One minute after sunrise.

This morning at 6:36 Central Standard Time.

An interesting sequence of horizontal clouds. Everybody's looking for the ladder.

"Your insurance is like a bad boyfriend."

Elizabeth Warren (played by Kate McKinnon) is questioned by a pretty young woman (played by new SNL cast-member Chloe Fineman):

The President of the United States enjoys getting called "a bad motherfucker."

Great fight Champ! https://t.co/URRR7vnSCj

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019

For more info on Jorge Masvidal, here's "Jorge Masvidal drank liquor, ate pizza, and dissed Conor McGregor in his post-fight press conference after dominating Nate Diaz" (Business Insider):

Masvidal won every round in the main event at Madison Square Garden, New York on Saturday, popping his fists into Diaz's face with such consistency that the Californian was bloodied, cut, and told by a doctor that he could not continue. The fight was over.

The crowd may have booed at the result, wanting a more conclusive finish, but there was little more Masvidal could have done, as the Floridian fighter dropped Diaz multiple times, kicked him in the body, punched him on the ground, and was declared the "baddest mother f-----" in the game. He was even given a "BMF" belt by The Rock....

This was the event we're discussing in the first post of the day — "I wouldn't call that 'massively booed'... but then to tell you the truth, I don't know what UFC even is" — about the way the MSG crowd reacted to Trump's entering and taking his seat.

"The characters act as childishly as they talk, and discriminating picture-goers will, no doubt, laugh at them."

"There is nothing romantic about either Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart, for both look bedraggled throughout."

From a 1951 review of "The African Queen," quoted at Wikipedia. We watched the movie last night. I think it was about the 3rd time for both of us. I saw it in the 1970s when it was on TV for the first time (which was portrayed in the media then as a big event), and I watched it at least once in the 80s or 90s when my sons were growing up.

More from Wikipedia about the contemporary reviews: Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times called it "rather contrived and even incredible, but melodramatic enough, with almost a western accent, to be popularly effective." Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "a slick job of movie hoodwinking with a thoroughly implausible romance, set in a frame of wild adventure that is as whopping as its tale of off-beat love ... This is not noted with disfavor."

"Great playwriting often helps inform our views on American character and identity. The work of accomplished writers... has sparked crucial national conversations around issues of race, sexuality, and class."

Incredibly irritating attitude toward art emailed to me by The New Yorker:



Art... serving its function of getting us started in that national conversation about race/sex/class we're always crucially in need of having.

Oh, no, wait, it's not a conversation about race/sex/class. It's a conversation around race/sex/class. We've been circling for decades, rotating endlessly, never really getting to whatever the point was.

And it's not a conversation about race/sex/class. It's "race, sexuality, and class." We used to talk about sex...



Now, we talk about sexuality.

I mean... around sexuality.

Ricky laughs at the news/"news" of a "huge backlash."

😂https://t.co/3kdZKUazl2

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 2, 2019

Click through to the article to understand the controversy and to see a funny way to do a nonapology on Twitter. Oh, I know most of you won't click. Here:

This tweet upset some people yesterday so I think I should apologise and delete it and never make offensive jokes like this again. https://t.co/AbNKESkKHL

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 1, 2019

SNL's one comic idea about Elizabeth Warren — "jacked up and ready to pop off" — is that she finds nerdiness sexually exciting.

If you want to watch her writhe, gyrate, and mime copulation at the mention of any wonky concept, feast your eyes:

I wouldn't call that "massively booed"... but then to tell you the truth, I don't know what UFC even is.

Seems like a big deal. United... Fight Club? Whatever. Here's your President getting greeted at Madison Square Garden... you judge the reaction:

President Trump getting massively booed as he entered the Garden for #UFC244 pic.twitter.com/ZwmSxlQ4uL

— Rob Taub (@RTaub_) November 3, 2019

I hear lots of loud crowd noise, then a guy clearly booing. A guy who happens to be near the camera. And who would expect that a group that big — a group that didn't assemble for the purpose of rallying for Trump — not to include some Trump antagonists? What's nice is that Trump is willing to go to such a place and be seen. He's not cocooning with supporters.

And whatever UFC is — I'll look it up in a sec — isn't it one of those things where villains are popular and booing is part of the fun?

The Hill conveys the news/fake news with "Trump gets deluge of boos upon entering MSG prior to UFC 244"

Okay, I looked it up. UFC is Ultimate Fighting Championship...

... an American mixed martial arts promotion company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, that is owned and operated by parent company William Morris Endeavor. It is the largest MMA promotion company in the world and features the highest-level fighters on the roster....

With larger live gates at casino venues like the Trump Taj Mahal and the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the UFC secured its first television deal with Fox Sports Net....

William Morris Endeavor — I assume Trump has some connections to that talent agency. Let's see:

On September 14, 2015, WME acquired from Donald Trump the Miss Universe Organization, which produces the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants and related content....

These are businesses. Who knows how much Trump actually likes mixed martial arts fighting?! Anyway, I'm not surprise the crowd is loud and rowdy and a good portion of them get off on booing the President, and I'll bet that lots of mixed martial arts fans love Trump.

I'm trying to figure out what the 1,000 words would be. The Founders are toasting Nancy Pelosi... but...why?

A picture is worth 1,000 words. pic.twitter.com/yJog6lsNyq

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) November 2, 2019

It's unlikely Amy will be the Democratic nominee, but if she is, this post will be linked in my "How Amy lost me" retrospective. She's talking to me in a mindless cliché ("A picture is worth 1,000 words"), and she's sharing a cartoon that is not devoid of words and that has to label the caricatures "Founding Fathers" because the artist apparently thinks the picture is NOT even adequate to convey who the people being caricatured are, and she thinks a completely partisan vote straining to legitimatize the behind-closed-doors hearings is a cause for giddy, alcohol-soaked celebration.

I remember when Amy Klobuchar was sternly disapproving of beery revelry...

"I think that you’ve probably had beer," said Judge Kavanaugh...

Sen. Klobuchar: There’s never been a case where you drank so much that you didn’t remember what happened the night before?

Judge Kavanaugh: “I don't know. Have you?”
…
Klobuchar: “I have no drinking problem, Judge.”

Kavanaugh: “Nor do I.” https://t.co/yUhhJQiHtI pic.twitter.com/5TEAJET9Sb

— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 28, 2018

"A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry."

According to The Washington Post:

Three of President Trump’s top advisers met with him in the Oval Office in May, determined to convince him that the new Ukrainian leader was an ally deserving of U.S. support. They had barely begun their pitch when Trump unloaded on them.... In Trump’s mind, the officials said, Ukraine’s entire leadership had colluded with the Democrats to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. “They tried to take me down,” Trump railed.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the senior member of the group, assured Trump that the new Ukrainian president was different — a reformer in Trump’s mold who had even quoted President Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address, for which the three advisers had been present. But the harder they pushed in the Oval Office, the more Trump resisted. “They are horrible, corrupt people,” Trump told them....

“We could never quite understand it,” a former senior White House official said... “There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations they’d hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.”....

Trump’s hatred, they concluded, was ingrained, irrational and possibly irreversible.

"They’re women who, in their teens, realized that they were actually men, socially transitioned to the other sex, and then underwent hormone therapy..."

"... to change their bodies, faces, and voices to become transgender men. After varying amounts of time, however, they all realized they had made a big mistake, stopped testosterone therapy, and 'detransitioned' back to being who they were before.... They expressed not a smidgen of transphobia, just a pressing concern that many teenage women, particularly lesbians, struggling with gender dysphoria, have been convinced too quickly that the only solution is to change their sex. They worry that any kind of therapy apart from affirmation of transgender identity is now seen as transphobic, and that teens are able to get hormones far too easily.... In 2009–2010, there were reportedly 32 girls and 40 boys referred to the center for treatment. Since 2018, there have been 624 boys and 1,740 girls, overwhelmingly in their teens. One explanation is that, as stigma declined, more transgender kids identified themselves as such. But the shift toward girls, compared with boys, suggests that something else may be going on. Why should the female share of transgender patients suddenly shift from 44 percent to 74 percent girls in a decade?... [H]ow can you tell which gender-dysphoric kid is gay and just needs to be left alone, and which one is trans and needs urgent treatment?... How much of the extraordinary surge in transgender girls is related to their discomfort with being a lesbian?... I know that gender dysphoria throughout childhood is one thing; sudden gender dysphoria among teenage girls is another."

From "The Hard Questions About Young People and Gender Transitions" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).

ADDED: Sullivan never says the word "homophobic" — though he anguishes over what is and isn't "transphobic" — but he really is talking about homophobia.

Antifa in Madison?

We were driving on West Johnson Street right about where it crosses North Barrett, and we saw these guys:



I shot this through the rear window and chose it for display because of the visibility of the object in the man's hand:



On the other side of the Capitol Square, on the first block of East Washington, I saw these guys, perhaps converging on the same event at the square.



Did something happen today? I will need to look it up and will update the post if I find anything. Let me know what this looks like to you. Part of me clings to the hope that the guys in the first 2 pictures were going to a Halloween party — going as Antifa guys. Looking at the photos, I asked Meade, "Are those jackboots or are they just those guys' snow boots... kind of moon boots?" Meade said, "They're jackboots."



We also discussed what's in the cooler. Maybe beer. See? It could be a Halloween party. Do Antifa normally bring a cooler? Pulled in a little collapsible wagon? Does this add up to fun or thuggery? I don't like the seeming weapon in that one man's hand. The silly shoes give me hope... though Meade insists they're jackboots.

UPDATE: Here's video (on Facebook) showing the American flag group arriving at the Capitol and eventually participating in what seems to be a permitted rally. The other group can be seen (around 38:00) encountering them. The police keep the groups apart. There's a bit of yelling and taunting, but it seems more like hot air than any physical threat.

By the clock, this morning's sunrise was the year's latest sunrise — 7:33.

Tonight, we set our clocks back, so tomorrow's sunrise — though later to those of us who are living by the sun — comes with an earlier clock time: 6:35. The time of the sunrise will be later and later, by the clock, but it will never get as late 7:33 (not until we're back on Daylight Saving Time and November comes around again).

On the shortest day of the year, the first day of winter, the sun will rise at 7:25. You might think that, after that, the sunrise will come earlier and earlier, but that is not so! Even though the days will start getting longer, the sun will come up later and later, and it won't come up earlier until January 7th. But as late as those later and later sunrises get, they won't get as late — by the clock! — as it was today. The latest Central Standard Time sunrise is 7:29 — and that will be on January 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

The day-to-day changes in the sunrise time are much smaller on the shortest days of the year. So don't worry too much when the days get short. The darkness seems to come very fast in mid-fall, but then the rate of change slows immensely. The day length will very very gradually approach 9 hours and bottom out at 8 hours and 59 minutes then barely change. The rate of change will pick up again in mid-January, and we'll be back to 10 hours of sun by February 3rd and then 11 hours of sunlight by February 25th.

I haven't been going out in search of sunsets, but the earliest sunsets, in case you are wondering, come before the winter solstice. They will be at 4:22 (here in Madison) on December 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. That's how the sunrises can keep getting later, up into January, even as the days start getting longer after the solstice (which is on December 21st).

CORRECTION: I’d written “8 hours and 59 seconds” instead of “8 hours and 59 minutes.”

Why is Adam Schiff — as chair of the Intelligence Committee — running the impeachment inquiry?

The Washington Examiner examines:

While the Judiciary Committee has traditionally handled the impeachment process and has held those hearings in public, [its chair Jerry] Nadler had run afoul of Pelosi over his handling of the investigation and his decision to hold a series of highly partisan public hearings that were criticized by both parties.

Republicans believe Democratic leaders were looking for a way to transfer control to Schiff, who is more closely aligned with Pelosi and runs a committee that traditionally holds hearings behind closed doors....

The whistleblower complaint prompted Pelosi to give Schiff total control over impeachment proceedings that he has so far conducted mostly out of the public’s view.

And didn't the whistleblower consult with Schiff before filing the complaint? Yes. Here is the Washington Post (from October 2):

6 NYT reporters try to catch up with Trump in "How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in Over 11,000 Tweets."

Here. Lots of counting things — like the percentage of tweets containing personal insults — and lots of graphs. Lots of effort at analysis — slanted toward disparaging Trump (predictably shrinking from acknowledging his greatness as a genius of social media):

Early on, top aides wanted to restrain the president’s Twitter habit, even considering asking the company to impose a 15-minute delay on Mr. Trump’s messages. But 11,390 presidential tweets later, many administration officials and lawmakers embrace his Twitter obsession, flocking to his social media chief with suggestions. Policy meetings are hijacked when Mr. Trump gets an idea for a tweet, drawing in cabinet members and others for wordsmithing. And as a president often at war with his own bureaucracy, he deploys Twitter to break through logjams, overrule or humiliate recalcitrant advisers and pre-empt his staff.

“He needs to tweet like we need to eat,” Kellyanne Conway, his White House counselor, said in an interview.

If I were — like these reporters — into counting things, I would count the number of times this article uses the word "attack." As they look at Trump's tweeting, what they see is relentless attacking — like he's always agitated and angry. But I read Trump's tweets every day — his is one of the 310 Twitter accounts I follow — and I see lots of humor and good fun... in tweets that are also, of course, eligible for classification as an "attack."

The president has tweeted more attacks so far this year than in the previous two years combined. In total, he has attacked at least 630 people and things in 5,889 tweets since taking office.

Yes, he fluidly uses Twitter to defend himself. He's under constant attack and the media transmit and amplify the attacks. The NYT should have counted how many of 5,889 attack tweets were in defense after he'd been attacked. Trump calls himself a "counterpuncher." How true is that? The NYT doesn't say.

To its credit, the NYT does tell us that his campaign aides say that Trump is using Twitter stand up to what Trump has called "the unholy alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians, deep-state bureaucrats and the fake-news media" and that they think "his unvarnished writing, poor punctuation and increasing profanity on Twitter signals authenticity — a contrast to the polished, vetted, often anodyne social media style of most candidates." And the NYT gives the last word to Kellyanne Conway:

“It’s the democratization of information,” she said. Everyone receives Mr. Trump’s tweets at once — the stay-at-home mom, the plumber working on the sink, the billionaire executive, the White House correspondent.

“They all hear ‘ping,’” she said, “at the same time.”

ADDED: There's a second NYT article — "In Trump’s Twitter Feed: Conspiracy-Mongers, Racists and Spies" — which is about tweets Trump might be seeing because they tag him:

The president is also awash in an often toxic torrent that sluices into his Twitter account — roughly 1,000 tweets per minute, many intended for his eyes. Tweets that tag his handle, @realDonaldTrump, can be found with hashtags like #HitlerDidNothingWrong, #IslamIsSatanism and #WhiteGenocide. While filters can block offensive material, the president clearly sees some of it, because he dips into the frothing currents and serves up noxious bits to the rest of the world.

Anyone can tag him. It's absurd to try to hang this stuff on him. Really unfair. What is the actual process by which Trump looks at things as potentially retweetable? How about if I look for the ugliest hashtags in tweets that tag the NYT and its reporters?

Tools.

I was overwhelmingly elected to Congress. Twice. I’ve served nearly a decade in public office, earning voter trust every 2 yrs.

You are appointed by corporate media 2 spread the very nonsense voters rejected when they elected Trump.

Your views are the definition of useless. https://t.co/YVdVNzDDoy

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) November 2, 2019