Trump defenders: Defend this.

President Trump, at his rally in Tampa, is pushing for voter ID laws and said you need to show an ID to buy groceries.

(You don't need ID to buy groceries.) pic.twitter.com/7WAs05R4dz

— Liam Martin (@LiamWBZ) July 31, 2018

The Trump haters are mocking him. "Donald Trump Says You Need A Picture ID To Buy Groceries In America/The president made the comment while pushing for voter ID laws at a Florida rally" (HuffPo).

To be clear, American citizens do not need a picture ID to buy basic groceries. There are some federal and state regulations that prohibit the sale of alcohol or certain over-the-counter medications without identification, but that does not extend to basic food or cleaning products.

Social media users remarked on Trump’s assertion as “out of touch” and wondered when the billionaire last bought his own groceries....

Some of us remember when George H.W. Bush lost his bid for reelection because he let us see that he was unfamiliar with a checkout scanner and thus that he didn't go grocery shopping like us plebes.

Here's a bad defense: Maybe Trump is the guy who gets out his checkbook when he buys groceries. Bad because: We hate that guy.

So what have you got? There's the Scott Adams idea that Trump deliberately gets some things wrong. What is that theory exactly? His antagonists will feel compelled to talk about it because they can point out what's wrong. (Duh, here, it's so easy.) And then they'll be forefronting the issue he really wants discussed. (Here, it's voter ID and the fear of voting by ineligible voters, emotional issues that cause people, some people, to gravitate toward Trump.)

I'd also say that the people who attack Trump need to attack and attack and attack, so give them some chum, and they may gnaw on it all day instead of something that might really hurt Trump.

Because I don't think Trump is vulnerable to what hurt George H.W. Bush so much. Trump was always an out-and-proud billionaire. Why would he be buying his own groceries? No one imagines him pushing a shopping cart, selecting items, and waiting "on" line in Manhattan! He'd have to walk 4 1/2 long blocks (not short blocks) to get to a Whole Foods from Trump Tower. That's 9 blocks, total, plus the walking in the store. Who even pictures him walking that far, let alone being subjected to the indignities of getting asked if he "found everything" he was looking for and if he's an Amazon Prime member? (Which kind of is like being asked for ID.)

And Trump is different from H.W. not only because he wears his rich-man status proudly. He has also already succeeded in connecting with working-class people. He hasn't seemed effete and out-of-touch, so there's no resonating with a preconception as there was with H.W.

Now, what time is it? I'm getting bored.



IN THE COMMENTS; campy said:

“I refuse even to joke about it,” Amanpour says...

THAT'S NOT FUNNY!!!

"Legendary journalist Christiane Amanpour walks into the room trailed by the most impressive of clouds: a cumulonimbus of fortitude, pierced by solar flares of her signature erudition."

So begins Kevin Fallon in "Christiane Amanpour on Replacing Charlie Rose: ‘It Sends a Really Big Message’/The acclaimed journalist on her new show, defending the press against Trump’s attacks, and what it means to be the woman replacing the disgraced Charlie Rose" (Daily Beast).

We attempt a joke. “Nice to meet a fellow ‘enemy of the people,’” transforming President Trump’s controversial characterization of the free press from a scorching threat on democracy to an interview icebreaker.

“I refuse even to joke about it,” Amanpour says, grinning gamely but preparing to deliver the first in a series of manifestos that would score our conversation about the state of journalism-under-fire....

Fallon is a florid writer. What does "manifestos that would score our conversation" even mean? Doesn't a "manifesto" need to be something more than a one-liner? My dictionary, the OED, says it's "A public declaration or proclamation, written or spoken; esp. a printed declaration, explanation, or justification of policy..." and "In extended use: a book or other work by a private individual supporting a cause, propounding a theory or argument, or promoting a certain lifestyle." As for "score," I guess he means "To cut superficially; to make scores or cuts in; to mark with incisions, notches, or abrasions of the skin." Example from the OED: "The elephant,..deeply scores with its tusks the trunk of the tree" (Charles Darwin).

The conversation is covered with cut marks made by declarations of policy. Okay. It's actually quite common to speak for words as capable of making cut marks. We often say "cutting remarks." And a conversation is something that can be cut. We speak of cutting into the conversation and even of silence that feels like you could cut it with a knife. Or a manifesto.

Anyway. Back to late-night talk shows. Why were people watching Charlie Rose in the first place? Did he make them feel smart and sophisticated? Can Christiane Amanpour access the same streak of TV audience emotion? If there was a sexual element to the response, can Christiane do what Charlie did? By the way, was Ted Koppel in a different psycho-sexual niche? Who watched Ted and who watched Charlie? What was that late night consumption of men chewing the news all about?

IN THE COMMENTS: campy said:

“I refuse even to joke about it,” Amanpour says,...

THAT'S NOT FUNNY!!!

The news for cats.

1. "They even had a cat together named Max," writes the Daily Mail in "EXCLUSIVE: 'They went back and forth having sex, screaming, yelling, having sex.' Meet the college professor who Barack Obama loved and lost because he 'wasn't black enough to have a white wife,'" where the top-rated comment is: "They 'had a cat together'? Is that even biologically possible?"

2. "Judge Posner Is Beyond Catty" is a column by Ed Whelan at National Review who is incredibly irked at 7th Circuit judge Richard A. Posner for doubting that Neil Gorsuch cried while skiing when he heard that Justice Scalia died. Posner doubts both that the news intercepted Gorsuch on a ski slope and also that the crying could ensue, given that Scalia was 80, a heavy smoker and — in Posner's un-PC words — "known to be obese." Whelan struggled to come up with mean enough words to lob at Posner. After trying "What a jerk," he ended up with Posner's own words: "I have exactly the same personality as my cat…. Cold, furtive, callous, snobbish, selfish, and playful, but with a streak of cruelty." Poor hapless Whelan, trying to make us hate Posner and serving up one of Posner's best witty remarks. Whelan, thinking he's getting the better of Posner, follows that cool joke with a humorless "Yes, indeed. Decent human beings aim higher."

3. Howard Stern has 17 kittens.

4. "In a bizarre case that so far has police and residents stumped, at least seven cats in Waynesboro’s Tree Streets neighborhood have been shaved since December without their owners’ permission, according to Waynesboro Police," reports The News Virginian. The cats were "shaved in the underbelly, groin and leg areas" and "not otherwise harmed."

5. Evidence that cats are nowhere nearly as popular as mainstream media think. Here's a Washington Post article, titled "An artist’s best friend? Cats, a new Smithsonian exhibit claims," full of cute pictures of cats, including one holding an artist's brush and palette and — to make sure you get that the cat is an artist — wearing a beret. The article has been up for over a week, and it has zero comments.

6. That's it for the cat news. There are hundreds of recent cat stories, but they don't make the cut. They don't make the shave. I think, as I said in Item #5, people are not that interested in cats. Remember when cats ruled the internet? Bloggers did Friday Cat Blogging. Hey, wait a minute. Kevin Drum still does Friday Cat Blogging. Here's the most recent one, deploying a cat for the cause of anti-Trumpism. But even cat-anti-Trumpiana is old. Here's "These Cats Look Like Donald Trump/The Internet makes #TrumpYourCat a thing." It's from July 2015.

7. From the comments to this post, after a certain amount of discussion of crying — "What happened to Posner?" (MayBee), "I don't know, but he's 78, and if he dies, there should be no crying" (me), "There's no crying in jurisprudence – or skiing!" (Paco Wové) — campy said: "I cried because I had no cats, until I met a man who had 17."

The power of women to read the minds of men.

1. Power Line's John Hinderaker has a lot of problems with Hillary Clinton's story of what it was like for her to take the LSAT in 1968. Last May, Hillary said: "We were in this huge, cavernous room... And hundreds of people were taking this test, and there weren’t many women there. This friend and I were waiting for the test to begin, and the young men around us were like, ‘What do you think [you’re] doing? How dare you take a spot from one of us?’ It was just a relentless harangue.' Clinton and her friend were stunned. They’d spent four safe years at a women’s college, where these kinds of gender dynamics didn’t apply." Were the young men actually saying those things to her and her friend? We see the usage "were like" followed by statements a magazine (New York) put in quotes, but it's not quite an assertion that these words were said. It's more of a dramatization of what Hillary felt at the time, perhaps because of something they said — "harangue" implies some speaking on the part of the men — but perhaps Hillary is relaying only her sense of what they must have been thinking.

2. Recently, Lena Dunham described her experience at the very swanky Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala sitting at a table next to the talented, attractive football player Odell Beckham Jr. She said: "And it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like: 'That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.' It wasn’t mean. He just seemed confused." Again, we see something in quote marks with a to-be-like intro: "He was like." He didn't actually say those words. Dunham was simply performing her subjective ideation around what he might have been thinking about her. It's comical and she's a comedian. It has the advantage of being self-deprecating. But it attributes mean thoughts to him. He never said those things, and it's not that hard to tell that the quotes are not real quotes. But it takes a liberty with another person's mind.

3. I'll be looking for things to add to this list. I just noticed #1 today, and it made me think of #2. Send me suggestions. I'm especially interested in the "He was like" usage to grab the female privilege to present mind-readings of men. I'm not totally condemning the belief in and use of this power of women to read the minds of men. Figuring out what's really going on in other people's minds is one of the highest levels of human thought. It is what great novelist do. The key is doing it well and doing it ethically. Like a great novelist. Or a great comedian. Or great feminist scholar. But you have to work on that power, and it's not easy to be great, and even when you are great, you're going to annoy and outrage a lot of people, and they're not all going to bow down and acknowledge your greatness.

IN THE COMMENTS: I went first with:

An award will be given to the first person to make what I believe is THE most predictable comment.

After a number of incorrect efforts, I wrote:

Prize not yet won.

Thanks.

When I posted that, I read a couple more comments including the winner, by campy:

Predictable comment: there are no great feminist scholars.

The prize is front-paging. Congratulations, campy. And I appreciate that you put your award-winning comment in the voice of someone else making the wisecrack that pre-annoyed me and not as your own disparagement of feminist scholarship. Huzzah!

"This case inspires terror in some artists who fear they could end up in court for denying that a work they did not do isn't theirs."

The artist who got sued for saying he didn't paint that — has won his case.

The evidence, the judge said, showed this was a case of imperfect memories, coincidences and mistaken identity. He said it was a different Peter Doige, who spelled his name with an "e," who created the artwork. Feinerman rejected the idea that Doig, the renowned artist, and Doige were the same person.

[Robert] Fletcher, 62, testified that he bought the painting of a desert landscape [for $100] while Doig was serving prison time in Canada's Thunder Bay Correctional Center. But Feinerman said it was Doige — who was several years older and painted at the time — who was briefly in prison.

2 Doig[e]s, painting in the same prison. That's odd! The plaintiff still thinks he's got a real Doig, and who knows how much  money he can get for what he at least once believed was good for $10 million.

ADDED: The quote in the headline is from a law professor, and you might be disinclined to pull it apart enough to see that it's got too many negatives, as the first 2 commenters simultaneously point out:

I think there's an extra negative in that sentence. — campy at 6:53 AM

I hesitate to say that I don't disagree with you. — rhhardin at 6:53 AM

Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

I'm just reading the comments on yesterday's carrot post. ("Shed a tear for the orange and its desperate problems.")

Campy started us off at a high level by referencing one of this blog's most controversial posts:

Carrot sticks! Where are the onion rings?

So, yes, we know what the carrots are.

Mr. Forward introduced a classic "orange" subject:

Nothing rhymes with orange.

Hector Owen responded:

I suppose, if one were to make a ceramic porringer, and glaze it the color of those carrots, and set it on the table with other things that did not include carrots, or yams, or (of course) oranges, that one could then proudly say, "Nothing is oranger than my porringer!"

Still, nothing rhymes with "orange." Now, if that porringer had a flange … no, the "a" would still be different.

I thought the right answer was "door hinge."

Lucid sledgehammers the meaning of the post:

This is clearly a very penetrating (???!!!!) photographic comment: While women (pink) are to be carefully considered, the photographer also feels concern for the tribulations of men and their special appendages.

Freeman Hunt provides an amazing list of things that an orange ribbon is supposed to reflect/create awareness of — according to this creepy awareness site:

Agent OrangeCultural Diversity
Feral Cats
Hunger
Leukemia
Lupus
Melanoma
Motorcycle Safety
Racial Tolerance
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome
Self Injury

Not prostate cancer, though. Prostate cancer gets light blue. Get it?

Freeman Hunt had an afterthought:

Why is there a ribbon for feral cats but not feral dogs?

I think it's more important to be aware of feral dogs because they could kill you.

Feral cats, not so much. You could probably throw a crazy cat away from you if it attacked you. Man > cat.

Ironrailsironweights said:

Self Injury...

Somehow I never thought of that as a "cause" requiring the ribbon treatment.

Maybe these people crave (carve) attention.

Michaele said:

There's some sad orange wearers right this minute 'cause University of TN just missed knocking off #1 Alabama...the score was 12 to 10 and UT had a chance at making a field goal in the last couple of seconds.

Knox(ville) — who "just ordered myself a black 'Amish Support' ribbon car magnet!" — said:

Yeah, yeah, keep it to yourself.

Oh, who am I kidding, I don't give a sh*t about football.

You are talking about football, right?

Leland said...

Texas A&M, in the[ir] hatred for University of Texas and all things orange, learned how to grow maroon carrots.

 Libhom said:

This post is as senseless as everything else on this blog.

Chip Ahoy said:

This post has no meaning!

Just like everything else on this blog -- meaningless.

Just like my life has no meaning. Except for the meaning I give it by spending time here noting your abject absence of meaning and returning regularly and reaffirming that observation and then setting aside my other meaninglessness to take the time and effort to remark on your meaninglessness, even so far as to bother with a CAPTCHA to do it. Yes, that's right, my remark on your meaningless blog does have meaning although I assert your blog that I make the remark on does not.

But then I wouldn't recognize meaning if it jumped up and bit my penis. I do not understand photography or art or getting out and seeing my city or recording it with my own unique eye and through my own lens, or forests or farmers market or flower boxes, animals or odd things in nature or within human constructions. They're meaningless to me! Now, start being meaningful Goddamnit! And give me something meaningful to foul.

Then my other self says,

I once had a careless carrot patch. There was loose tilled dirt directly under an air conditioner that dripped steadily throughout the hot summer directly onto that patch of dirt, so watering was automatic. I had a packet of carrot seeds that I broadcast into the soil and, being an ordinary kid, didn't pay much attention to them thereafter, just checked back occasionally. The plants are beautiful at every stage of development, more so because they were not arranged in tight farmerly rows. At first the foliage looks like delicate little green feathers, then lacy ferns, then they expand, fill in, and strengthen to proper deep dark green carrot tops. The bright orange carrot roots were delicious.

LoafingOaf said:

These are gross looking carrots. They look like fucked up fingers or pathetic penises or something. Ick.

Uh, yeah. Have you no pity! Why are cancerous breasts a big warm fuzzy cause, but a pathetic penis is just something against which to hurl contempt? Sexist. You must wear a light blue ribbon for penance. Penis penance.

And yet the Oaf continues:

I have a question. Why is everything that Obama says or does horribly wrong to Althouse and her commenters, yet Dick Cheney is such a hero the Althouse world wants to build him a statue in Madison? Is Obama really that awful and Cheney really that righteous? Or is this blog getting carried away by the right wing?

(Link added.)

Bissage said:

I find myself disappointed that Loafing Oaf didn’t post a link to his blog where we’d all find his twelve point plan specifying what each and every one of us should do to make Althouse so very much better than it is.

Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

"How is the government going to 'get its money back' if the [auto bailout] money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt?"

Mickey Kaus asks.

1) How is the government going to "get its money back" if the money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt? Only by liquidation, it would seem. So does the bailout deal eliminate the option of restructuring (as an ongoing enterprise) under the aegis of the bankruptcy court? Either the firms are saved under the "czar," or they are liquidated, apparently. 2) The big "stick" is to kill the firms, then. Isn't that too big a stick? Like a nuclear weapon is too big a stick? Come April 29th, if the choice is to approve a half-assed "restructuring" plan that has maybe a 35% chance of succeeding, or to kill General Motors, there's going to be an awful lot of pressure not to kill General Motors, no? The threat is so big it pressures the auto czar, not the executives, investors and union members. What's needed is an intermediate threat that's more credible. How about empowering the auto czar to declare the companies' labor contracts null and void? And to indefinitely delay payment of all executive salaries and bonuses? That would get the "stakeholders" attention, maybe. 3) Shouldn't there be a different "czar" for each firm? Having a single czar for the whole industry muffles what might be salutary competitive pressures. Maybe Chrysler's workers are so desperate they'll give up more in terms of pay and work rules than Ford's workers. Shouldn't that sort of choice be encouraged? Dueling "czars" would encourage this viability-enhancing reverse solidarity. ...

Good questions! As to #3, can someone explain why 3 car companies with 1 head isn't an antitrust problem?

Also, Mickey, don't say "auto czar." It's either car czar or auto autocrat. Poetry's important when everything is going to hell.

IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch offers: Motor City Mogul. Campy says: Detroit Despot.