It is incumbent on Pete to stop this shit dead in its tracks. If the media asks him about Black voters and homophobia, he needs to pivot and talk about homophobia writ large.
— 🍁Imani Gandied Yams is now IMANI GANDIED YAMS🍁 (@AngryBlackLady) November 4, 2019
This really ain’t it, homey https://t.co/uWBROVKR0a
November 4, 2019
Writ large.
"How would it be possible for a Ukraine investigation into Biden to be good for Trump politically unless it was also the kind of thing that voters in the United States would care about?"
"A federal appeals court on Monday rejected President Trump’s effort to block New York prosecutors from accessing his tax records and Trump’s sweeping claims of presidential immunity...."
"The case is one of several legal clashes testing the limits of presidential power that is expected to reach the Supreme Court as soon as this term. The Manhattan District Attorney is investigating hush-money payments made in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.... At oral argument last month, Trump’s private attorney William S. Consovoy told the court that the subpoena is a politically-motivated 'fishing expedition.' A sitting president, he said, cannot be investigated — or prosecuted — while in office, even for shooting someone on the streets of Manhattan. His assertion of 'temporary presidential immunity' came in response to a question about Trump’s own hypothetical from 2016, when he said as a candidate his political support was so strong that he could 'stand in the middle of Fifth Aveneu and shoot somebody' and not 'lose any voters.'"
WaPo reports.
So... wait for the Supreme Court.
That shooting business is a distraction. Colorful but meaningless.
WaPo reports.
So... wait for the Supreme Court.
That shooting business is a distraction. Colorful but meaningless.
"In the future, she believes time in blue space will be a mainstream, formalised response..."
"By working to characterise and quantify benefits, BlueHealth’s cross-disciplinary team hopes to establish how 'blue infrastructure' – the coast, rivers, inland lakes – can help tackle major public health challenges such as obesity, physical inactivity and mental health disorders. A 2016 paper... put the monetary value of the health benefit of engaging with the marine environment at £176m. Harnessing the power of blue space could also potentially help to alleviate inequality.... 'To go to the sea is synonymous with letting go... It could be lying on a beach or somebody handing you a cocktail. For somebody else, it could be a wild, empty coast. But there is this really human sense of: "Oh, look, there’s the sea" – and the shoulders drop.'"
From "Blue spaces: why time spent near water is the secret of happiness" by (The Guardian).
I don't know who's getting the £176m worth of health benefit here. Everyone in the world? Everyone in the U.K.? It can't be per person!
But I'm familiar with this idea of putting a monetary value on proximity to the "blue space" of water. The received wisdom in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980s was that our lakes were the equivalent of $20,000 in salary per year, so that, say, a $35,000 salary was really the same as a $55,000 salary in a place without lakes (or, I suppose, other "blue space").
Here's a screenshot of our lakefulness:
I'm not the first person to write "lakefulness" on the internet, but I am the first to write this slogan: Lakefulness is wakefulness.
And here's that quote from the first page of "Moby-Dick":
From "Blue spaces: why time spent near water is the secret of happiness" by (The Guardian).
I don't know who's getting the £176m worth of health benefit here. Everyone in the world? Everyone in the U.K.? It can't be per person!
But I'm familiar with this idea of putting a monetary value on proximity to the "blue space" of water. The received wisdom in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980s was that our lakes were the equivalent of $20,000 in salary per year, so that, say, a $35,000 salary was really the same as a $55,000 salary in a place without lakes (or, I suppose, other "blue space").
Here's a screenshot of our lakefulness:
I'm not the first person to write "lakefulness" on the internet, but I am the first to write this slogan: Lakefulness is wakefulness.
And here's that quote from the first page of "Moby-Dick":
Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.From this morning's sunrise glimpses:
"He saw real problems in society: The country was warehousing very sick people in horror houses pretending to be hospitals..."
"... our diagnostic systems were flawed and psychiatrists in many ways had too much power — and very little substance. He saw how psychiatric labels degraded people and how doctors see patients through the prism of their mental illness. All of this was true. In many ways, it is still true. But the problem is that scientific research needs to be sound. We cannot build progress on a rotten foundation. In disregarding Lando’s data and inventing other facts, Rosenhan missed an opportunity to create something three-dimensional, something a bit messier but more honest. Instead, he helped perpetuate a dangerous half-truth. And today, what we have is a mental-health crisis of epic proportions. Over 100,000 people with serious mental illnesses live on the streets, while we are chronically short of safe housing and hospital beds for the sickest among us...."
From "Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar" by Susannah Cahalan, who has a new book, "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness," about Stanford psychology and law professor David Rosenhan. The study had volunteers lying about hearing voices and getting themselves committed to mental hospitals so they could observe the place from the inside. One of the volunteers, Harry Lando, described the hospital as "a benign environment" where "agitated" people would "fairly quickly... tend to calm down." Rosenhan, we're told, dropped Lando's data from the study.
From "Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar" by Susannah Cahalan, who has a new book, "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness," about Stanford psychology and law professor David Rosenhan. The study had volunteers lying about hearing voices and getting themselves committed to mental hospitals so they could observe the place from the inside. One of the volunteers, Harry Lando, described the hospital as "a benign environment" where "agitated" people would "fairly quickly... tend to calm down." Rosenhan, we're told, dropped Lando's data from the study.
"Richard Nixon's most lasting rhetorical contribution to American politics came at the tail end of a 32-minute speech. Exactly 50 years ago Sunday..."
"... and less than a year into his presidency, Nixon presented his plan for a 'just peace' in what had become a Southeast Asian morass.... 'So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support,' he said. By this he was referring to the white working and middle classes of the nation's heartland, the 'non-shouters' and 'non-demonstrators' he had invoked a year earlier at the Republican National Convention.... Nixon understood that, by 1968, millions of white Americans detested what they saw as growing disrespect for authority and the American way.... ...Nixon neatly conflated the politics of resentment with the feeling of victimhood at the heart of many reactionaries' sense of identity. Society was rapidly changing, and they wanted no part of it. These 'forgotten Americans,' as Nixon called them, valued their all-white neighborhoods and schools, and they appreciated America's defense of the free world. So when Nixon promised 'law and order,' he sent a message that he would stop these changes by silencing activists on college campuses and keeping America's cities from burning.... [T]he 'silent majority' was about race, yes, but it was also about youth. Millions of patriotic Americans despised the young activists they saw on their television sets, viewing them as spoiled and elitist malcontents whose drug-induced protests were destroying the nation from within - while their non-college-going, working-class counterparts fought for the country in Vietnam.... Today it is President Donald Trump who is giving voice to this same white population. Like Nixon before him, Trump uses a celebration of the 'silent majority' - it's 'back,' he declared in 2015..."
From "How Richard Nixon captured white rage - and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump" by Scott Laderman (which I originally encountered at The Eagle, but I see that it's also in The Washington Post, here). Laderman is a history professor and the author of "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right." This new book is only 192 pages and costs $31.69 on Kindle — $107.70 as a hardback book. Those are some strange prices!
Anyway... I've had Nixon's "silent majority" speech noted on my calendar — on November 3rd — for a long time, and I really wanted to blog it for you as one of my "50 years ago today" posts. I tried watching the speech yesterday, but I could not make it. It is so awkward and painful:
Now that I know "silent majority" is at the very end, I'll recommend starting here, with "I know it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism or national destiny these days...":
Please note that Nixon's appeal to the great silent majority in this speech is completely about the Vietnam War. He's trying to summon support for his effort to "win the peace." There's nothing racial or anti-youth in this speech. There's nothing divisive in what he's saying: "Let us be united for peace." Of course, everyone I knew hated him. I was a couple months into my college career at the time, and I assure you we all hooted at the TV screen and regarded him as a horrendous villain, whatever he did.
From "How Richard Nixon captured white rage - and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump" by Scott Laderman (which I originally encountered at The Eagle, but I see that it's also in The Washington Post, here). Laderman is a history professor and the author of "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right." This new book is only 192 pages and costs $31.69 on Kindle — $107.70 as a hardback book. Those are some strange prices!
Anyway... I've had Nixon's "silent majority" speech noted on my calendar — on November 3rd — for a long time, and I really wanted to blog it for you as one of my "50 years ago today" posts. I tried watching the speech yesterday, but I could not make it. It is so awkward and painful:
Now that I know "silent majority" is at the very end, I'll recommend starting here, with "I know it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism or national destiny these days...":
Please note that Nixon's appeal to the great silent majority in this speech is completely about the Vietnam War. He's trying to summon support for his effort to "win the peace." There's nothing racial or anti-youth in this speech. There's nothing divisive in what he's saying: "Let us be united for peace." Of course, everyone I knew hated him. I was a couple months into my college career at the time, and I assure you we all hooted at the TV screen and regarded him as a horrendous villain, whatever he did.
Two hundred years ago this Nation was weak and poor. But even then, America was the hope of millions in the world. Today we have become the strongest and richest nation in the world. And the wheel of destiny has turned so that any hope the world has for the survival of peace and freedom will be determined by whether the American people have the moral stamina and the courage to meet the challenge of free world leadership.ADDED: In saying "to you, the great silent majority," he had to be leaving some people out. Like Hillary with her "basket of deplorables" or Romney with his 47%, Nixon had the idea that some Americans could not be reached. And he set this group to the side as he made his appeal. Just before he got to the part of the speech quoted above, he spoke of a minority, and these were the people exemplified by the protest sign, "Lose in Vietnam, bring the boys home." He said that "a vocal minority" can't "dictate" the policy. But he did address the minority with kind words:
Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.
I respect your idealism. I share your concern for peace. I want peace as much as you do.... I want to end [the war] so that the energy and dedication of you, our young people, now too often directed into bitter hatred against those responsible for the war, can be turned to the great challenges of peace, a better life for all Americans, a better life for all people on this earth.
"Well, I’ll tell you what. There have been stories written about a certain individual, a male, and they say he’s the whistleblower."
"If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he’s a Brennan guy, he’s a Susan Rice guy, he’s an Obama guy. And he hates Trump. And he’s a radical. Now, maybe it’s not him. But if it’s him, you guys ought to release the information."
(Via Washington Examiner, which unlike Trump, names the man.)
(Via Washington Examiner, which unlike Trump, names the man.)
November 3, 2019
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.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 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....
"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."
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.
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."
— 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:
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...
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....William Morris Endeavor — I assume Trump has some connections to that talent agency. Let's see:
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....
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.
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