Jake Tapper vs. Stephen Miller.

Hi. Want to see a murder on live TV?

I give you White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vs. Jake Tapper on CNN.

Tapper said we need illegals here to pick our crops.

Then, Fatality…

pic.twitter.com/W10tfKT2Od

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 28, 2025

Can Kristi Noem survive — politically survive — the killing of her dog?

She tweets: "We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years. If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder 'No Going Back'..."

"No Going Back" is her book, which you can't read yet, but you can read the snippet about her whippet... I mean her wirehair pointer... in this Guardian article, which she shows a screenshot of but I had to look up. Here:

"Where have all the emus gone? We have about a quarter as many as we did two decades ago..."

"... new data shows. Llamas and ostriches plunged even more precipitously. Meanwhile, the bankable animal superstars you grew up Seeing ’N Saying on Fisher Price toys — think chickens, cows, pigs and turkeys — haven’t lost a step. What happened to our loony livestock?..."

Asks Andrew Van Dam, in "The great American llama (and ostrich and emu) collapse" (WaPo).


Did any of you "invest" in wacky animals?


As in any investment strategy shaped like a pyramid, exotic livestock schemes rely not on selling animal products like milk, eggs, wool, meat or leather, but on selling the animals themselves to a new sucker.... [T]he classic mark for these dubious investments probably would have been a couple who had just retired or moved to the country and had a few extra acres burning a hole in their pockets.... During the boom years... every month as cadres of savvy bird brokers would spot new money the instant they walked in and bid up prices accordingly.... More dumb money flowed in as friends and neighbors worried about missing out on the ostrich-and-emu game.... [F]resh rounds of new rural residents [would] convince themselves it made sense to pay $40,000 for an emu....

ADDED: Is it true that the stress was on selling the animals and not on the products that could be made from them? I seem to remember the touting of emu meat. Here, there's this from 1992 in the NYT: "Emus and Ostriches Studied as Future Food":

"There is a huge market for ostrich hides, feathers and meat," said Dr. Kenneth Page, an avian venterinarian who has been working with Georgia's rapidly growing ostrich and emu industry for more than a year. It is $100 million to $200 million-a-year industry.

"The meat is red and it tastes just like steak, but it doesn't have any cholesterol," Dr. Page said. "In California, especially, it is becoming the new yuppie food." Ostrich and emu meat is also higher in protein and lower in fat than beef, he said....

And it wasn't just the seemingly amazing meat:

Ostrich feathers are used in the clothing industry and their hides are used for everything from billfolds to belts. "I like cowboy boots," Dr. Page said, "so I picked up a pair of those darn ostrich boots in October, for $695, and I understand that was a cheap pair."

Oil extracted from the emu, which is slightly smaller than an ostrich, standing close to six feet tall and weighing 110 to 115 pounds, can also be used as a pain reliever, its proponents say. Besides, said Charles F. Powell, the president of the Georgia Emu Association: "It's one of the best moisturizers on the market. When you put it on, it goes right down into your muscles without a greasy film or anything."

But there was still the worrisome news that the business had mostly to do with selling the birds (to suckers?):

[It] is essentially still a breeder's market. Because of the lucrative potential of the birds, nearly all are sold to people eager to raise ostriches or emus for themselves. A pair of mature breeding emus sell for $15,000 to $20,000, while an ostrich couple are close to $50,000....

"An unscientific bias against 'feral' or 'invasive' animals threatens to undercut one of the great stabilizing trends making ecosystems healthier...."

"Introduced species such as feral pigs, horses, donkeys and camels represent a powerful force of 'rewilding' — the reintroduction of wild animals into ecosystems where humans had eradicated them — according to a study published Thursday in Science."

The Hill reports, in "Feral pigs and donkeys may be more salvation than scourge for ecosystems, study finds."

“One way to talk about this is: whether a visitor from outer space, who didn’t know the history, could tell what megafauna are native or introduced based solely on their effects,” said Erick Lundgren, a doctoral student in biology at Arizona State University.... In the case of big animals... if our alien visitor couldn’t tell the difference, Lundgren said, “then nativeness isn’t actually a helpful way to understand how ecosystems work.”...

"[T]raveling from town to town and asking for votes was considered undignified for a presidential candidate."

"Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised [James A.] Garfield to do the same. 'Sit crosslegged,' he said, 'and look wise.' Happily left to his own devices, Garfield poured his time and energy into his farm. He worked in the fields, planting, hoeing, and harvesting crops, and swung a scythe with the confidence and steady hand he had developed as a boy. In July, he oversaw the threshing of his oats. 'Result 475 bushels,' he noted. 'No[t] so good a yield as last year.'"

I'm reading "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" by Candice Millard. (Commission earned if you use that link.)

Sit crosslegged and look wise.

"The hoedown was to celebrate the closing of the harvest season and thrown by Shani Mink, 29, the flower farmer and D.J...."

"...  and also a food-systems educator and advocate, and Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and [grower of] things like bergamot and asparagus on Long Island’s North Fork, where the humble potato farms that once dominated the area are increasingly crowded out by vineyards and the weekend escapes of Manhattanites. Many of the farmers were Manhattanites who had escaped themselves. The oyster farmer, Will Peckham, 31, for example, left a job in corporate finance in the city to start West Robins Oyster Company, a mollusk farm in Peconic Bay about seven years ago. 'I thought it would be a really easy switch, because I had been through this super-grueling desk job in New York... I never knew how hard it could be.'... Sitting on a hay bale was Sara Hyman, 32, who left a job in human resources in 2017 in the city to work at Amber Waves. She seemed to be growing melancholy.... She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island. This was her last season on a farm, she said, for good.... She took solace that at least one-half of the couple would keep growing things: Mr. Peckham will remain farming his oysters."

From "They Fled City Jobs. Now, It’s Time for Farm Prom. A group of young urbanites gave up desk jobs to become farmers. They have earned the harvest party" (NYT).

I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?

Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day? And didn't the NYT covered our madness too?

"Oliver [Anthony] splits his time between the farm and a remote wooded encampment where he lives a spartan life in a tent and small trailer with his pregnant wife..."

 and their two young children. He and I both hope that his homestead can serve as a pilot site for my proposal... to build free healing centers in depressed communities across the nation, places that help reclaim a generation beset by depression, PTSD, loneliness, addiction, and mental illness."

Writes RFK Jr. at Substack.

"In the organic vegetable world, Hepworth Farms, in Milton, N.Y., is a regional power player, a name brand in everything from lettuces to leeks..."

"As grass-roots organic growers go, Hepworth is as pure as they get.... Amy Hepworth, who took over the farm in 1982, was once the subject of a glowing New York Magazine profile, calling her a 'cult hero' to the city’s locavore set.... She and her identical sister, Gail Hepworth, run the business together, and this year, in the farm’s 204th growing season, they added marijuana to the mix.... Across the United States, [cannabis] is grown primarily indoors, where farmers can control variables like light, temperature, airflow and humidity. Amy Hepworth finds this arrangement repugnant. The plant 'wants to be free,' she said, and it can reach its fullest potential only in natural sun and living soil. 'It is a plant, and it belongs in agriculture,' she continued. 'People say you can’t grow it outside. Well, I beg to differ.'... [L]ast May, they partnered with Pura Industries, and they have] invested heavily in machinery to extract THC, the chemical found in vape cartridges and edibles; they are processing not just their own harvest but also those of other growers in the region. Mr. Lasser is developing more than 100 different retail products.... The hope is that Hepworth’s brand in vegetables — which stands for quality and sustainability — will translate to New York’s marijuana buyers...."

 
From "They’re Betting the Family Farm on Weed/The Hepworth sisters are famous in the organic food world, but like other farmers, they’re struggling. They hope their new venture will change things" (NYT).

An interesting marketing concept: You've got a fresh, organic, locavore vegetables brand and you're going to put it on 100 different products made from extracted THC. Supposedly, these highly processed plant-based items will retain the vibe of the fresh plants. Somehow, in the mind of the marijuana-user, the plant will have aspired to freedom and truly achieved it, because it was outdoors, but it's been machine-transformed  — how, exactly? — into a substance trapped — imprisoned — in in vape cartridges and edibles. Where is the freedom? Where is the fresh, organic, locavore vegetables concept? It's all in the mind... and the label and the brand.

I've got 5 TikToks for you tonight. Let me know what you like best.

1. A way of planting potatoes.

2. A way of slicing apples.

3. Camping... and terrorized by ducks.

4. A song about thinking of what you wanted to say long after it's too late.

5. Coming upon a sandwich station that someone else did.

Today, we had a different vantage point for the sunrise.

Looking out over prairie:

At my back was a wheat field (or is it rye?): 

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"In 2020, Fern Steficek set out to raise sheep and grow plants for natural dyes in the Hudson Valley."

"She began searching for land, visiting one property that had recently been acquired by Brooklyn transplants. But when she described rotational grazing practices to the owners, which involve moving clusters of animals around the pasture using portable fencing, they were put off by the idea, saying they preferred for the livestock to dot the landscape. 'We walked around the property, and they were talking about their vision of, basically, a petting zoo,' Ms. Steficek said. They also objected to any of the animals’ being slaughtered for meat, she said. 'It was frustrating and unrealistic, and not trusting me to know how to process animals humanely, but wanting a fairy tale idea of what farming is.'... If farmers could afford their land to begin with, these alliances might not be so necessary...."

From "How 'Fairy Tale' Farms Are Ruining Hudson Valley Agriculture Farmers are losing properties to wealthy buyers from the city, while leasing land from the new owners can feel like a 'modern-day feudal system'" (NYT).

"My life is completely different now. I can’t imagine myself living 100 percent back in Tokyo anymore. I love how I’m surrounded by nature here, and I feel healthier and emotionally full."

Said Kana Hashimoto, 25, quoted in "Goodbye, city life. Green acres in Japan beckon as pandemic shifts priorities" (WaPo).

In April, she moved to Minami-Aso, a village of about 11,000 people in southern Japan, and now balances many jobs she loves: farming, helping distribute local ingredients to nearby restaurants, working at a miso soup shop and a hot-spring spa.... 

[Y]oung workers are seeking alternatives to Tokyo’s corporate grind, marked by long hours, cramped subway commutes, meetings with bosses over after-work drinks and strict corporate hierarchies. About one-third of the people in their 20s and 30s living in greater Tokyo said they had taken steps in the past six months to move to rural Japan, according to [a] survey. Among 20-somethings alone, 44.9 percent said they were interested in moving to rural Japan.... 

ADDED: Here's the top-rated comment at WaPo, from ZanHax:

Stories like this are so inspirational to me. In America, however, I don’t think it would be so easy for all people. I would love the opportunity to move to a rural community and work the land. The reality, for many Black and minority people, is that policies and rural communities themselves, may not be supportive, safe and welcoming to people like me. There are communities here that I fear driving through when traveling. I think it is simpler to do something like this when a society is more homogeneous. I do wish these young people success, because this grind? It isn’t all life is about.

Rural Americans "may not be supportive, safe and welcoming." You "fear driving" when you pass through their territory. But do you know any of these people or are you just prejudiced against them? Where did you learn that prejudice? In the city? And here you are wishing for a more homogeneous society. This is a prime example of how much racism is woven into anti-racism.

"Harry Truman-style, Biden should press Republicans about what benefits they propose to deny to Americans who need them."

Writes E.J. Dionne in "Biden needs a reboot. Fighting for democracy is the key" (WaPo).

That got me wondering what "Harry Truman style" actually looked like, so I watched this:

Here's the text of the full speech (from September 1948). Here's part that's in the video: 

It does my heart good to see the grain fields of the Nation again. They are a wonderful sight. The record-breaking harvests you have been getting in recent years have been a blessing. Millions of people have been saved from starvation by the food you have produced. The whole world has reason to be everlastingly grateful to the farmers of the United States. In a very real sense, the abundant harvests of this country are helping to save the world from communism. Communism thrives on human misery. And the crops you are producing are driving back the tide of misery in many lands. Your farms are a vital element in America's foreign policy. Keep that in mind, that is of vital importance to us and to the world.

"Bradley Pitts, a 43-year-old artist, says his climate-related emotions have offered him 'opportunities to engage in decisions in a different way.'"

"After attending Good Grief meetings, he and his wife have shifted personal choices toward adapting to and mitigating climate change. They purchased an old commercial farm in upstate New York, and committed to returning it to meadows and forestland."

From "How to Calm Your Climate Anxiety/Between wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes, we’re all feeling nervous about the future. But stewing or ignoring the problem won’t ease your burden" (NYT). 

Good Grief is an organization that offers "a 10-step process" for dealing with climate-related distress. There are "weekly meetings that culminate with a commitment to 'reinvest in meaningful efforts.'"

Interesting phrase — "old commercial farm." What would a noncommercial farm be? Googling my question, I found a scholarly paper: "Beyond ‘Hobby Farming’: towards a typology of non-commercial farming" (Springer): 

"Here in the Netherlands, where there is little land and a lot [o]f rain, hydroponic farming is almost all there is."

"Frankly, the vegetables and fruits such as strawberries have almost no flavor. Tomatoes taste like red sponges. It’s efficient but that’s it. Many of us live for the summer to travel to France, Spain or Italy where fruits and vegetables are grown in the ground and have real flavor."

From the comments section on this NYT article: "No Soil. No Growing Seasons. Just Add Water and Technology/A new breed of hydroponic farm, huge and high-tech, is popping up in indoor spaces all over America, drawing celebrity investors and critics."

"I decided to befriend the crisis and give it a name — Locky Lockdown."

Said Maggi Hambling, in a May interview in the Times of London, which is popping up on my screen today because — as you can see, 2 posts down — we're talking about her sculptural tribute to Mary Wollestonecraft.  

Back then, she'd painted a self-portrait and called it "Angry" — her "lockdown self-portrait... about my rage at what’s happened, about the way every plan that I had has gone completely to pot.... We’re living under this dark threat... And yet at the same time we are aware of how good this time is; how the roads and the skies are not buggered up by cars and planes. And even as we are scared that we are going to die, we watch this lovely spring with its flowers and its leaves and its dawn chorus of birds. Life is always uncertain. But never more so than now. The uncertainty has been so concentrated, brought before our eyes in such a dramatic way. And, as a control freak, of course that at first made me furious. That’s why I painted that 'Self Portrait (Angry).'... Meanwhile, I’m still alive and time is all that I’ve got. Once I got to 60, even I who gave up arithmetic at the age of 11 had to realise that I was past the halfway mark."

And, I like this: "[I]n the 1990s a longstanding female admirer died and, much to Hambling’s surprise, bequeathed her a Suffolk cottage and its adjoining water meadows." Did anyone not a member of your family ever die and leave you anything — I mean, even $1,000? She gets a Suffolk cottage and adjoining water meadows?! 

"The [coca] economy has collapsed. We plant coca because it is a solution for our survival. But now, no one is buying it."

Says a Peruvian cocalero, who, we're told, farms coca "for traditional indigenous uses," quoted in "The coronavirus has gutted the price of coca. It could reshape the cocaine trade" (WaPo). I don't really understand how he's the victim of the supposed global market collapse if he's only providing for traditional indigenous uses, but I do accept the proposition that coca farming in Peru is "a solution for... survival."

Are we, the readers of WaPo, supposed to feel bad about the collapse of the coca market? I think so, because the article goes on to say that drug trafficking will come back after the lockdown, but the big operations — the "supersized cartels" — will survive and prosper, and as usual, we are prompted to care about small business... including, apparently, small criminal businesses.

The comments at WaPo find their own path and — surprise! — make it about Trump: "This will be hard news for Trump supporters. If meth and heroin supplies are disrupted, a part of the economy they actually participate in will be taking a hit"/"Notice trump isn't sniffing his runny nose as much as he used to"/"Finally! Something to explain trump's impatience to reopen the country - it's screwing with his cocaine trafficking logistics. Shoulda knowed."

How crazy is America right now? We've had low-level crazy for a while, and then they put us under house arrest for 3 months and they've hidden the faces behind masks, then we all watched video of a mind-bending murder, which was the go-ahead to pour back into the streets en masse and express ourselves — suddenly, emotively, violently — and all the while we were starving for our usual drugs.

How crazy is America right now?

Quite insane.

Crazy, but the other side is much worse than my side.

More or less the usual American-style craziness. Keep your bearings. We'll be okay.

We're actually quite sane, just blowing off some steam. Things will work out.

 

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“The Farm-to-Table Connection Comes Undone.”

“A direct pipeline to chefs that took decades to build has been cut off by the coronavirus, leaving small farmers and ranchers with food they can’t sell” (NYT).

For the first few weeks, farmers scrambled to find other ways to sell their crops. Some turned to online sales or tapped a renewed interest in community-supported agriculture, or C.S.A.s, in which farmers sell subscriptions for boxes of produce. Others delivered food to restaurants that had turned into pop-up grocers, or doubled down on the farmers’ markets that remained open. Many sent what they could to relief kitchens....

For some, it’s been the agricultural equivalent of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Celtuce, microgreens and gooseberries might make for a beautiful restaurant menu, but they aren’t what most stuck-at-home cooks are looking for.

When the pro-travel pitch feels like an argument against travel.

Look at the photograph the NYT travel magazine highlights from a set of "The 10 Most Idyllic Destinations" that it has featured over the course of an entire year.



Yes, I'd find that pretty if I drove my car out into the Wisconsin countryside and got back home the same day, but imagine going all the way to Albania and finding your way out to a farm just to look at that! Is that some kind of joke?!

Looking at some of the other 10, I'm thinking: Imagine going all the way to Morocco and getting a view that's like a toned downed version of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. Why would you do that?!

Is it the mental experience of beating yourself inside the head with I am in Albania! or I am in Morocco! Morocco, I tell you!!? Do you go alone or do you drag along a companion whose inside-of-the-head you hallucinate as We came all the way to Albania/Morocco for this? We could have visited the wineries of Wisconsin or gone back to Zabriskie Point?

"Idyllic" means "Forming a suitable theme for an idyll; full of natural simple charm or picturesqueness. Also used trivially" (OED). Also used trivially — ha ha. I love that.

What, exactly, is an "idyll"? It's a poem (or poetic prose) describing "some picturesque scene or incident, chiefly in rustic life" or "An episode or a series of events or circumstances of pastoral or rural simplicity, and suitable for an idyll."

1873 J. A. Symonds Stud. Greek Poets x. 306 The name of the Idyll sufficiently explains its nature. It is a little picture. Rustic or town life, legends of the gods, and passages of personal experience....

The literal etymology is, indeed, "little picture."

Is any place really idyllic in itself, such that you can go there and experience the idyllic, or is the processing through the human mind what is necessary? The original meaning of "idyll" is a piece of writing. It's not the place itself but the poet's description.

So is it not more idyllic to read the poet's idylls? If you go to the place that might have inspired the poet to write an idyll, you'll have to perform the mental magic yourself. Maybe you should. Maybe that will expand your mental powers. But if you don't find the idyllic when you take a day trip to the countryside near your home, is it at all likely that you'll have the mental wherewithal to perform that brain labor after 15 hours of air travel and finding your way to a farm near Tirana?

"Trump’s getting impeached? I defy you to convince anyone at this cursed truck stop."

Writes Alexandria Petri, who seems to have ventured out of the elite cocoon to talk to some deplorables before condemning them for failing to match her opinion. This account of a perilous journey to the hinterlands appears in The Washington Post. She doesn't state where this truck stop is, so I'm not certain it isn't a satirical fantasy. I'm just reading the headline and glancing at the text, trying to find out exactly where this is, and I'm suspecting "cursed" is a clue that the place is her invention, the truck stop from hell.

Now, I'm reading the text.

I’ve been interviewing for what I figure is at least an hour — the clock on the wall is broken — and everyone I speak to still supports the president just as much as they did the day he was elected....

Who relies on a wall clock to know what time it is? That's your first clue.

The old man at the end of the counter shakes his head when I tell him the president is beleaguered by scandal. He’s not tied to his phone, like some of you coastal types. He’s not bound even to the latest fashion. I notice he’s wearing an old wide-brimmed hat and rimless spectacles, the kind I haven’t seen outside of movies. He says he’s still with the president, and that he doesn’t pay attention to the daily buzz of news. He has priorities like many real Americans have. I want to go out to my car, but it’s raining too hard. Coffee here is only a nickel. I order another cup.

I think that's another clue. Coffee can't be only a nickel anywhere, can it? I look it up, and find this at Eater:

A latte may cost $5—but America’s cheapest cup of coffee is a mere 5 cents.... Yet, one kitschy old place in Wall, South Dakota is garnering attention for the opposite reason. Their cup of joe only costs a nickel. And owners haven’t raised the price since the 1960s. Wall Drug Store, also known as Wall Drug, is a Western-themed diner on the edge of the Badlands that sells the bargain brew using an honor system, with serve-yourself coffee urns and piggy bank-style boxes where customers drop their change. 

Well, hell. I feel like I've dropped into my own surreal scenario. I look up the clue — 5¢ coffee — and I get an answer about what "truck stop" we're talking about and there it is: "South Dakota is garnering attention"... garnering! That word I've been railing against since 2015 (click the tag for more). Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me.

Back to Petri:

I try to say something about the impeachment, but no one can hear me over the noise of the soybeans, growing healthy and strong. I have never heard a soybean so loud before....

Okay. Ha ha. So funny. Laughing at the farmers.

When I look at my watch, the hands don’t seem to move, but when I look at it again after my next sip of coffee, it says hours have passed. How long have I been here?

So she's not relying on the wall clock.

Someone tries to mention the phone call to the president of Ukraine, and out of nowhere, pigs in all the neighboring fields begin to screech, horribly, an almost human sound, and they only stop when he gives up mentioning it....

Oh, no. She's laughing at the idea of people living in farm country. It makes them so stupid. The screeching of the plants and animals fills up their useful-for-nothing-but-farming brains. What tags should I give this? Besides "garner (the word!)," I mean. I'm thinking "class politics."

The corn and soybeans don’t care about what the president has been doing on his phone calls to Ukraine. Whenever I try to ask, something rustles against the window, and it’s corn. I think it must be higher than an elephant’s eye now. The corn is pressed right up to the glass. I think the corn wants to get inside.

This is the figure of speech called "metonymy" — the things associated with people stand in for the people. She's talking about corn and soybeans as a way to talk about the people. You can only do this with white people, by the way. Talk about black people as animals and your career is over, but talk about white people as plants and you'll do fine.

There’s a Norman Rockwell painting hung on the wall, and it says it doesn’t think the president has done anything bad. There’s a scarecrow in a pair of dungarees with a big pitchfork. He and his pitchfork both voted for Trump. They will vote for him in the next hundred elections. When I turn around from talking to them, I don’t see the windows anymore. Is it day or night? I thought there used to be windows. Has it always been so dark? Are we underground?...

Here's the reveal that it's all a bad dream, presumably. Ha ha ha. Not fake news, not class snobbery, just something hilarious cooked up in the Washington Post for the comfortable amusement of its readers.

The walls are packed earth and so is the clock and it still hasn’t moved and now there is something crawling in the wall. The wall bursts! There’s an enormous worm here, and I pledge allegiance to it, willingly. I burn my notebook for King Worm!...

Just in case you were slow picking up that this is satire, you're beaten over the head with a giant phallic symbol (and soon enough "The walls squeeze in and out, like the clenching of an enormous fist!").

Good satire? A commenter over there says: "Wow. A bravura performance. Perfectly captures the dystopic and Kafka-esque reactions of the right wing to this clear cut (and clearly impeachable) scandal. Kudos, Ms. Petri."