"I wouldn’t sign the pledge. Why would I sign a pledge if there are people on there that I wouldn’t have?"

"I wouldn't have certain people as, you know, somebody that I endorse. So they want you to sign a pledge. I can name three or four people that I wouldn't support for president. So right there, there's a problem right there. There's a problem."

 
Said Donald Trump, quoted in "DeSantis torches Trump for refusing to sign GOP candidate pledge: 'You don't take your ball and go home'/GOP candidates are required to sign the pledge to be allowed on the debate stage" (Fox News).

I think they want Trump to debate — if he doesn't show up to take a public beating, how is any other candidate supposed to make any headway? — but they were also trying to burden any attempt he might make at a third party run. So, obviously, he says no. He doesn't need the debate. But look what they have now. Since Trump is so far ahead and likely to win the nomination, all these other candidates will be pledged to support him. What good did this pledge requirement do? 

"They thought it was over, that they could put it in the rearview mirror. All that Hunter Biden had to do was show up in a courtroom, answer a few questions..."

"... sign some paperwork and that would be it. Not that the Republicans would let it go, but any real danger would be past. Except that it did not work out that way. The criminal investigation that President Biden’s advisers believed was all but done has instead been given new life with the collapse of the plea agreement and the appointment of a special counsel who now might bring the president’s son to trial. What had been a painful but relatively contained political scandal that animated mainly partisans on the right could now extend for months just as the president is gearing up for his re-election campaign. This time, the questions about Hunter Biden’s conduct may be harder for the White House to dismiss as politically motivated. They may even break out of the conservative echo chamber to the general public... It may be that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s decision to designate Mr. Weiss a special counsel with more independence to run the inquiry means that there is still more potential legal peril stemming from Hunter Biden’s business dealings with foreign firms. Yet it may amount to less than meets the eye in the long run...."

 
So begins the top story at the NYT right now, "For President Biden, a Political Liability That May Not Go Away Soon/The collapse of a plea deal and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden mean the president could face political fallout for months to come," by Peter Baker.

Sunrise color story — 5:51, 5:54, 5:58:26, 5:58:48, 6:04, 6:05.

Perhaps you can tell I ran through rain to get to my vantage point and the rain had passed over me by the time I got there and luckily it hadn't got to where it would block the sun. It produced a sunrise unique in my collection of approximately 1,000 sunrises. 

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"In a recent study, a team of marketing professors looked at how service employees perceive 'customer deviant behaviors,' which include minor infractions like incivility and aggression..."

"... as well as more serious offenses like shoplifting and fraudulent returns. The researchers found that shoplifting was 'by far' the most prevalent and detrimental form of deviant behavior. According to the study, in the presence of a suspected thief the burden of policing often falls to frontline employees, who, depending on company policy, may be expected to guard the store, stand by passively or even assist the thieves as if they were paying customers. These behaviors leave employees feeling frustrated, angry, helpless, targeted, unmotivated and uncomfortable. Allowing shoplifting to continue unimpeded, the authors found, undermines the sense of pride they might otherwise find in their work and the workplace.... Because retailers continue to struggle with underemployment and employee retention, stores are often more sparsely staffed than they once were, and all the more grim. On a recent shopping excursion in Manhattan, I saw something I’d never seen before: a handwritten sign in the window of a major clothing chain, apologizing for closing for an hour midday because of understaffing...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "What We Lose to Shoplifting" (NYT).

It's amazing that stores — the kind you can physically enter and shop in — still exist.

"Heat Singes the Mind, Not Just the Body."

Reads the headline at The New York Times. 

To "singe" is to scorch superficially.

In French, "singe" means "monkey."

But let's read on. This sounds quite serious:

"You probably won’t get burned, but that’s not what’s going to kill you. It’s the smoke that’s going to kill you."

Said Carl Otsuka, fire inspector for the Honolulu Fire Department, quoted in "Why jumping into water to escape a wildfire should be a last resort/Seeking refuge in a pool or the ocean won’t always protect you from the heat or smoke, experts say" (WaPo).

Crystal Kolden, a professor of fire science at the University of California at Merced, said... if you seek refuge in the water, you may be stuck there for several hours “before the coast is clear,” Kolden said. “People don’t realize how long you’re going to be in the water... Hypothermia and risk of drowning due to not being able to swim or tread water for that long are very real possibilities.”

"'What brought you here?' I asked. 'What brought me here?' The man paused. 'Hmm. I don’t know.'..."

"'He remembers,' [said Timothy Doherty, a senior officer specialist at F.M.C. Devens, which houses federal prisoners who require medical care]. Then he told me that the white-haired man had raped his granddaughter. Later, I wondered how much it should matter whether the old man remembered what he did. And what if he remembered sometimes, but not other times? Many people with dementia exist in a kind of middle ground of partial comprehension, or have memories that surface and then disappear. 'We get into difficult metaphysical questions about personhood here,' said Jeffrey Howard, a professor of political philosophy and public policy at University College London, when I told him about my conversation with the white-haired man. 'But you might think that there are two versions of the man: One of them deserves the punishment, and the other doesn’t. In order to punish the version of him that deserves it, you have to take along this hostage for the ride. It’s hard to see how that sort of collateral damage could be justified.'"

Writes Katie Engelhart in "I Visited the Men Who Live Behind Bars and Can’t Remember Where They Are," about prisoners with dementia.

ADDED: Elsewhere in the article, about a different prisoner, we hear that "his disease leaves him sexually disinhibited," so I don't see how the inability — or purported inability — to remember the rape supports freeing the man. But that's not what the article argues. It ends:

"Asked if he was warned about the fire, one Lahaina resident [said] 'Oh, hell no'... [H]e fled with his wife when they saw flames about 500 yards from their house."

"He said the fire quickly closed in on them as they drove through thick black smoke — and finally to safety. 'Nobody saw this coming,' he said. Claire Kent, who works in Lahaina taking tourists out on a boat off the coast, said she began to panic around 3:30 p.m. when she saw a billowing cloud of black smoke and heard an explosion. A neighbor told her three nearby gas stations were on fire and urged her to pack a bag to flee. As she and several friends tried to drive out of town, she said, she saw people trying to escape on foot, some holding children. Even then, said Ms. Kent, she had still not been notified of any need to evacuate — save for a shirtless man on a bicycle along the road who was screaming: 'You have to get out!'... Robbie Wares, who has lived in Lahaina for decades, said the only warning she got was from someone — it was not clear who it was — shouting out of a moving vehicle that passed by her house...."

From "Some Fire Survivors Say Flames Reached Them Before Evacuation Orders/A fire near Lahaina that had initially been contained flared up again and threatened homes, but some residents said they received no evacuation orders" (NYT).

Expression, Sunrise.

"American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties. So today, in my view, there is no Republican party..."

"... to counter the Democratic party in the country. And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.... A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican party for America."

Said Judge Michael Luttig, quoted in "'No Republican party’ in US today, says anti-Trump conservative judge J Michael Luttig, who advised Mike Pence not to try to overturn 2020 election, says former president has destroyed GOP" (The Guardian).

Trump, he said, was a danger “more so today” than last year, when Luttig testified to the House January 6 committee.

I can't help reading between the lines and seeing Luttig's outrage that Trump broke the system in which the elite were thinking up the beliefs and values and principles and policy views and ordinary people were stuck with what was handed to them.

"It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well."

"He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.... So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole? Shared values. In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy...."

Writes Tayo Bero in "Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? Ice Cube has joined a long list of rappers who have cuddled up with conservative pundits and politicians" (The Guardian).

"Over decades of presidential campaigns, the Iowa way has been to hop from town to town, taking questions from all comers and genuflecting to the local culinary traditions."

"Going everywhere and meeting everyone has been the gospel of how to win over voters in the low-turnout midwinter caucuses that kick off the American presidential cycle. Now former President Donald J. Trump is delivering what could be a death blow to the old way.... If any of his dozen challengers hope to stop his march to a third straight nomination, they will almost certainly have to halt, or at least slow, him in Iowa after spending the better part of a year making their case. A commanding victory by Mr. Trump could create a sense of inevitability around his candidacy.... As Mr. Trump and nearly all of his Republican rivals converge in the coming days at the Iowa State Fair, the annual celebration of agriculture and stick-borne fried food will serve as the latest stage for a nationalized campaign in which the former president and his three indictments have left the rest of the field starved for attention. 'You’ve got to do it in Iowa, otherwise it’s gone, it’s all national media,' said Doug Gross, a Republican strategist who was the party’s nominee for governor of the state in 2002. 'The chance to show that he’s vulnerable is gone. You’ve got to do it here, and you’ve got to do it now.'"

From "Racing to Stop Trump, Republicans Descend on the Iowa State Fair/As the state fair and its Republican pageantry begin, Donald Trump’s rivals face a transformed political environment in Iowa, where he holds a comfortable edge in polls despite rarely visiting" (NYT).

That made the three indictments sound like the equivalent of stick-borne fried food — stick-borne fried food that Trump gets to hog while everyone else is "starved." 

"'Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people,' said Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, her book about writing."

"'It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life . . .' But it’s not a choice, really. I am sure that whatever stopped Harper Lee from writing a second book, she’d have preferred the impediment not to be there. And Salinger, in that pitiful late-snatched photograph, didn’t look like a man who was enjoying his royalty checks and a few rounds of golf. Nor could the problem have been resolved by stern self-admonishment and a determination to let things go next time around. Any perfectionist needs to stop being who they are, and that’s hard. I understand Prince and Dickens better than I understand the perfectionists."

Writes Nick Hornby, in "Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius" (Amazon).

"Country Pie is not about sex, its a cute song about liking pie!"

The best answer to the question "Are there any songs where you're convinced the fan "consensus" interpretation is wrong about Bob Dylan's lyrics?" (at r/bobdylan).

Somebody asks "What do you do with this lyric though? 'Saddle me up my big white goose Tie me on 'er and turn her loose" and gets the answer "It's a riff on Mother Goose with the surreal imagery of Dylan riding a goose. Sexual? Um, maaybe..."

The lyrics at Genius are annotated with this 1987 quote from Bob Dylan: "People try and read so much into songs. You know that song, Country Pie? That’s what it was about. Pie."

Album version here.

"which piece of public art in Madison disturbs you most?"

A topic of discussion at r/madisonwi.

There are so many to choose from, but the biggest rivalry is between "Flayed Bucky by the Best Western on Highland by UW Hospital" and "The sculpture of the parents reaching out to their dead child in the cemetery on Speedway Road."

About that dead child sculpture, someone says:

I actually like that sculpture, although I'm probably not in the majority. If you ask me "how can I feel more alive?" I'd parrot Martin Heidegger, "spend more time in graveyards."

EDIT: Now that I know it's a "memorial" against abortion I don't like it anymore.

There's also "The turd on top of a pyramid on Regent Street" and the "crowning woman" and "The pale yellow man resting on the bike bridge at Jenifer Street." And "The plaques along Picnic Point that showcase monetary donations and ego over nature and historically sacred land." 

Way too many people bring up the "footballs penis" and need to be told that was excised.

It's pretty hilarious that there was such a wealth of bad public art around here to choose from. 

"While violence is never the ideal, self-defense has a morally universal appeal and justification."

"And there comes a time when defense is the only option, when standing upright is the only appropriate posture. Describing the events in this case, even Montgomery’s police chief pointed out that members of the riverboat’s crew 'came to Mr. Pickett’s defense.'"

Writes Charles M. Blow in "The Montgomery Brawl Was, for Some, a Clarifying Moment" (NYT).

This is the incident we discussed here 2 days ago, in "The joy that Black people across the country are feeling over the Montgomery Riverfront Uprising, aka the Alabama Sweet Tea Party, is filling my soul."

The better term for what happened, rather than "self-defense," is "defense of others." One man was attacked by a few men and badly outnumbered, and those men, in turn, were badly outnumbered by a much larger group that came in on the side of the one man. It got chaotic, and what happened seems to have gone well beyond what was needed to rescue that man. As a viewer of the viral video, you may find yourself enjoying that extra dose of payback.

ADDED: As I said in the comments to the 2-day-old post: "It really is an example of 'try that in a small town.'" I hope Charles Blow and others who are finding some form of joy in that video take a new look at what Jason Aldean was singing about.