"The fact of the matter is, if the entire community hadn’t stood up and taken action..."

"... there is a real good chance that we would just all be living with the northern giant hornet, even for years to come. It is a very difficult task to eradicate an insect once it has become well-established.”

Said Sven Spichiger, the pest program manager at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, quoted in "'Murder Hornet' Has Been Eradicated From the U.S., Officials Say The hornet was discovered in a corner of Washington State. Five years later, a massive mobilization has eliminated the invasive species, at least for now" (NYT).

Murder hornets were a public obsession in the year 2020 — the year of the covid pandemic and a hotly contended presidential election. I was skeptical, blogging, on May 3rd:

People are desperate to concern themselves with something other than coronavirus and Joe Biden's sexuality.

I think that's why this story has legs — disgusting spindly legs — "‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet/Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations."

That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"? They already had "murder hornet" and "giant hornet." Why go big with "Asian"? 

Dr. Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.

Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?

That said, I am looking for more exciting articles that are not coronavirus or sex and Joe Biden.

What was the sex and Joe Biden topic? Had you remembered the murder hornets? Yesterday's ephemera. You remember covid, of course, but it's wearing thin. They're cuing up the next scary insect + disease. I see Gavin Newsom has declared an emergency — in California — over "bird flu." Which sounds like "bird flew." I guess that's why they usually say "avian flu." While you wait for whatever insects they've got cued up, you can watch the wonderful old movie "Killer Bees":

But seriously, congratulations to all the good people who swarmed together to conquer the murder hornets.

"Listen, I didn't like the way they did it. I'm gonna just say it out loud, because nobody says it out loud. I didn't like the way it was done publicly."

"I thought they could have done this in a different way because we didn't need to hear all the inner fight. I didn't like it. I'm saying it to you. You were my ride or die. I was going wherever you go and that's what I would do, so I just wanted to say that because I always felt you were going to probably do four years and then try to figure out where to go with Kamala. Then he just wouldn't go. He was like a a a bug. He just kept being there. He was like a like a bug right there, so you felt that's what was needed, and you did...."

Said Whoopi Goldberg to Joe Biden, on "The View" today.

 

I always like to get a chance to use the old "insect politics" tag, but Whoopi likened Joe to a bug. She said it twice. [ADDED: On rewatch, I can see that Whoopi was characterizing Trump as the bug. Biden slaps the table, smashing the insect. I thought we weren't supposed to speak of human beings as vermin, but that's a rule that becomes conveniently invisible.]

I listened to all of what Joe Biden said — in response to the various super-soft questions — and I extracted 3 highlights:

• On why he didn't follow through on the understanding that he'd be a 1-term President: "When I ran for the first... for my first this last term, I said that I was, I thought, saw myself, as a transition president, yeah, transitioning to a new generation of leadership... but what happened was... I found myself having used more time than I would have ordinarily to you know pass that torch."

• Indicating that those who pushed him to give up the nomination were not so much worried that he couldn't handle it but motivated by the desire of "some folks" to get their hands on the power: "I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance [about] my running again. I didn't sense that... but uh what I did was I think there were... some folks who would like to see me step aside so they have a chance to to move on. I get that. That just human nature. But that wasn't the reason that I stepped down. I stepped down because started thinking about it...." ("It," I gather from the extended babbling that followed, was his advanced age.)

• Praising Kamala Harris but also saddling her with the burden of what has gone on in his administration: "She is bright, she is tough, she's honorable... Look, she is smart as hell, number one, yeah, she's tough. She was a first-rate prosecutor. She is a United States Senator of significant consequence, and as Vice President, there wasn't a single thing that I did that she couldn't do, and so I was able to delegate her  responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy."

"RFK Jr. is radical left. He reminds me of this fly that's driving me crazy up here. This fly is brutal. I don't like flies!"

"But RFK Jr. calls you a terrorist group. You know he calls you a terrorist group."

Said Trump at the NRA convention — video.

Brutal????!!!!

Now I know that Trump knows the "insect politics" speech from "The Fly":

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. You see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake... I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."

Have you ever heard of insect politics? Trump has! 

How to touch a woman.

"Are you prepared to declare a national emergency with respect to climate change?"

BIDEN: "We've already done that"

"So you've already declared that national emergency?

BIDEN: "In a practical— you have a bug on you" pic.twitter.com/XZ7sNKHCEM

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 9, 2023

This gets one of my favorite tags, "insect politics," and it also gets the tag "global warming," which could be construed in this case as a double entendre.

The lanternfly and the unborn baby.

Meade texts me the link to this NYT article: "In the Lanternfly War, Some Take the Bug’s Side/Even as the invasive pest spreads across 11 states and threatens agriculture, lanternflies are winning sympathizers who resist kill-on-sight orders." 

He pulls this quote...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered a less than full-throated defense of the lanternfly. The advocacy group did advise people, however, to carefully consider their actions if it involves “killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar,” said Catie Cryar, a PETA spokeswoman.

... and says:

"Killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar"

Like an unborn living human being? 

He quotes...

The bugs “didn’t ask to be invasive, they are just living their own life,” [said Catherine Bonner, 22, a Temple University student in Philadelphia]. “I would be bummed if I suddenly started existing somewhere I wasn’t supposed to exist and everyone started killing me for it.”

... and says: 

Like suddenly existing somewhere like your mother’s body?

"I tried to convince people to slow down — slow down AI — to regulate AI. This was futile. I tried for years. Nobody listened. No one..."

"Normally the way that regulations work is very slow — very slow indeed. So usually, there'll  be something — some new technology — that will cause damage or death. There will be an outcry. There will be an investigation. Years will pass. There will be some sort of insight committee. There will be rulemaking. Then there will be oversight — eventually regulations. This all take many years.... If you look at, say, automotive regulations: How long did it take for seatbelts... to be required?... This timeframe is not relevant to AI. You can't take 10 years from the point at which it is dangerous. It's too late...."

Said Elon Musk, talking to Joe Rogan, in September 2018 (Episode #1169, embedded below). 

That part came right after a discussion of the way Google, Instagram, and Twitter have us "plugged in like the nodes on the network, like leaves on a big tree." Using these services, he said, we become "one giant cybernetic collective." We're "fueling this thing that's constantly around us all the time and it doesn't seem possible that people are going to pump the brakes."

He said we seem to be following "an instinct," as if we're "the ants that build the anthill." "It feels like we are the biological bootloader for AI." Because we're acting on instinct, the resulting AI is "our id writ large." It is a "projection of our limbic system" — all the "things that we like and hate and fear." This "combination of electronics and biology" is "a cyborg," "a sort of an organism."

At this point, he brings up that Instagram — with more images and video and consequently more engagement — has more "limbic resonance" than Twitter.

I listened to all of that to extrapolate what Musk intends to do with Twitter. We keep talking about how he wants to rid it of censorship and bias and institute freedom of speech. But that would be "our id writ large." And, at least back then, he sounded as though he was deeply worried about what we were creating and doing to ourselves and how terribly hard it is to regulate. The people who work at Twitter now are furiously regulating, but it's not the right kind of regulation. They're just more ants, projecting their limbic system. They don't see the larger phenomenon, as Musk does. 

Maybe Musk just wants to be the consciousness of this "cyborg" while the rest of us are blithely behaving like instinct-driven ants. Maybe he's a benefactor who genuinely wants to figure out how to make AI develop in a way that is good for humanity and not dangerous.

Finally! The steaming pile of insect politics I've been waiting for!

I saw that the NY Post hated it — "'SNL’ somehow screwed up the VP debate fly" — but I — an intense fan of the Jeff Goldblum version of "The Fly" — think it's truly great:

 

That guy in the Post objected to the use of Jim Carrey as Joe Biden combined with Jeff Goldblum — characterized it as "this strange, aspiring 1980s East Village performance art piece." I'll just guess he doesn't know the movie "The Fly." How can you have missed "The Fly"? And I mean the Jeff Goldblum "Fly." Nothing against the Vincent Price "Fly." That's also great. But come on, if you're going to review American satire, there's a certain baseline of experience you need to have in your brain. 

Kudos to "SNL"! Every one of the actors did a fine job and the material was even politically balanced. The only thing I'd change is the color of Kate MacKinnon's lipstick. She played the moderator Susan Page in pretty bright red lipstick, but Susan Page had on a color that made me laugh:

Just a little missed opportunity. They perked Susan Page up a bit. And Kate MacKinnon is already way perked up compared to the hilariously dull Susan Page. Anyway... other than that — excellent. Thanks, "SNL"! 

ADDED: Here's the very best thing in "The Fly" — the part about "insect politics" (and by they way, Kate MacKinnon would make a great Geena Davis, if the Geena Davis part had found its way into the sketch):

 

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. You see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake... I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."

("SNL" did not use the "insect politics" material.)

Was the fly on Mike Pence's hair divine intervention?

This is a question that occurred to me as I was recording my reading of the previous post — "Was there any discussion of 'systemic racism' during the debate?," — which has a bit to say about the fly that landed and lingered on Mike Pence's hair during the debate. It made it hard to listen to what Pence was saying, which I see, reading the transcript, was trenchant and substantive. Was the fly a meaningless, random occurrence or could it have been divine intervention? 

Surely, an omnipotent deity, if He cared about the outcome of American elections, could simply cause the person he wanted to win. Why would he merely put a thumb on the scales as We the People weigh the choices? And such a tiny thumb, a little fly, so lightweight that it made no impression on the mind of Pence as it stood staunchly on the man's silvery coif! He had no idea of that thing as he burbled about respect for our earthly justice system. Yet perhaps it tipped the election. Who can know?!

But I had divine intervention on my mind after what Trump said yesterday (transcript):

Hi, perhaps you recognize me? It’s your favorite president. And I’m standing in front of the Oval Office at the White House... A short 24 hours [after receiving the drug Regeneron], I was feeling great, I wanted to get out of the hospital and that’s what I want for everybody. I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president because I feel great. I feel like perfect. So I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it. I heard about this drug. I said, “Let me take it.” It was my suggestion. I said, “Let me take it,” and it was incredible the way it worked.... You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better fast, just like I did. So again, a blessing in disguise....

I blogged that video yesterday, here, and then — because it was thematically relevant — I added video of the aged actress Jane Fonda saying "I just think COVID is God’s gift to the Left." So, people are talking about divine intervention. It's an idea that landed on my head and has been lingering — depositing eggs of ideas, one might say, to extend the metaphor. 

By the way, look what The New Yorker put in its crossword on Monday:

23 Down: "________ Jane, celebrity epithet of 1972." So many possible clues for "Hanoi." They had to want to go there. Is it, for them, just a funny old nugget of pop culture? 

Anyway, back to the question whether divine intervention could come in the form of a fly? I think of the play "The Flies" ("Les Mouches") by Jean-Paul Sartre. This is something that occurred to me as I was reading the previous post out loud, but I couldn't talk about the play off the top of my head — my almost certainly flyless head. I hadn't read it in 50 years. I had to end the recording and find some sort of recap. I'll use this, randomly:

Was there any discussion of "systemic racism" during the debate?

I need to read the transcript, in part because I want to do a word search, but in part because I, like so many of you, became distracted when a fly landed on Mike Pence's hair and stayed there for quite a long while. I thought it would never leave. Pence has helmet hair, so zero chance of feeling the weight or movement of the fly, and the fly barely moved. We talked about whether the fly was stuck or dead and whether it symbolized racism, being a discordant black dot on highly structured white hair. 

Here's the transcript. I see, searching it, that Kamala Harris never said "racist" or "racism," let alone "systemic" or "systemically." But Mike Pence said "systemically racist," and it is in this portion of the debate, where I was distracted by the fly in Mike Pence's hair. Let's work through this carefully, beginning with the question framed by the moderator, Susan Page. I've made some corrections to the transcript, which I'll note with boldface.

In March, Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old emergency room technician in Louisville was shot and killed after police officers executing a search warrant in a narcotics investigation, broke into her apartment. The police said they identified themselves. Taylor’s boyfriend said he didn’t hear them do that. He used a gun registered to him to fire a shot, which wounded an officer. The officers then fired more than 20 rounds into the apartment. They say they were acting in self-defense. None of them have been indicted in connection with her death. Senator Harris, in the case of Breonna Taylor was justice done?...

Notice that Page did not mention race at all. Taylor was identified by her age, her occupation, and her city. The question relating to indictment should be right in the zone where former prosecutor Kamala Harris can display the most expertise. Will she show respect for the process? Will she accuse the grand jury of racism and perhaps explain that white people carry racism into their decision-making whether they realize it or not? That is, will she demonstrate a belief in systemic racism or "implicit bias" and invite us to understand and share the belief in an enlightened new way (which is, I think, what the Black Lives Matter movement would like us to do)?

Harris answers:

Let's talk about the VP debate.

1. I don't know if I'll say anything tonight, but here's a place for you to talk. I'll be moderating comments through quickly, at least unless I fall asleep. 

 2. I wish Harris were not wearing false eyelashes. It's causing her to blink a lot, which isn't good for making a connection with the viewer. 

 3. Neither candidate is answering the question asked. Now, Pence is going overtime to get to a question. 

 4. Harris is going big and emotional. 

 5. My son John is live-blogging, here.

6. Harris is more fun to watch than Pence. He’s so earnest and sincere, so steadfast. She’s smirking and reacting, looking surprised, jerking about, seeming pleased to have something to jot down. I wonder if he has a plan to irritate her or if he’s just being his usual, unchanging self. 

7. The fly of racism landed in Pence’s hair. No one is listening. All are staring at the fly, which seems to have become stuck in the silver fibers. Ah! Finally, it flits off. We’re released to return to the substance. 

At the Creature-of-the-Day Café...

... you can look through any window.

I checked the photographs of all 870 insects of Wisconsin, then double-checked a separate page of dragonflies of Wisconsin and wasps of Wisconsin, and I found nothing with wings like that and a red spot on its thorax/abdomen, so I cannot tell you what it is. I know when I saw it, I jumped up, grabbed my camera, and yelled, "It's the murder hornet," and for that, I will encourage you to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

Do you remember the New Year's Tick?

It was December 31, 2008, when I wrote, "I'm quite serious about replacing the depressing Father Time/Baby New Year with the New Year's Tick." I was inspired by a BBC headline, "New Year to arrive a tick later" (about a "leap second" that had to be added to the atomic clock). I said:

I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?

It's just by chance that I got reminded of the New Year's Tick on the day of New Year's Eve. I was reading a Jennifer Rubin column in The Washington Post, "Resolutions for the media and politicians." One of her resolutions is:

Presidential candidates should promise to cut out their rhetorical ticks. Former vice president Joe Biden needs to stop saying “I’m serious” and “No joke.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) must not start sentences with “So … ” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) cannot say “billionaires” more than 10 times in a debate or speech.

Rhetorical ticks! I love the idea of ticks giving speeches! I'm tantalized by the prospect of using my favorite tag "insect politics" once again, but I've been down that road before across that grassy meadow before. A tick is not an insect!

The spelling should be "tic," but I'm thinking there's something perhaps a little politically incorrect about the figurative use of a word that denotes "severe facial neuralgia with twitching of the facial muscles" (OED).  I like this example in the OED:

1960 20th Cent. Apr. 361 This is an irritating tic of the British Left, this substitution of moral gestures for practical policies.

"Tic" is spelled like that because the medical condition is "tic douloureux" — French for "painful twitching." There is also a condition in horses, "The vice or morbid habit in horses called crib-biting or cribbing," and that has been spelled "tick" since the 18th century. Etymologically, it too comes from the French "tic," so it's easy to argue that "promise to cut out their rhetorical ticks" is just fine and nicely in English and un-French. The horse's crib-biting also has been used figuratively, and the meaning is the same as the figurative "tic": It means "whim."

I'm going to say that Rubin's "tick" is le mot juste if what you're picturing when you picture Elizabeth Warren saying "so" and Bernie Sanders saying "billionaire" looks something like this:

"New York Times columnist accused of eugenics over piece on Jewish intelligence/Bret Stephens faces backlash after suggesting that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than other people."

Yikes, the heat on Bret Stephens has zoomed up since I blogged about his genius-of-Jews column at 5 a.m. yesterday morning.

The Guardian says:

The rightwing New York Times columnist Bret Stephens...

Eh. I don't think the right wing deserves responsibility for whatever it is Bret Stephens is.

... has sparked furious controversy online for a column praising Ashkenazi Jews for their scientific accomplishments, which critics say amounts to embracing eugenics.

In a column titled The Secrets of Jewish Genius and using a picture of Albert Einstein, Stephens stepped in the eugenics minefield by claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other people and think differently.... [There were] furious accusations that Stephens was using the same genetics arguments that informed Nazism and white supremacist thinking.

The Guardian is simply collecting tweets. An editorial director at Vice says, "It’s hard to read this column as expressing anything other than a belief in the genetic and cultural inferiority of non-Ashkenazi Jews"; a NYT contributor says, "I don’t think eugenicists should be op-ed columnists"; a "journalist" says, "A Jew endorsing the idea that certain races are inherently superior to other, lesser races, what could possibly go wrong?"; a writer called it "eugenics propaganda" and urged subscribers to cancel.

This is what you get on Twitter: hot takes. There, Stephens is a eugenicist. I do see this mild-mannered correction:

Did Trump just call Bret Stephens a bedbug? No, you could "bring in" the infestation without being one of the bugs.

“The infestation of bedbugs at The New York Times office” @OANN was perhaps brought in by lightweight journalist Bret Stephens, a Conservative who does anything that his bosses at the paper tell him to do! He is now quitting Twitter after being called a “bedbug.” Tough guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

To quote the old Rolling Stones song:

To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bedbugs uptown
What a mess this town's in tatters I've been shattered
My brain's been battered, splattered all over Manhattan...

"NY Times' Bret Stephens Vaguely Threatens—and Emails Boss of—Professor Who Called Him ‘Bedbug.'"

Mediaite reports.

The professor, Dave Karpf, who studies media and public affairs, published a screenshot of the email he received Monday night from Stephens, who claimed an unnamed “someone” had “just pointed out” Karpf’s insult to him, complained that the professor had “set a new standard” for poisoning the discourse. The Times columnist went on to effectively physically challenge Karpf, inviting him to “come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.”...

Karpf’s initial joke on Twitter, posted just hours before, was in response to news of a recent bedbug outbreak in the New York Times newsroom. "The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens."...

Stephens’ over-the-top response to a Tweet that notably did not use his Twitter handle, as well as the not-so-subtle attempt to get Karpf in trouble with the professor’s boss at the college, seemed to run counter to the proclaimed free speech champion’s disgust with thin-skinned “PC culture” and societal “safe spaces” where no one has a sense of humor anymore.... The tetchy, how-dare-you tone and speak-to-your-manager snitch move by Stephens came across as more than a little hypocritical to many media watchers online....

ADDED: "Bret Stephens is Deactivating His Twitter Account After Blowing Up at Man Who Called Him a Bedbug" (Mediaite).

“Twitter is a sewer. It brings out the worst in humanity,” Stephens posted. “I sincerely apologize for any part I’ve played in making it worse, and to anyone I’ve ever hurt. Thanks to all of my followers, but I’m deactivating this account.”

Insect politics.

So what is your solution? Crickets? https://t.co/7tQV3f352J

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 31, 2019

"He made particularly disparaging comments about President Obama. And as the Republican nominee for president, I just couldn't subscribe to that in a federal judge. This was not a matter of qualifications or politics. This was something specifically to that issue as a former nominee of our party."

Said the U.S. Senator who refers to himself as "the Republican nominee for President" because, I guess, there's some idea of forefronting your highest or most elite accomplishment, and Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee for President. He's a Senator now, elected by the people of a state, but he was a nominee for a higher office, and that's apparently more important, even though he didn't win, and he's not even the party's "standard bearer" (not the most recent nominee). But Romney is apparently proud of his distinction, and there's only one other person on the face of the earth whose highest level was Republican nominee for President (and he's 95 years old). Maybe the idea is that Trump is illegitimate, so exclude him, and that leaves Romney as the leader of his party.

But he didn't beat Obama. He showed he could beat Obama if he wanted. He came on strong in the first debate. But he stood down in the second debate, and his party lost. Now, he's voted against one of Trump's judicial nominees, and he was the only Republican Senator who voted no, and he voted no because the person, Michael Truncale, once called Obama an "un-American impostor." Truncale testified that he was "merely expressing frustration by what I perceived as a lack of overt patriotism on behalf of President Obama" and did not mean to suggest that Obama was not a natural born citizen.

I'm reading about this in Politico, where the text is he "believed Obama was born in Hawaii and did not subscribe to 'birtherism,' a racist theory that the president was not an American citizen." The Politico text is shocking for 2 reasons. First, the question under the Constitution wasn't whether Obama was an American citizen. Citizenship isn't enough to qualify a person to be President. He must be born a citizen. Big difference. Second, a news organization shouldn't casually toss in the opinion that this suspicion about Obama is a "racist theory." That's not decent journalism. I accept the use of the term "birtherism" because I think Truncale used it in testifying. If Truncale himself called birtherism "a racist theory," it would be good journalism to quote him, but you can see that it's not in quotes.

I actually don't have a problem with Romney's voting against Truncale. But Romney's stated reason — if this is all he said — is inarticulate. He could have said that he lacked sufficient confidence in Truncale's judicial temperament. There were other things about Truncale that were disturbing, and not just the one thing Romney is quoted as citing — "disparaging comments about President Obama." I'm seeing in The Salt Lake Tribune that Truncale was quoted as saying "With regard to immigration, we must not continue to have the maggots coming in" and later that the word was not "maggots" but "magnets." I can see not bringing that up, because of confusion over whether Truncale said "maggots" (though I note that in immigration discussions, the word "magnet" is applied not to the immigrants but to the United States (for example, candidate Trump said he wanted to "turn off the jobs and benefits magnet")).

By citing only the "disparaging comments about President Obama" and stressing his own status as the one-time Republican Party nominee, Romney elevated himself. He's special.

ADDED: On rereading, I question my assertion that "Romney's stated reason... is inarticulate." I was assuming that Romney looked at everything about Truncale and formed the opinion that he didn't have what it takes to be a judge — that he was too political and intemperate. There are clearer ways to say that. But the statement Romney did make was, I think, rather revealing of his psychology and his plans for himself as a Senator. It's more revealing perhaps, than he intended to be. I wouldn't call that inarticulate, because "inarticulate" connotes that he meant to say something and couldn't come up with the right words, and I don't think Romney meant to reveal that much. What then is the right word? Maybe — ironically — it's "intemperate."

IN THE COMMENTS: Nobody points to a Slate article correcting the FALSE assertion that Truncale  said "maggots." The video there — at 1:25 — shows him saying "we've got to stop the magnet that draws people over." Not only is it clear that he's saying "magnet" not "maggots," he's using the word "magnet" in the standard context, referring to government benefits. He's not calling the immigrants "magnets." He's saying they are drawn to the metaphorical magnet that is welfare benefits. The "maggots" slur is truly evil. Shame on The Salt Lake Tribune.

ALSO: I wrote this in the comments but I want to frontpage it:

Making up racial hatred is truly evil.

I was careful to write, in the original post, " I'm seeing in The Salt Lake Tribune that Truncale was quoted as saying..." Was quoted. I avoided saying that he said it, because how do I know? I only said what I knew, that the SL Tribute presented that statement as a quote.

But with the video there and available for weeks, there's no excuse for passing along the "maggots" quote.

It reminds me of the continued reporting that Trump said Nazis were "fine people." The corrective material is available and plain, and there are some horrible journalists and politicians who want to make people feel that there's some deep ugliness out there -- want people to feel hurt and diminished and afraid. It's disgusting to have a personal stake in doing that to people.

"I am not surprised that this call could disturb people who are not familiar with insect sounds."

"The recording is definitively a cricket that belongs to [the Indies short-tailed cricket, known formally as Anurogryllus celerinictus]. The call of this Caribbean species is about 7 kHz, and is delivered at an unusually high rate, which gives humans the sensation of a continuous sharp trill," said Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a professor of sensory biology at the University of Lincoln, quoted in "'Sonic attack' on US embassy in Havana could have been crickets, say scientists/Noise which saw diplomats complaining of headaches and nausea could be song of Indies short-tailed cricket" (The Guardian).

"You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there."

Being There! I saw that movie.



The quote in the post title is from Amy Klobuchar, interviewed by The New Yorker about "How Democrats Can Defeat Trump in 2020."

I'm the person who once said, "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar," so I guess I have to read this, even though I expect it to be boring. (I've often said I like elected officials to be boring, but that doesn't mean I want to consume their boring words, and I'm also wary that a boring candidate will not make it to the position of elected official.)

Let me put the quote in context. Unboringly enough, the context is Insect Inferno.

Klobuchar was asked how she (in getting reelected Senator) was able to speak to Trump voters. She says "you have to show up," and she visits all 87 counties in Minnesota every year:

One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, “Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat,” and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they’d put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there....

Insect Inferno?! Have you ever heard of insect politics?



Later in the interview (after some grilling — mild grilling — about the Kavanaugh hearings), Klobuchar is asked , "On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?" Her answer:

Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I’m not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest....

The interviewer (Susan B. Glasser) observes that the 2016 election was determined by the voters of the Midwest, and Klobuchar — quite unboringly — comes out with an anecdote and a metaphor:

But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and... they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we’re not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren’t getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren’t feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren’t doing in that last election.

Ever have one of those Facebook exchanges that make you think, I need to stay out of Facebook for a good long time?

I have!

I'm used to being the blogger, and readers come to me, and they comment here. Over on Facebook, I'm a passive reader and an occasional commenter. I do very bland posts of my own sometimes, mostly of the here's-how-Lake-Mendota-looked-today kind.

I should probably never comment on a political thread (other than my son John's posts, which are feel very much like a blog I'd love to read outside of Facebook). But I do sometimes see awful things that other people have written and feel called to say, for example, as I wrote yesterday (not on one of John's posts), "Eliminationist rhetoric. Humans visualized as insects. Is this where you want to go?"

The response I got from this person made me want to sign off Facebook and never look back.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

So there's some insect-related hot button so far unrevealed.

Thanks for prompting me to add my "insect politics" tag.