"'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized."

"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision."

Kamala Harris writes, quoted in "Harris admits Biden 'got tired,' denies 'conspiracy' to hide mental decline/'107 Days' reveals Harris felt unsupported by Biden staff on foreign policy and immigration issues" (Fox News).

How could it be recklessness? Everyone — "we all" — adopted a stock phrase to protect their own political interests and to avoid responsibility for depriving the country of a legitimate primary process and to foist her on us.

I guess it means something that she's calling herself and her confederates reckless. It is bad to be reckless, so she's admitting fault. It's just not believable that the fault was in carelessly disregarding the risks. It was coldly deliberate, and it would have been brilliant, I'm sure they all thought, if it had worked, and she'd won.

"I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself..."

"I can’t cut my hair now as it would be embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.... I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man."

Wrote Robin Westman, more or less rejecting trans identity, quoted in "Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman confessed he was 'tired of being trans': 'I wish I never brain-washed myself'" (NY Post).

I don't understand why we are calling this person trans. If you're saying you "brain-washed" yourself, you've implicitly consigned the belief to the past. You might not reveal the loss of belief to others, but you've put it in writing — albeit in code — and we can read it. Why are people pretending to believe that he believed what he said he didn't believe? And he wrote it explicitly: "I know I am not a woman." 

I don't see why anyone wants this person to be a member of their group. What good would it do anyone to have Westman as one of their own?

"I make a mistake. I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey."

Said Winnie Greco, quoted in "Eric Adams Advisor Winnie Greco Handed a CITY Reporter Cash Stuffed in a Bag of Potato Chips/THE CITY reported the incident to law enforcement and was promptly contacted by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office" (The City).

Greco's lawyer, Steven Brill, doubled down on the "culture thing" excuse: "I can see how this looks strange. But I assure you that Winnie’s intent was purely innocent. In the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of friendship and gratitude. Winnie is apologetic and embarrassed by any negative impression or confusion this may have caused."

Is it Chinese culture to deliver money inside bags of potato chips?!

I understand there is a tradition in China of giving money in red envelopes, and, to be fair, in this case, there was a red envelope that contained the money inside the potato chip bag. Go to that link to see the nature of that tradition — who does it, when, how do they behave — and compare that to what Winnie Greco did. I'm sympathetic to serious arguments about cultural differences and genuine misunderstanding, but come on.

"Patel, Bongino and the other leaders are caught in a trap of their own making. The world they helped create, a world in which conspiracy destroys facts, is now the world they have to inhabit."

Said politics professor Russell Muirhead, quoted in "Once Champions of Fringe Causes, Now in a ‘Trap of Their Own Making’/Top leaders at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are struggling to fulfill Trump campaign promises often rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories" (NYT).

From the article:

The tension between practicing politics based on conspiracy theories and having to govern extends far beyond the F.B.I. and Justice Department’s problems with the Epstein case.... Days after the backlash over his Epstein comments, Mr. Bongino offered other promises — new investigations into other episodes that have gripped the president’s base: the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing during the Biden administration, the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights in 2022 and the discovery of pipe bombs near Republican and Democratic Party headquarters before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, an unsolved crime that has already consumed significant law enforcement resources.... 

Emerald Robinson, a former White House correspondent for Newsmax, made her frustration clear on social media. “Dan Bongino & Kash Patel know they destroyed their credibility by claiming that ‘Jeffrey Epstein killed himself’ so now they’re trying to offer up three investigations you don’t care about to misdirect you from the Epstein files you do care about,” she wrote. “Sad!”

"The video expected to be released by Bongino is said to show Epstein alone in his cell. However, the actual act of suicide is not shown."

"'There’s video clear as day,' Bongino... told Fox News on Thursday. 'He’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.... We are working on cleaning it up to make sure you have an enhanced [version] and we’re going to give the original so you don’t think there were any shenanigans,'  he said."

I'm reading "FBI to release Jeffrey Epstein video ‘confirming suicide in cell’/Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the agency, hopes the video will end speculation that Epstein’s death was suspicious" (London Times).

If they're "working on cleaning it up" and "mak[ing] sure" it's "enhanced," then people are going to think there were "shenanigans." If the video is "clear as day," why do they need to clean it up and enhance it? Well, I guess he's saying we'll see "the original" and the cleaned-up, enhanced version that will influence how we look at what we'll see in that "original." I expect people to deny that they are seeing what the enhanced version is nudging us to see and to question whether the original is really the original.

I was just listening to the newest episode of Joe Rogan, where subject of Epstein comes up:

JOE: They were gonna release the Epstein files Day One. Right?... What happened? What happened? What happened?

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

Did this "longtime Democratic researcher" really ask "around 250 focus groups of swing voters" to name the animal each political party reminds them of?

I'm reading this free-linked NYT article — "Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward" — because my son John posted about it on Facebook.

I just couldn't believe this:

One longtime Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America’s two major parties to animals. After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio. Republicans are seen as “apex predators,” like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive. So Ms. Shenker-Osorio perked up earlier this year when a Democratic man in Georgia suggested that a very different kind of animal symbolized her party. “A deer,” he said, “in headlights.”...

Somehow Republicans do way too much, so aggressively, but Democrats don't get anything done? And these were swing voters? Sorry. Not believed. Sounds too much like the opinion of someone with left-wing policy preferences. You want more from the Democrats and you want it faster. And those terrible Republicans!

Anyway, asking people what animal Democrats and Republicans reminded them of reminded me of the old Barbara Walters question "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Yeah, be skeptical about that too because she didn't ask that question... other than that one time, after Katharine Hepburn started it by likening herself to a tree. Barbara Walters followed up with "What kind of tree are you, if you think you’re a tree?" Of course, Hepburn gave the answer nearly everyone would give if they were asked what kind of tree they are: Oak. And poor Barbara was forever after treated as if she asked everyone what kind of tree they were.

"Everybody, don't worry about it. Don't panic. You're gonna be on that island as a tourist for decades and decades to come."

"I mean, you gotta be kidding me. This is going nowhere. This is distraction day in the United States of America."

Says Gavin Newsom — yes, he still has a podcast — addressing Trump's plan/"plan" to turn Alcatraz back into a prison, in "And, This is Escape From Alcatraz" (Podscribe, transcript + audio).

"A million plus people, I think it's 1.2 million last year came to Alcatraz and the island. I think the Park service that runs it generates $60 million a year in revenue. Back to my Doge point, this would cost tens of millions of dollars. You have to bring people onto the island, the workforce and everything else. [Trump] specifically directed his Department of Justice and, and he directed Secretary Burgum to start to put together a plan of action on this. I mean, I pray that they're focused on other things and not focused on the folly of this latest distraction...."

"Cory Booker didn’t go to the bathroom for 25 hours. Is that … OK?"

Headline at The Guardian, where we're told..

[H]e seemingly didn’t pee once the whole time. (A rep for Booker confirmed to TMZ that he did not wear a diaper during his speech.)

I would have written: A rep for Booker confirmed to TMZ that Booker claimed he did not wear a diaper during his speech. Or, if the rep claimed personal knowledge of which unseen garments Booker wore: A rep for Booker corroborated Booker's claim that he did not wear a diaper during his speech.

Does anyone believe that? It seems reckless. Does Booker want to appear reckless? He may think that appearing reckless is better than being thought of as having worn a diaper. But the fear of being thought of as having worn a diaper is ableist and ageist. And yet, look at our Congress.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "At the State of the Union speech in 2025 — I know it wasn't officially a 'State of the Union' — what percentage of those in the audience were wearing diapers — in your estimation? Consider how long in advance they needed to get to and remain in their seats, the expected length of the speech, the length of time after the speech before access to facilities, and the age and frailty of the members of Congress."

Anyway, the Guardian's answer to its question — "Is that … OK?" — is no.

Fake outrage, isn't it?

I'm reading, among other things, "Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Schumer Retreats on Shutdown/A generational divide, seen in newer lawmakers’ impatience with bipartisanship and for colleagues who don’t understand new media, has emerged as one of the deepest rifts within the party" (NYT)(free-access link).

The Democrats have to make a show of fighting Trump, but Schumer's move was more important anti-Trumpism, and I think they all know it:

On Thursday, Mr. Schumer explained his decision to vote to keep the government open in an opinion piece in The New York Times, a version of which he read on the Senate floor.

“As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse,” Mr. Schumer wrote.

From the written opinion piece:

Treading the boards on a perfect set.

Well, I don’t know about you guys but I am completely buying this with no further questions. https://t.co/Y92gosc4vZ

— Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) January 3, 2025

The NYT purports to show us "how" Biden did something we don't even know that he did.

This is an embarrassing headline: "How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This’/The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems."

They — the authors are Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush — cannot know the interior of the President's mind. He may have changed what he was saying about his thoughts, but I presume that he was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter, and I presume that he always intended to pardon him.

The phrase "How Biden Changed His Mind" is misdirection — sleight of hand. If we fall for it, we unwittingly form a belief that Biden did change his mind. He and his supporters weren't lying to us throughout the campaign season. He was weighing all the factors and the factors changed after the election. He painfully reweighed and his consistent and honorable decision-making process yielded a new result. Let Rogers and Rush detail the factors and burnish our respect for the venerable statesman.

No, no, absolutely not. Now, and only now, am I reading past the headline. So let's see:

A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.

It was a dark and stormy night. We begin with a weather report.  

Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months....

Who, if anyone, is the source of this knowledge of Biden's months-long mental torment? 

Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family...

Who? Jill? Hunter? Who's talking to the NYT? How is building support observed? Was this support in the mind of Jill? Was it voiced to the President? 

... but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

Biden also "watched" as Trump got elected, but that's not mentioned. It's not politically convenient to characterize Biden as waiting to see if his party might win, lying about the pardon in an effort to produce that win, and needing a new plan when the party lost. It needs to be about Trump's bad behavior, and son of a bitch, it was!... in this dark-and-stormy-night tale the NYT is telling. 

Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

So Trump was sympathetic, and it's here, for the first time in the article, that we see a reference to sources. It's harder to portray Trump as a vengeful narcissist when 3 sources say he sympathized with Biden. It was sympathy, we're told, in the context of Trump's complaining that Biden's administration was using criminal prosecution against Trump. Maybe that inspired Biden to see how a pardon of Hunter could be portrayed not as a political favor to Hunter but as an end to political disfavor. It sounds crazy, but we're looking for "How Biden Changed His Mind."

But the article doesn't pursue that, perhaps because it had no evidence that the meeting with Trump jogged Biden's thoughts on the subject. Or do you think the fact that Biden was smiling widely is circumstantial evidence that a wonderful new idea had arisen?

The next thing in the article is this:

But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push....

The final push. So we were supposed to see the Trump meeting as a push? This is a long article, and it purports to tell us "How Biden Changed His Mind," but there was no elaboration of "how" in that bit about the meeting with Trump. Now, I'm wondering if Trump cleverly played Biden somehow? The Times had 3 sources about the conversation and we got one unenlightening sentence.

But there is much more to the article after that introduction. We're told the NYT spoke with "a half dozen people close to the president and his family," but not told who they are or anything about how they could have access to Biden's mind and why they should be trusted to tell the truth.

When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision. “Time to end all of this,” Mr. Biden said, according to a person briefed on the call....

That's says nothing about how or when Biden decided to pardon Hunter, only about the timing of the action. 

Mr. Biden’s decision has tarnished a storied public legacy that began more than 50 years ago....

Here's a good place for elision. 

Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty on the tax charges — after a weeklong gun trial in Delaware in June that rehashed the family’s darkest days — had further embittered Mr. Biden....  [who] began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon. It appears that there was never serious consideration of anything short of a full pardon, such as a commutation of his sentence, they said.

Was there any serious consideration of restricting the full pardon to the gun and tax charges? The article doesn't mention the sweep of the pardon Biden gave, covering every possible federal crime in a 10-year period, such as the oft-alleged corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China!  

For his part, Hunter Biden was hardly shy about telling the people around him that he wanted — needed — a pardon, although it is unclear how often he had discussed the matter directly with his father before this past week....

You've got sources. What did he say? Did he threaten to do drugs again and yell about how it would all be dad's fault? Did he say he's writing a memoir that will destroy Joe's reputation forever? Did he threaten to offer his testimony to Trump officials about Joe's involvement in corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China? You're inviting your readers to visualize this scene. That's what I'm seeing.

And here's a hint that the corrupt dealings were part of the discussion:

While both father and son expressed anger over the yearslong effort by Republicans to link Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business consulting to the president — the unproven “Biden crime family” narrative — they were almost equally contemptuous of the prosecutors who aggressively pursued both cases....

The door was cracked open for half a sentence, then quickly shut.

The statement that followed from Mr. Biden on Sunday offered a window into the mind-set of an aggrieved president who, in the end, could not separate his duty as a father from his half century of principled promises as a politician....

The most comforting possible narrative is chosen! That's the answer to how — how Biden "changed" his mind. He's just too devoted a father — to his duty as a father. Surely, you won't subtract very much from the value of his half century of principled promises as a politician!

I've read the whole thing now, and the NYT hasn't rebutted my presumption that Biden was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter. And I need to know much more about the 10-year sweep of the pardon, covering all federal crimes, and how that connects to Joe Biden's own possible corruption. Don't just label that "unproven." Investigate it!

ADDED: I just listened to this morning's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, and it is much better. The guest is the NYT reporter Peter Baker. Excerpts:

I think obviously the only thing that's changed between June... and December when he gives this pardon, is the election. And you can look at it a couple of different ways. You could look at it in the way of him not being honest in the summer. That he really was in fact considering this, but didn't want to say before an election because it would be politically damaging. And only after the election does he admit that in fact he is going to use his extraordinary power for his son. Or — and this may be an and/or — you can also look at it as waking up to the reality of a Trump-run Justice Department in which this new president is promising retribution and specifically to go after Hunter Biden and a president who's on the way out thinking, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not only going to pardon him for this tax and gun charges. I'm going to protect him from the next guy who's making very clear he's going to use the FBI for retribution....

[In his statement announcing the pardon, Biden] talks about the current prosecutions that his son has faced being unfair and selective. He doesn't say the other part... which is that he is guarding against politicization of the Justice Department by his successor. Right? He could have framed it that way, but he didn't. But the net effect of what he did by making it a 10-year sweeping pardon for any and everything that his son might have done does have that effect. And it does tell you what was probably going through his mind when he decided to issue the pardon.

What Peter Baker says was "probably going through his mind" is what I was saying Rogers and Thrush left out of their "How Biden Changed His Mind" article.

Let's read WaPo's "note from our owner": "The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media."

I need to force myself to read this — by Jeff Bezos. He kept WaPo from publishing an explicit endorsement of Kamala Harris, who is all too obviously implicitly endorsed by WaPo every day. So I'll live-blog my reading of it. Let's go....

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

He's calling it a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles that must be followed, even if the polls don't go your way. 

Things not believed.

You released 425,000 convicted criminals into the public.

No one believes you. pic.twitter.com/ddq048Eqv9

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 27, 2024

"Exposure to other tourists... can improve our mood and enhance cognitive function. And travel can lead to healthy eating."

So says an expert quoted in the WaPo article "Travel can slow the aging process, new study says/According to researchers in Australia, positive tourist experiences can help you live a longer life."

This gets my "things not believed" tag, of course, but here's a picture my son Chris sent me this morning from Tokyo:

I'm going to have to give my "things not believed" tag to this WaPo story about why Alexa said "I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate"...

...  when it was asked "Why should I vote for Donald Trump," but, when asked "Why should I vote for Kamala Harris," said...

"While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishments. As the first female vice president, Harris has already broken down major gender barriers and her career in politics has been characterized by a commitment to progressive ideals and a focus on helping disenchanted communities."

I'm reading "Amazon’s Alexa favored Harris over Trump after AI upgrade/Leaked documents show that a viral incident in which the voice assistant appeared to favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump was related to artificial intelligence software added to improve accuracy" (WaPo).

I made that a gift link so you can double check my skepticism. Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence software added late last year to improve Alexa’s accuracy instead helped land Amazon at the center of an embarrassing political dust-up, with Trump spokesman Steven Cheung accusing the company in a post on X of “BIG TECH ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

It's just an "embarrassing" "dust-up." Nothing big, deep, and nefarious.

Amazon said Alexa’s behavior was “an error that was quickly fixed.”

Oh, well then. Just "an error." And "quickly fixed." Yes, I believe it was a mistake to make it so obvious and easily demonstrated and shared and that, on notice, Amazon quickly fixed it. But I remain suspicious that Alexa contains bias in favor of the Democratic Party. 

"How the f*** do you start this tweet with 'I've worked tirelessly?'"

How the f*** do you start this tweet with "I've worked tirelessly." https://t.co/FlRiOC2F60

— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) September 1, 2024

"It felt like the world's largest mosquito."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "In Leaked Phone Call, Trump Tries to Coax Kennedy Into His Camp/Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized for a leaked video of the phone call, in which Donald Trump offers anti-vaccine messaging and says the wound to his ear  'felt like the world’s largest mosquito.'" 

A leaked video of Donald J. Trump calling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a behind-the-scenes look into the former president’s efforts to coax Mr. Kennedy out of the presidential race and into his camp. On Mr. Kennedy’s speaker phone, Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, can be heard offering up the kind of anti-vaccine message that Mr. Kennedy is known for. Mr. Trump also reveals details of his call with President Biden, saying “it was very nice.” And he tells Mr. Kennedy, seemingly in an effort to win his support: “I would love you to do something. And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.”

Kennedy tweets that he's "mortified" and should have "ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately." Hmm. This gets my "things not believed" tag.

Biden said to have zero chance of winning even as FiveThirtyEight says that a Biden victory is more likely than not.

I'm reading — at NBC News — "'No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path': Biden insiders say the writing is on the wall/The set of Democrats who think he should reconsider his decision to stay in the race has grown to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with guiding his campaign to victory":

Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people who are directly involved in efforts to re-elect him, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as zero — and the likelihood of him taking down fellow Democratic candidates growing.

“He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official said. “He will never recover from this.”

Zero!

And then there's this at FiveThirtyEight:

So Biden is more likely to win than Trump. Just slightly, but still. Call it a tie. That's infinitely more than zero. Now, FiveThirtyEight is working with actual polls, but the campaign officials saying zero are picturing the path of events in the next 4 months. They're also affected by their hopes and fears and capable of distorting and lying. They want Joe out. His own campaign officials! Well, they are, technically, Biden's people, hired to help him win, but they are also human beings with career aspirations of their own. I don't trust them. But do I trust FiveThirtyEight? Is FiveThirtyEight corrupt? 

"No conversations about that whatsoever. The Democratic voters elected, nominated, Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s the nominee."

Said Michael Tyler, director of communications for the Biden campaign, quoted in "There Are 'No Conversations' About Replacing Biden, Campaign Official Says/The official also said President Biden was committed to attending the next presidential debate in September" (NYT).

This immediately called to mind a tag I don't know why I don't use more often: "things not believed."

But even though I don't believe there have been "no conversations... whatsoever," I do believe "The Democratic voters elected, nominated, Joe Biden." That's the thing they like to excoriate Donald Trump for supposedly not believing. And when it's Donald Trump failing to say he believes it, he's denounced as an enemy of democracy, a man who wants to be a dictator. 

These people who want to oust Joe Biden — we don't even know who they are. They seemed to think they could stage a coup in 5 minutes, using CNN commentators in the immediate aftermath of the debate. Are these people not enemies of democracy? Do they not deserve the epithet "dictator"? And if they are the same people who have worked together to hide Joe Biden's incapacity from us, who exercise power through or instead of him, then the answer to those questions is even more emphatically yes.