At the Saturday Night Café...

 ... you can talk all night.

"To Trump's team, it was three strikes — and now officially out of favor — for Zelensky. "

"In their eyes, Zelensky already had two strikes against him when he sat down with Trump and Vance.... Strike 3 against Zelensky: He disagreed publicly with Vance, who accused Zelensky of trying to 'litigate' his case before the media.... Strike 2 came just before Friday's meeting, when Zelensky arrived at the White House without a suit or jacket, as requested.... Strike 1... came Feb. 15, when Zelensky publicly trashed a proposed mineral rights deal with Ukraine that he privately had discussed the day before in Munich with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The plan Friday was for Zelensky to sign a new version of the deal as part of a plan to end the war. That didn't happen.... The meeting was largely uneventful until Zelensky addressed Vance directly and asked how diplomacy would work with a lying killer like Putin. 'No one expected Zelensky to walk in there and act like such a petulant child, constantly frowning and shaking his head and DJT and JD had had enough,' one Republican close to the administration told Axios via text...."

From "'Three strikes': Inside the Trump-Vance fury with Zelensky" (Axios).

"Body-language and behavioral expert Darren Stanton said he thought Zelensky appeared 'quite angry from the outset' and got 'caught up in his own ego.'"

"At one point while Vance is talking, Zelensky moves from leaning forward to leaning back with his arms crossed, showing a 'dramatic change in inner emotion' that Stanton believed was the moment Zelensky realized 'he was going to leave.' 'He felt he wasn’t getting his points across or wasn’t allowed to,' Stanton said, adding that he also thought Trump was greatly frustrated by Zelensky, despite remaining stone-faced."

From "Body-language experts break down the dramatic Trump-Zelensky meeting/The row between Trump and Zelensky was heightened by the lack of an interpreter, the power imbalance, and the men’s TV backgrounds, body-language experts say" (WaPo).

"Until this week, government officials had resisted answering inquiries as to who was formally in charge of [DOGE], except to say that it was not Mr. Musk."

"(Nor is Mr. Musk among its employees, the government said.) On Tuesday, a White House official said that Amy Gleason, a former health care investment executive, was serving as the acting administrator. On Friday, Joshua E. Gardner, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s civil division, denied that Mr. Musk had any role with the Department of Government Efficiency. This despite Mr. Musk’s clearly driving its initiatives, including an email blasted out last weekend that attempted to require all federal employees to respond with a list of five accomplishments from the previous week. Although the email was sent by the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources arm, Mr. Musk said on Wednesday that he had suggested it and that the president had approved...."

"Judge Appears Skeptical of Claims That Musk Isn’t Driving DOGE/The judge prodded government lawyers for additional clarity on Elon Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of his operation and his part in the rapid reshaping of government" (NYT).

The argument is that the Appointments Clause applies and Senate confirmation is required because Musk is a "principal officer" and not an "inferior officer." I'll just give you this quote from the 1988 Supreme Court case, Morrison v. Olson:

Space tourism is idiotic... as is the use of the word "historic" to describe non-achievements by women.

But The Daily Mail tells us: "Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King have left fans shocked after it was announced they are heading to space. It was revealed on Thursday that the Jeff Bezos's partner, 55, the pop star, 40, and the news anchor, 70, are part of the Blue Origin's historic all-women crew, which will blast off in the spring."

The fan "shock" is only over the sheer randomness. Katy Perry in space! I wasn't thinking about that.

As for "historic"... I'm reminded of the old Samuel Johnson quote: "Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." That is, calling this non-achievement "historic" is actually a sexist putdown.

To wallow in the idiocy, watch Lauren Sanchez do TikTok:

"I'm going to start referring to Donald Trump as the thinking man's President."

Overheard at Meadehouse.

I'd asked Meade (and Grok) about the adjectival phrase "thinking man's," which came up this morning in the comments on the post about Donald Trump's pardoning of Pete Rose, baseball being, some say, "the thinking man's sport."

Googling jogged my memory: "The Thinking Man's" is a Playboy phrase (apparently, you need to think to deal with women):

The Zs and what they wore.

Yes, there was Zelensky, in his traditional wartime outfit, taunted by Trump and Vance for not wearing a suit, but there was also Zuckerberg, more forcibly eschewing the suit:

NEW: Mark Zuckerberg rips off his suit and starts performing in a blue jumpsuit at his wife's 40th birthday party.

What

The billionaire surprised his wife at her birthday party by wearing singer Benson Boone’s jumpsuit that he used during his 2025 Grammy performance of… pic.twitter.com/ompbHIW8mp

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 1, 2025

ADDED: Did Trump taunt Zelensky about his clothes? I was thinking about what he said when Zelensky first arrived — "Hey, you're all dressed up" — but I see that after Vance went hard on the clothing issue, Trump said: "And I do like your clothing, by the way":

"Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!"

Writes Donald Trump (on Truth Social):

Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as “Charlie Hustle,” into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME! Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!

I'm disconcerted that the President of the United States wrote "betted," but I'm amused at the metaphorical flourish of "dying all over the place" and "fat, lazy ass." 

To me, "betted" is embarrassingly wrong, but I see Shakespeare used it. From the OED:

1600 Iohn a Gaunt loued him well, and betted much money on his head. W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 iii. ii. 44

If you use "fat, lazy ass" metaphorically — baseball doesn't even have an ass — you do flout the niceties of the body acceptance movement, but Trump is well aware that his own ass is fat and thus presents a big target for his antagonists. He doesn't care. It's a fat ass, but emphatically not a lazy ass.

Sunrise — 6:34.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

3+ hours of Joe Rogan and Elon Musk.

I'm listening, but so far it's mostly Joe and Elon enthusing about sex robots. They're only listening to a "female" A.I. voice that keeps insulting them, and they keep saying she sounds "hot."

Joe: "See, she could get away with this if she's really hot, like this kind of behavior. You can totally get through life as a hot woman and be super successful with that kind of behavior. But you gotta be really hot to pull off that attitude."

Podscribe has a transcript. That's helpful in figuring out where to jump ahead.

Trump and Vance get remarkably intense with Zelensky.

ADDED: The scene is described by Peter Baker for the NYT: "Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance castigated Mr. Zelensky for not being grateful enough for U.S. support in its war with Russia and sought to strong-arm him into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictate. With voices raised and tempers flaring, Mr. Trump threatened to abandon Ukraine altogether if Mr. Zelensky did not go along. Talking over the Ukrainian leader, Mr. Vance told Mr. Zelensky that it was 'disrespectful' for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the American news media and demanded that he thank Mr. Trump for his leadership. Mr. Trump jumped in and told the Ukrainian leader, 'You’re not really in a good position right now” and that “you’re gambling with World War III.' 'You’re either going make a deal or we’re out,” Mr. Trump added. “And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.' The exchange in front of television cameras was one of the most dramatic moments ever to play out in public in the Oval Office...."

AND: "This is gonna be great television — I'll tell you that."

Things that explain a lot.

This image, for example:

Here's a free-access link to the column, which is by William Shoki, a journalist in Cape Town. So read for the content if you want, on your own.

What I want is to talk about the image. He's green. The little green man from Mars. But more importantly, his head is cut off, the top of his head, and it is cut off by a shape that is not a rectangle. It is angled....

And note the angled shadow across his neck.

Inciting a peaceful and patriotic riot.

Mmm. First time I'm noticing that the word "riot" is present in "patriotic."

On January 6th, 2021, Trump famously said "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Today, I'm reading: "Why Aren’t We in the Streets? On Trump the Almighty and his so-far quiescent capital," by Susan Glasser, in The New Yorker.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Rewrite "Takin’ It to the Streets" with words that express the feelings of someone who would write an article titled "Why Aren’t We in the Streets? On Trump the Almighty and his so-far quiescent capital."

Inspiration for parodists:

"There is a deep irony here. If there is an operating philosophy driving the Trump White House, it is that of the unitary executive..."

"... the idea that the president is the sole and exclusive wielder of a broad and expansive executive power. This includes the power to dismiss federal employees at will as well as the power to resist congressional statutes or judicial decisions that encroach on executive authority.... Trump may be working from an expansive theory of executive power, but in delegating so much of his authority to Musk... he is both undermining that power and demonstrating [Alexander] Hamilton’s real insights about the importance of a singular executive. Hamilton wrote that 'plurality in the executive' tends to 'conceal faults and destroy responsibility.'... Hamilton says that 'the multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection…. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author.' It is hard to imagine a better description of our current situation, in which the presence of what are essentially two presidents has blurred lines of accountability for 'pernicious measures.'... If and when disaster strikes, Musk can walk away. After all, he isn’t really the president. The buck will stop with Trump and the Republican Party, because if Musk cannot be held politically liable, they will be."

Writes Jamelle Bouie, in "The Bewildering Irony Behind the Trump-Musk Partnership" (NYT)(free-access link).

But Trump himself says "The buck stops here":

And isn't it rich — isn't it ironic — to hear Trump antagonists rail about concealment and lack of clear lines of responsibility when they did not seem to care much about the radical opacity of the "Biden" administration? We're supposed to worry now about the "multiplication of the executive" when you didn't worry about the absence of any true executive and nothing but a multiplicity of executive substitutes?

"The diagnosis of online irony poisoning tends to understate the extent to which social media’s rightward drift regulates so much else in life..."

"... establishing the terms and the tenor by which we enter that bustling intersection called discourse. The comedification of America has become the memeification of America.... The puerile hasn’t confabbed with the establishment so much as replaced it, with the latter’s permission. Jokes mingle with cruel and lethal austerity measures. At the podium during a rally held after the Presidential Inauguration, Musk raised a stiff right arm in what looked like a Nazi salute yet it was laughed off by the Anti-Defamation League as just an 'awkward gesture.' This month, Musk briefly changed his profile name on X, the social platform he owns, to Harry Bōlz, a brilliant display of homophonic potty humor that prompted a surge in an obscure cryptocurrency by the same name. This is where America lives and what America does. Nothing is funny, but everything is. And therein lies a sense of impotence, because our ability to discern the consequential ghoulishness of this nation’s policies–LOL that’s crazy!–doesn’t in and of itself constitute resistance.... Laughter does not speak for itself. We must ask after it.... We ask the universe, as one memesmith did, 'does anyone know if we have to maintain our senses of kindness and empathy despite the world constantly trying to destroy the individual and destroy feelings in impersonal society tomorrow.'"

Writes Lauren Michele Jackson, in "The End of Seriousness/Our unfunny times are rife with laughter that seldom offers relief" (The New Yorker).

I get to use my "Era of That's Not Funny" tag again.

How are you doing in the bustling intersection called discourse?

"The male reproductive system, in particular, seems to be under plastic assault."

"Men with severe erectile dysfunction were found to have up to seven types of plastic in their penises. (That study, published in 2024 by researchers in Miami, was the first to detect microplastics in human penile tissue, which was extracted from six individuals who were undergoing surgery to get an inflatable prosthesis.) Microplastics have also been found in human semen samples. One experiment conducted in China, from October, found that all the semen and urine samples from 113 men contained microplastics. The samples that contained Teflon (the chemical PTFE), which coats cooking utensils, cutting boards, and nonstick pans, had reduced sperm quality, lower total sperm numbers, and reduced motility...."

From "There’s a Spoon’s Worth of Plastic in Our Brains. Now What? An investigation into what microplastics are doing to our bodies" (NY Magazine).

ADDED: Ironically, the inflatable prosthesis is plastic. 

AND: