"Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have reportedly agreed to film a fly-on-the-wall reality show..."

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were initially expected to only remain behind the camera for their multi-year deal with Netflix.... The pair will allow Netflix cameras to follow them for three months in a 'tasteful' docuseries as they go about their new life in ritzy Montecito, California.... Another source insisted that the docuseries will mostly focus on their 'philanthropy rather than what they get up to behind closed doors,' and it is not clear if cameras will be allowed in their new $14 million mansion.... 'We were told they had gone to California for greater privacy so it all appears rather hypocritical,' Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty Magazine, told The Sun. 'It is extraordinary. This is exactly what they said they wouldn’t do. The more they talk about themselves the more people will want them to do just that and won’t be interested in anything else they have to offer.'... [Piers Morgan said] 'At what point does the penny drop that she came over here, took our prince and now Mrs. Privacy is making a $150 million fly on the wall documentary where every part of their lives is going to be filmed?'"

From Page Six.

How dumb would they need to be to believe they could be paid $150 million to appear on camera doing philanthropy?! Of course, we must get inside their California mansion. But what will make them interesting in there? Him bumbling about and her running the show? Ha ha. I'm picturing something like Season 1 of "The Osbournes."

ADDED: Here's my post from the Harry-and-Meghan wedding day. I observed the body language:

Did anyone count the number of times Harry touched his face?... ... I don't want to be awful... but Harry kept touching and rubbing his face and I just couldn't help thinking about Harry's mother and what I know about the thoughts that rushed through her head on that day that the world watched her bogus "fairytale" wedding.... You can watch all sorts of couples get married — people congregate to witness weddings — but you can't know what the marrying minds are thinking. Is it wrong to look at the outward signs that there is a big disconnect between the spoken words and real person who is enduring the theatrical ritual?

I was trying to be discreet. In the comments, somebody said, "Can’t we just enjoy a wedding?," and I said:

I don't think it's right to enjoy watching the torment of a human being. So, no. But maybe your observation of human facial expression and body language is something you haven't developed or like to turn off when you're trying to have fun, but that's not me!

 Somebody else said, "Let us all aim to spread happiness," and I said:

So it's all about what goal you're hoping to achieve? But even if my main goal were to increase the happiness in the world, I would not believe that the way to do it is to encourage credulous sentimentality about marriage (especially the marriage of royalty).

The effort to cancel the one black person on the Court.

On the front page of The Washington Post right now:



Can you even guess what that's about? I tried and I guessed wrong. I thought maybe there was a prediction that Justice Thomas might be conscious of a likelihood that he'd be leaving the Court within the next 4 years and he might be swayed by a desire to control who appoints his replacement. But, no, that would also be a ground to demand that Justice Breyer recuse himself.

Here's the column. The reason is that he might be carrying a decades-long grudge against Joe Biden for the way he ran the Senate Judiciary Committee in the hearings on his confirmation.

"Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life."

"'The Apprentice,' along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million.... He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s. Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name.... There is far more useful information, he has said, in the annual financial disclosures required of him as president... [but] those public filings... simply report revenue, not profit. In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses.... [H]e has previously bragged that his ability to get by without paying taxes 'makes me smart,' as he said in 2016. But the returns, by his own account, undercut his claims of financial acumen, showing that he is simply pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out.... Mr. Trump’s elaborate dance and defiance have only stoked suspicion about what secrets might lie hidden in his taxes. Is there a financial clue to his deference to Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin?... [T]he tax records revealed no previously unknown financial connection...."

From the big NYT article about Trump's taxes, which we started talking about here, last night.

It's very interesting that the NYT, strongly motivated to find tax crimes and connections to Russia, seems to have only found that Trump might be a faker — not the billionaire business genius he purports to be. But, it seems, the main thing he is doing is putting more money into his businesses than he takes out, and that may be a wise or at least legally authorized way to run his affairs. Now, he's forced to explain that to us, and maybe we will be outraged that the tax laws are currently arranged to allow people to escape taxes, but maybe we will accept instruction that the outrage should be directed at Congress... even at Joe Biden.

Why didn't Joe Biden do something about the tax laws — in all those years as a Senator? Is it because laws like that are actually good or because he's been in cahoots with the wealthy for decades?

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

"Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750."

"He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.."

The NYT reports, saying that it "has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office."

At his press conference today, Trump called this "totally fake news."

ADDED: From "An Editor’s Note on the Trump Tax Investigation": "Some will raise questions about publishing the president’s personal tax information. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment allows the press to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters even when those in power fight to keep it hidden. That powerful principle of the First Amendment applies here."

"[Cat] Stevens said he had originally wanted to serve as a bridge between two great cultures, yet, while Islam welcomed its famous convert, western audiences were hostile."

"'On the other side, people said, "He is a bit of a traitor." He has "turned Turk," if you like. So I was often used as a bit of a spokesman, and I was useful for certain occasions.... I thought, "Everybody should get this," but it didn’t work out quite like that.'... One of the most upsetting times for Stevens, he reveals, was his portrayal as a supporter of the Iranian fatwa that forced the novelist Salman Rushdie into hiding in 1989. 'I was certainly not prepared or equipped to deal with sharp-toothed journalists,' he said. 'I was cleverly framed by certain questions. I never supported the fatwa. I had to live through that.'... Stevens emphasised the importance music has in his life once more. 'It is a mystical thing still. It is something that permeates our emotion, our soul, sometimes our intellect. Our body moves to it. I didn’t know where I was going but music helped me to get there.'"

From "Yusuf Cat Stevens on Islam, the fatwa and playing guitar again/The singer-songwriter tells Desert Island Discs about walking away from his fans, and the difficulties of following a spiritual path" (The Guardian).

"I never supported the fatwa" — you can believe that or not. He's crying "fake news." I choose to believe him, because I've always loved Cat Stevens.

Anticipating the debate, Trump and Biden call each other dumb.

Source: ABC News.

Biden predicted how Trump would debate and said: "It is going to be difficult. I know — I mean my guess it's going to be just straight attacks. They're gonna be mostly personal. That's the only thing he knows how to do. He doesn't know how to debate the facts because he's not that smart. He doesn't know that many facts."

I think he meant to criticize Trump for making personal attacks, but then he turned around and immediately made a personal attack on Trump: "he's not that smart."

For his part, at last night's rally, Trump said this about debating Biden: "He's a dumb guy. Always known as a dumb guy. But we look forward to seeing him in the debate. He's got a lot more experience. He's got 47 years. I've got 3 1/2 years. So we'll see. But he's got 47 years of experience,"

It seems that Trump is torn between wanting to tear Biden down and wanting to avoid giving him the advantage of low expectations.

Each says the other is dumb, so I'm looking forward to spending Tuesday night watching 2 dumb guys arguing with each other.

"Interviews with more than a dozen Democratic senators revealed broad support for disrupting the Supreme Court confirmation process, even if the strategy yields some collateral damage."

"Yet Democrats facing tough reelections and those who typically spurn delay tactics overwhelmingly support the hardball campaign, potentially putting them at increased risk of losing their seats. 'We know that the votes are not there [to block the nominee], but you do what you can to call attention to it,' said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent who could be pulled off the campaign trail as a result. 'The issue is that this is a power grab.'"

Politico reports.

The techniques are too boring to quote — Senate procedure stuff. Basically, delay tactics: "[I]f Schumer develops a cohesive strategy and has the support of the entire Senate Democratic Caucus, it could quickly become one of the most disruptive series of delay tactics in recent memory."

"In Russia, the dissident Aleksei Navalny uses withering sarcasm in his efforts to bring democracy to Russia."

"Navalny, now recovering in Germany from what apparently was an attempt by Russian officials to murder him with Novichok nerve gas, responded to Russian suggestions that he had poisoned himself: 'I boiled Novichok in the kitchen, quietly took a sip of it in the plane and fell into a coma,' he wrote on Instagram. 'Ending up in an Omsk morgue where the cause of death would be listed as "lived long enough" was the ultimate goal of my cunning plan. But Putin outplayed me.'... 'The grins of the people are the nightmares of the dictators,' wrote Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while in prison."

From "To Beat Trump, Mock Him/The lesson from pro-democracy fighters abroad: Humor deflates authoritarian rulers" by Nicholas Kristof (NYT).

"A Man Died After Eating a Bag of Black Licorice Every Day."

"That habit caused his potassium levels to drop precipitously, prompting a cardiac arrest, according to the study. He never regained consciousness after his collapse and died about 24 hours after he arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital.... Aspiring doctors are taught in medical school that black licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid, a plant extract that is often used as a sweetener in candies and other foods and can lead to dangerously low potassium levels if it is consumed in high enough doses. But it is rare to see a case of someone dying as a result of ingesting too much of the candy" (NYT).

Your blogger at dawn.

Photo by Meade.

A strange image, from Joe Biden: "We got to stop pouring flames on the fire."

Pouring flames? On fire?

The context is his remarks yesterday to the US Conference of Mayors (transcript):

This moment we’re facing now, isn’t a partisan moment. It’s an American moment.... It’s a chance for us to overcome anger and division that has hold [sic] us back of late for far too long. We can emerge from these crises.... If I’m elected, you will have direct access to the White House. I want to thank you all because we need you to build back better. You are the foundation stone, not a joke. You’re the ones leading away.... We got to stop the hate and the division now, we got to stop pouring flames on the fire, we got to start talking straight to the American people.... I’ve never been more optimistic... The blinders have been taken off the American people. They understand what’s going on now. They understand.... They want to get things done... and I want to make sure that your ideas are the ones that are funneled up. They don’t have to go through a state legislature, go through a governor. They can go straight to the federal government, straight to me....

Funneled up? I'm trying to picture that. Don't funnels work only downward, through gravity? Oh, I don't know!



That's a detail from the Hieronymus Bosch painting "Cutting the Stone," which appears at the Wikipedia article "Funnel." There, I learn something about the idea of a funnel working upward instead of downward:

The inverted funnel is a symbol of madness. It appears in many Medieval depictions of the mad; for example, in Hieronymus Bosch's Ship of Fools and Allegory of Gluttony and Lust....

And in "Cutting the Stone." Michel Foucault, "History of Madness," had something to say about that doctor in an inverted funnel hat: "Bosch's famous doctor is far more insane than the patient he is attempting to cure, and his false knowledge does nothing more than reveal the worst excesses of a madness immediately apparent to all but himself."

There's also inverted funnel hat worn by the Tin Woodman in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."  It's not mentioned in the text of the book. It comes from the imagination of the the first illustrator,  W. W. Denslow:

"I clerked for Justice Scalia more 20 years ago, but the lessons I learned still resonate. His judicial philosophy is mine too. A judge must apply the law as written."

"Judges are not policymakers and they must be resolute and setting aside any policy views they might hold. The president has asked me to become the ninth justice. And as it happens, I’m used to being in a group of nine, my family. Our family includes me, my husband Jesse, Emma, Vivian, Tess, John Peter, Liam, Juliet and Benjamin. Vivian and John Peter, as the president said, were born in Haiti and they came to us five years apart when they were very young. And the most revealing fact about Benjamin, our youngest, is that his brothers and sisters unreservedly identify him as their favorite sibling. Our children obviously make our life very full. While I am a judge, I’m better known back home as a room parent, carpool driver and birthday party planner. When schools went remote last spring, I tried on another hat, Jesse and I became co-principals of the Barrett E-learning Academy.... Our children are my greatest joy, even though they deprived me of any reasonable amount of sleep. I couldn’t manage this very full life without the unwavering support of my husband Jesse, at the start of our marriage, I imagined that we would run our household as partners, as it has turned out. Jesse does far more than his share of the work. To my chagrin, I learned at dinner recently that my children consider him to be the better cook. For 21 years, Jesse has asked me every single morning what he can do for me that day. And though I almost always say, 'Nothing,' he still finds ways to take things off my plate. And that’s not because he has a lot of free time, he has a busy law practice. It’s because he is a superb and generous husband.And I am very fortunate. Jesse and I have a life full of relationships, not only with our children, but with siblings, friends and fearless babysitters...."

Said Amy Coney Barrett (transcript).

"There is no question some ballots will be mailed to people who have died, or moved or are no longer eligible to vote."

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony. And even when isolated instances like this happen, they don’t swing presidential elections.... There is also no question that some election administrators... will make errors in handling ballots. There are weak links in our election process.... There are a few steps that election administrators and the media should take given that we are going to have an imperfect election and given that these imperfections may be cynically manipulated by political operatives who want to throw the election results into doubt.... The media need to report claims of misfeasance in elections with caution.... The days leading up to November’s election may be rocky. But competence, patience, transparency and perspective are the best antidote to attempts to manipulate small-scale election problems into a full blown crisis."

From "Don’t fall for claims of voter fraud. Political operatives want to turn errors into a way to throw the election" by Richard L. Hasen (L.A. Times).

"Good lawyers wanna get rid of bad lawyers and dachshunds...."

WATCH: Joe Biden suddenly brings up a person name "John" and accuses him of avoiding what needs to be done pic.twitter.com/p2JkYPzssh

— Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) September 26, 2020

Organizers of the Proud Boys rally in Portland said they'd have 20,000 people, the sheriff thought there'd be 1,000 or 2,000, but in reality, there were only 200.

NBC News reports.

The Proud Boys, a group of self-declared Western chauvinists, were denied a permit for the planned gathering due to coronavirus social-distancing concerns, but rallied anyway in what they had said would be a free speech event to support Trump and the police and condemn anti-fascists....

The governor used her emergency powers to give the Oregon State Police superintendent and the local sheriff the power to take charge of public safety in Portland for the weekend, a move that would restore the ability of law enforcement to use tear gas as a crowd-control measure.

The state police superintendent said there would be a “massive influx” of troopers in the city beginning Saturday morning. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, said on Twitter this week, “Violence has no home in Portland.”