"The book will... allege that Trump and his father, Fred Trump Sr, contributed to the death of Trump's alcoholic elder brother Fred Trump Jr by failing to help him."

From "Donald Trump’s niece reveals in new book that she leaked details of his 'fraudulent' tax schemes, alleges he contributed to his brother’s death and says his retired federal judge sister disapproves of him" (Daily Mail).

The niece is the daughter of the brother who died. It's sad to think about what could have been done to prevent a death — sad to look for living persons to blame.

Most of the time, we soothe the survivors and tell them there's nothing they could have done, and when we choose to say, no, there are things you could have done that you did not do, it is probably not because those things were more obvious or had more potential to help.

"'Now there’s an IQ test,' said another prominent Hamptons media figure. 'I’d have to be insane to let you quote me.'"

From "Newsrooms Are in Revolt. The Bosses Are in Their Country Houses/Those who can afford it left the city, shining a spotlight on class divisions in the media" (NYT).

Were media leaders in the right place to cover the horror of the early days of the outbreak, when they weren’t being kept awake by sirens? And did they overplay the violent fringes of protests, when they’ve been overwhelmingly peaceful and the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer? Walking with a television executive past boutiques on Newtown Lane in East Hampton last week, I tried to convince him that his teenage children would be fine walking around their native Upper East Side unaccompanied. During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police; but the mood away from the police billy clubs was not exactly the Reign of Terror. (Though stay tuned: When The New York Times forced out the opinion editor James Bennet over a controversial column a week ago, two employees reacted in Slack with a slackmoji of the word “guillotine,” prompting internal complaints, a Times reporter said. “We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues but there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in response.)

Fists — a blackface fist and Biden doing fists.

At Drudge right now:

The link on "Long, Hot Summer" goes to "In Miami-Dade, dueling rallies in support of Black Lives Matter and President Trump" (Miami Herald). I don't really know what's in that article that justifies the photograph of what I'm calling a blackface fist or that headline using a phrase that back in the 1960s meant there would be "race riots" in the city all summer....



It's got to be to chime with that blackface fist that Drudge chooses 2-fisted Biden to illustrate "POLL: Trump losing female vote by historic margin..." That picture is one of several pictures at the link, which goes to "LADY TROUBLES/Trump ‘losing female vote to Biden by a historic margin not seen in more than 50 years’ – but men still on his side'" (The Sun).  In that poll, Biden has a 20-point advantage with women, and Trump has a 2-point advantage with men. Polls — who believes them?! But why 2 fists when the issue is his appeal to women? Don't we imagine that the female preference for Biden over Trump is that he seems to be a kinder, gentler fellow?

Perhaps Drudge means to suggest that women are going to need a strong protector, and there's Biden, balling up his fists — does he look adequate to fight for you, as this "long, hot summer" comes on? In that light, consider the third item in my screen shot: "Winston Churchill's picture mysteriously vanishes from Google amid rising tensions" (knewz):

Searches for ‘British prime minister’ and ‘World War 2 generals’ called up photos of everyone else but the legendary British prime minister — just after his statue in London was defiled. The images were eventually restored. The picture of Winston Churchill suspiciously vanished from Google search results on Saturday just as the legendary British prime minister was under siege from racial justice protesters in the United Kingdom. The images reappeared about 12 hours later on Sunday, with Google saying it was an unintentional “updating issue.”

The old-school belligerent male protector is disappearing from the scene, and all we've got left is old man Biden, because the women seem to think he'll have to do.

"The scope of what some museums now call 'rapid response collecting' has expanded significantly in recent years."

"Curators often mingle with crowds, scoop up fliers and ask people to part with signs, or perhaps a piece of clothing. Such collecting has taken place at demonstrations around the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown."

From "Museums Collect Protest Signs to Preserve History in Real Time/Curators surveyed the area outside the White House on Wednesday for artifacts that will help record the emotional turmoil" (NYT).

They swoop in.

This morning, driving to the sunrise, at the turtle crossing, we saw birds picking over the smashed body of a plate-sized turtle.



I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.

"The only thing I’ll tell you is she never spoke directly to a person. She always spoke through her dog, and in a baby voice. It was really bizarre."

Said a 60-year-old woman named Maria Meade, who lived near Amy Cooper, the woman in the story "How 2 Lives Collided in Central Park, Rattling the Nation/The inside story of the black birder and the white woman who called the police on him. Their encounter stirred wrenching conversations about racism and white privilege" (NYT).

Another neighbor, Marisol De Leon, 40, said Ms. Cooper frequently walked Henry unleashed, and became irate when told not to. “There was a sense of entitlement,” Ms. De Leon said.

Alison Faircloth, 37, a neighbor and dog owner, recalled that last winter, she came upon Ms. Cooper on the verge of tears outside the building’s lobby. A doorman had cursed at her for no reason, Ms. Cooper told her. Ms. Cooper vowed to get the doorman fired, Ms. Faircloth said. But when Ms. Faircloth asked the doorman what had happened, he told her that Ms. Cooper had complained about a broken elevator, then cursed at him after she barged into a security booth and had to be removed by a guard.

“There’s always a narrative from her about someone who has done her wrong,” Ms. Faircloth said.

ADDED: Bob Boyd said:

It's too bad nobody got her on video cursing the door man through her dog in a baby voice.

I'd like to see that.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you like.

And do think of using the Althouse Portal to Amazon, if you are shopping.

"... without barely a wimpier..."

Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet these same weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020

"It was while in the lower house of Congress that Franklin Pierce took that stand on the slavery question from which he has never since swerved a hair’s breadth."

"He fully recognized, by his votes and by his voice, the rights pledged to the South by the Constitution.... [W]hen the first imperceptible movement of agitation had grown to be almost a convulsion, his course was still the same. Nor did he ever shun the obloquy that sometimes threatened to pursue the northern man who dared to love that great and sacred reality — his whole, united, native country — better than the mistiness of a philanthropic theory.... With his view of the whole subject, whether looking at it through the medium of his conscience, his feelings, or his intellect, it was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that great object unquestionably demanded.... Those northern men, therefore, who deem the great causes of human welfare as represented and involved in this present hostility against southern institutions, and who conceive that the world stands still except so far as that goes forward,— these, it may be allowed, can scarcely give their sympathy or their confidence to the subject of this memoir. But there is still another view, and probably as wise a one. It looks upon slavery as one of those evils which divine Providence does not leave to be remedied by human contrivances, but which, in its own good time, by some means impossible to be anticipated, but of the simplest and easiest operation, when all its uses shall have been fulfilled, it causes to vanish like a dream. There is no instance, in all history, of the human will and intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it adapted to that end; but the progress of the world, at every step, leaves some evil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify."

From "The Life of Franklin Pierce" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, consulted on the occasion of the University of New Hampshire's idea that maybe it ought to rename its Franklin Pierce Law School.

Trump retweets Michael Moore.

Michael Moore: I‘m ‘Begging‘ Dems -- Don‘t Underestimate White Male Trump Supporter‘s ‘Rage,‘ ‘Emotion‘ https://t.co/IktLtIZNgZ via @BreitbartNews Well, he got it right in 2016?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020

"So... I don't get what's 'problematic' with Madonna's putting her son's incredible dance on Insta? Thanks, in any case, it was great to see it."

That's the first comment I read on the New York Magazine article, "What Do We Want From White Celebrities Right Now?" Here's the section that labels Madonna "problematic":

[S]ome celebs have shown up to protest. Others have “opened up their purses” and lent their voices to decry racism and support detailed and specific calls for reform. But just like the rest of us, they have some problematic colleagues: Madonna celebrating her son’s interpretive solidarity dance; Ashton Kutcher posting an incongruously emotional video about Black Lives Matter that veered off on a bizarre and lengthy tangent about parenting; Ellen DeGeneres tweeting “for things to change, things must change”; Drew Brees’s willfully ignorant understanding of peaceful protests and inability to have his mind opened by the steady murders of Black people on film.... More of these bizarre blathers will surely come....

Here's Madonna's son's interpretative solidarity dance. The son is black, it helps to know. You can judge for yourself. According to Madonna: "David Dances to honor and pay tribute to George and His Family and all Acts of Racism and Discrimination that happen on a daily basis in America." Yes, it's miswritten. She didn't mean "to honor...  all Acts of Racism," but that is what she said.

Maybe I don't understand the way dance works these days. I was driving home this morning at 5:30 a.m. and a man up ahead of me was crossing the street in the middle of the block. I drove slowly. It didn't matter to me. There was a red light up ahead anyway. Midway through his crossing, he did a little dance, complete with pirouette. Was he dancing for me? Was he honoring some abstraction?

There was this guy...



And this...

Wild indigo.

In the sunrise light — at 5:25 — the white flowers look yellow. Why are white flowers called "indigo"? The scientific name is Baptisia lactea — and "Baptisia" is based on the Greek word for "dye." I'm a little confused about whether the wild indigo with white flowers was used to make dye. I think the answer is yes, because the dye is made from the leaves. Here are some instructions, and, by the way, a major ingredient is urine.

This was my best sunrise picture. Today was a Type #3 sunrise — completely clear sky — and the sun had already crossed the shoreline when I reached my vantage point. It doesn't work to aim the camera right at the unclouded sun. You have to get your picture when the sun first peeks over the line or point your camera at something else.

"We will not sell facial-recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology."

Said Microsoft President Brad Smith, quoted in "Microsoft won’t sell police its facial-recognition technology, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM" (WaPo).

"[W]hen things get real — really murderous, really tragic, really violent or aggressive — my white, liberal, educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read."

"And talk about their reading. What they do is listen. And talk about how they listened. What they do is never enough. This isn’t the time to circle up with other white people and discuss black pain in the abstract; it’s the time to acknowledge and examine the pain they’ve personally caused. Black people live and die every day under the burdens of a racism more insidious than the current virus that’s also disproportionately killing us. And yet white people tend to take a slow route to meaningful activism, locked in familiar patterns, seemingly uninterested in really advancing progress. Theirs is still a world of signs and signaling, where actions like joining book clubs — often based in some 'meaningfully curated' readings that are probably easy to name: 'White Fragility,' 'How to Be an Anti-Racist,' 'Between the World and Me,' maybe even 'All About Love' — take precedence.... [In social media] people write long posts about the need to examine white privilege, to 'name white supremacy,' and to either proudly denounce family members or call them in to conversations.... ... I know what happens next. In a handful of Sundays, my social media feeds will no longer have my white allies 'This'-ing, or unpacking their whiteness or privilege, or nudging their kids to put down their tablets and march. Their book clubs will do what all book clubs do: devolve into routine reschedulings and cancellations; turn into collective apologies for not doing the reading or meta-conversations about what everyone should pretend to read next; finally become occasional opportunities to catch up over wine...."

From "When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs/I’m caught in a time loop where my white friends and acquaintances perform the same pieties over and over again" by Tre Johnson (WaPo). If you're wondering what, in Johnson's view, is the right response, I can pick out the 2 words where he says it, and when you see them, you may think it's no wonder white people don't just snap to it and do what needs to be done: "dismantle systems."

ADDED: I read the top few highest-rated comments at the link, and they were all taking issue with Johnson's stereotyping of white people. What percentage of white people react to racial strife by cuddling up in book clubs murmuring about "White Fragility" and "Between the World and Me"?

"Melania has been overheard referring to Ivanka as 'The Princess'.... Ivanka, when younger, called Melania 'The Portrait' because she spoke as often as one."

Writes Dwight Garner in "A New Book Brings Melania Trump Into (Slightly) Better Focus" (NYT). Also:

[Melania] spends much of her time with Barron and her parents. Barron speaks Slovenian...  “Trump has complained to others,” [author Mary] Jordan writes, “that he has no idea what they are saying.”...

[O]ne of her former New York roommates... told the author that Melania, in those pre-Trump days, liked to watch “Friends,” ate seven fruits and vegetables a day, didn’t drink alcohol and walked with weights on her ankles to keep toned.

Jordan confirms that the first lady and her husband sleep in separate bedrooms. He likes darkly colored walls and rugs; she prefers light ones. They rarely seem to interact. He uses Irish Spring soap....

When someone once hazarded a joke about Trump’s penis size, the author writes, Melania replied, “Don’t say this — he’s a real man.”

Donald Trump appears to dwell in the White House, for the most part, like a sultan among his pillows. Melania is self-exiled with her parents and son. On many days, Jordan writes, her press office doesn’t answer questions about where she is....

"I’d just like to say Woody Allen is a great, great filmmaker and this cancel thing is not just Woody. And I think when we look back on it..."

"... we are going to see that — short of killing somebody — I don’t know that you can just erase somebody like they never existed."

Said Spike Lee on the radio on Friday, New York Magazine reports.

On Saturday, he was all: "I Deeply Apologize. My Words Were WRONG. I Do Not And Will Not Tolerate Sexual Harassment, Assault Or Violence. Such Treatment Causes Real Damage That Can't Be Minimized.-Truly, Spike Lee."

Deeply!

So he thought when he would look back on it, he'd see that you can't really just erase somebody who's done some great work, but the looking back happened the very next day and he looked back and saw that he was WRONG. That is, the new position, which he feels very deeply, is that you can just erase somebody like they never existed. And "this cancel thing" really can be just about Woody. Isolate that one man and erase him. It won't have a wider effect. It can be as if he never existed!

Is there something physically wrong with President Trump?

then, there’s the stairs. pic.twitter.com/ngwru8TTNy

— Lipstick Killer (@lipstickkills) June 13, 2020

Watch both videos, then say which of these things is most likely:

Nothing at all wrong here.

Minor problems — perhaps the heat, aging, aches and pains, sleep deprivation.

Might be a major health problem.

Fakery. To distract us and to have a health reason if he needs to withdraw from the 2020 race.

 

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