course, we can't really know. None of us, not even Linda Greenhouse, can divine the inner workings of anyone else's head. (Thank God! What a world this would be if we could!) But there is no more valuable inner working of your own head than to contemplate the inner workings of the heads of others. What fools we are if we take other people's words at face value! But — and here Professor Bainbridge is right — we are wrong if we present our speculation as the truth. If we posture as certain, those who don't like what we say can smack us down. You can't know that!

But I speculate that Linda Greenhouse — in the secret inner workings of the head that only she can access — knows her "The Real John Roberts Emerges" overstates what she knows about the inner workings of the mind of John Roberts. I presume that she has her reasons for writing like that. I presume, I don't know, but I could — if the inner workings of my mind cranked in this direction — write a blog post titled "The Real Linda Greenhouse Emerges." Or "The Real Stephen Bainbridge Emerges."

See if you can read my mind and tell why I don't think such cogitations need to be spelled out.

"Three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that same-sex marriages can resume 'effective immediately' in the state of California..."

... says Breaking News email from CNN.

So! I'm glad I didn't get sucked into the legalistic argle-bargle about the effect of the Supreme Court's Prop 8 case. Did you read any of that? I did, but I chose not to inflict it on you. Perhaps some local functionary will refuse to record a gay marriage and there will be more litigation, but really... get a clue. It's over.

Is Will.i.am suing Pharrell Williams for using "I am OTHER" and horning in on his "I am"?

I am so you can't be. Will.i.am's lawyer provided this legalistic argle-bargle:

"Will.i.am is not suing Pharrell Williams... What Will.i.am has done is what any trademark owner must do to protect and maintain a trademark. This is a run-of-the-mill trademark dispute that has been going on since late last year. In order to avoid weakening or losing his trademark, Will.i.am has an obligation under trademark law to monitor and defend his trademarks against confusingly similar marks. Will.i.am has registered several trademarks, including 'I AM', which is also emphasised in, and a significant element of, his professional name. We think their proposed trademark is too close to our registered and common law trademarks. They disagree. We hope to work out a sensible compromise that will allow both parties to move forward without unnecessary acrimony."

So don't call this suing AND don't call yourself "I am," especially in the music business and where you seem to be exploiting the "William" name and the simple cleverness of seeing the "I am" in William, and anyway, your name is Williams, with an "s," so that's some awkward appropriated cleverness. Like I ams. So go infringe on that dogfood, why don't you? Or... I mean... cease this unnecessary acrimony.

By the way, I thought God owned the trademark on "I am":

I Am that I Am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh...) is a common English translation...  of the response God used in the Hebrew Bible when Moses asked for his name (Exodus 3:14)....

Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition. The phrase is also found in other world religious literature, used to describe the Supreme Being, generally referring back to its use in Exodus.

If God is I Am that I Am, then Will.i.am must already be an OTHER I am. Suggested legalistic argle-bargle: one more reason for Pharrell Williams to step back.

UPDATE: The 2 men settle the lawsuit in March 2014.

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.

"Justice Scalia Used The Term ‘Argle-Bargle’ In A Scathing, Condescending DOMA Rant."

Business Insider gets to the meat of things.

Specifically, Scalia said: "As I have said, the real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow, is that DOMA is motivated by '"bare . . . desire to harm"' couples in same-sex marriages."

I started a new tag today. No, not "argle-bargle." Paraphrase. I've become immensely interested in the concept of paraphrasing, and I'm hypervigilant about paraphrasing about paraphrasing, and I see that there. Scalia has a really cheeky way of saying "so what you're really saying is...": whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow....

Memorize that. Use it. It's sure to annoy some people and give others a great sense of relief. For example, law students may enjoy hearing the lawprof say whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle Justice X chose to follow, the real rationale is...

So high-handed! So liberating!

The (unlinkable) OED traces "argle-bargle" — which means "Disputatious argument, bandying of words, wrangling" — back to 1872:

1872   A. J. Cupples Tappy's Chicks 252   During these days of ‘argle bargle’, as our smith's wife called it.
a1881   Carlyle in W. A. Knight Retrospects (1904) 15,   I have for a long time given up the argle-bargle of metaphysics.
1927   Observer 11 Dec. 15/2   Can they..stand up to a good and sufficient argle-bargle that lasts for the best part of three hours?

UPDATE: 2 days later, I actually did make a tag for argle-bargle — as the continued use of the term appealed to me — and came back to add it here.