"If you are worried about rapid, catastrophic changes to the planet’s climate, then you must be worried about nuclear war...."

"[E]ven a relatively 'minor' exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.... A detonation of a [one-megaton nuke], within about a four-mile radius, produce winds equal to those in a Category 5 hurricane, immediately flattening buildings, knocking down power lines, and triggering gas leaks.... The hot, dry, hurricane-force winds would act like a supercharged version of California’s Santa Ana winds, which have triggered some of the state’s worst wildfires.... Towering clouds would carry more than five megatons of soot and ash from these fires high into the atmosphere."

Writes Robinson Meyer in "On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem/Even a 'minor' skirmish would wreck the planet" (March 9, 2022, The Atlantic).

Is Putin "rational actor"? — Jake Tapper asks Biden. Biden answers "he is a rational actor... I just think it’s irrational."

You have to separate the "he" and the "it" to make sense of it.

Here's the video. I'll quote from the transcript:

"[T]he 'Lebensborn' program — meaning wellspring or fountain of life... created in 1935... provided luxurious accommodations for unwed, pregnant women."

"Part of the program’s attraction was that unwed pregnant girls could give birth in secret. In 1939, about 58 percent of the mothers-to-be who applied to the program were unwed... by 1940, that number had swelled to 70 percent. Often, the homes were converted estates decorated by Himmler himself, using the highest quality loot confiscated from Jewish homes after their owners had been killed or sent to camps. Girls who were already pregnant or willing to be impregnated by SS officers had to prove their Aryan lineage going back three generations and pass inspections that included measuring the size of their heads and the length of their teeth. Once accepted, they were pampered by nurses and staff who served them delicacies at mealtimes and provided a recreational diet rich in Nazi propaganda...."

From "A new novel tells the story of Nazi birthing farms" by Kathleen Parker (WaP).

The new novel is "Cradles of the Reich" by Jennifer Coburn.

Here's the article in the Holocaust Encyclopedia about the Lebensborn program.

I found that as I was looking for photographs showing how a place "decorated by Himmler" would look. Here's a propaganda photograph with a caption that translated into "Everything for the healthy child":

 

 

From the Holocaust Encyclopedia article:

"Ye claimed that he’d rather his kids learn about Hanukkah than Kwanzaa since 'at least it would come with some financial engineering.'"

"His assertion that 'professional actors' had been 'placed into my house to sexualize my kids.' He said he trusted Latinos more than 'certain other businessmen' — a vague descriptor he used to 'be safe.' Ye also told Carlson that he had 'visions that God gives me, just over and over, on community building and how to build these free energy, kinetic, fully kinetic energy communities.' Both in the snippets Vice obtained and what made it on the air, Carlson mostly nodded along with Ye’s commentary. There is no obvious effort to question Ye’s assertions or to express uncertainty about moving forward with the interview at all. What emerges from the fuller context provided by the Vice segments, really, is that Carlson wasn’t really interested in interviewing Ye or presenting his views to his audience. Instead, it’s that Carlson wanted to present a very specific version of Ye to his viewers, a Ye that mirrored Carlson’s rhetoric on race and politics and didn’t go much further...."

From "The Kanye West Tucker Carlson didn’t want his audience to see" by Philip Bump (WaPo). 

Fox News showed an edited version of the interview, and Vox has made some unused material available.

Bump makes assumptions about Carlson: he "wasn’t really interested in interviewing Ye" and "wanted to present a very specific version of Ye." Bump wants to present a very specific version of Carlson. 

Tulsi Gabbard explains the military industrial complex to Joe Rogan.

Thoughts on Albany.

Thoughts on Albany... pic.twitter.com/60BSmY2VNT

— Joe Pera (@JosephPera) October 11, 2022

ADDED: If you've forgotten "ciao, bella," refresh your recollection here.

Also, as suggested by someone over at Twitter: 

Sunrise — 7:10, 7:12.

"Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel/President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."

That's the headline at the NYT for something currently at Memeorandum with the headline "Biden's Folksiness Can Veer Into Folklore, or Falsehoods."

Perhaps that had been the front-page teaser at the Times. It's not on the front page at the moment. It went up yesterday, but there's only one newer headline with the name Biden on the front page — "Biden Administration Plan Could Lead to Employee Status for Gig Workers" — and that isn't about Biden, just his administration. 

There's an older headline still on the front page — "Joe Biden Knows How to Use Donald Trump." That extols Biden... but for what? What is Biden being given credit for here? The author is Ezra Klein, who goes on about how "startlingly few interviews and news conferences" Biden gives.

Adnan Syed goes free — charges dropped.

Breaking News: Baltimore prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed, who spent 23 years in prison fighting a murder conviction on charges that he murdered his former high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee. His case was chronicled on the podcast “Serial.” https://t.co/8C3MRH9nSm

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 11, 2022

"Who ya think Frankenstein'd vote for?"

That's one of 20 "conversation starters" suggested in the "Epilogue" to "A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape" by Joe Pera.

I read that after stumbling into the TV series "Joe Pera Talks With You." We love this TV here at Meadhouse. It takes place in Marquette, Michigan, and we discovered the show about a day after we got back from a nice 3 days in Marquette, Michigan.

Sample:

Writing this post, I noticed an article, published yesterday at uppermichigansource.com, saying that Joe Pera had just donated $11,613 to the Calumet Public School Music Program.

There's also some important background on how Pera developed the show. Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw Elementary Music and Choir Teacher Matt Ruitta said: "About four years ago, [Pera] reached out to me because, in his TV show, he plays as a choir director that lives in Marquette. And he came and shadowed me here one day....” 

But the real point of this post is who do you think Frankenstein would vote for?

Tulsi Gabbard explains why she's leaving the Democratic Party.

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 11, 2022

"If you accept the premise that the film business is the folly of the filthy rich, then the independent-film business must seem the folly of the stupidly rich."

Wrote Nikki Finke, in 2007, saying she doesn't "get all aflutter at the mere mention of the Park City film festival like some media, quoted in "Nikki Finke, Caustic Hollywood Chronicler, Is Dead at 68/At newspapers and then at Deadline, the website she founded, she served up the opposite of fluff entertainment journalism" (NYT).

Another quote: "I am a very old-school journalist. I believe you make the comfortable uncomfortable, and that’s the whole point of doing it."

She was evoking the old saying: "The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Evoking half of it anyway. She didn't seem interested in comforting anyone.

"Judy Tenuta, the absurdist, accordion-playing 'Love Goddess' of stand-up, who broke into the male-dominated 1980s comedy world while wearing Grecian gowns, preaching the gospel of 'Judyism' and..."

"... derisively addressing men as 'pigs' and 'stud puppets,' died Oct. 6... She was 72.... A gum-snapping comedian with one of stand-up’s most distinctive voices — she might deliver the setup in a cooing falsetto, then use a husky growl for the punchline — Ms. Tenuta deployed a campy brew of insult comedy, physical humor and acerbic wit.... During her heyday in the late-1980s and early ’90s, Ms. Tenuta was sometimes carried onstage by a bodybuilder or borne aloft in a thronelike chair, raised on the shoulders of several muscle-bound men. Wearing gold lamé pants or a gauzy floor-length cape, she would introduce herself as 'a shy, innocent petite flower' before revealing another, brassier side of her personality. 'Hey pigs, let’s party,' she would shout. 'You know you’re begging for abuse from the Goddess of Love.'... Ms. Tenuta often performed with an accordion strapped to her chest.... [A 1990 NYT article said] 'Whether she’s taunting male members of the audience about their masturbation habits or referring to herself as a Goddess of Love, her greatest gift is her ability to take male fantasies and transmogrify them into the stuff of nightmare.'"

From the Washington Post obituary.

What to watch from the Criterion's "80s Horror" collection?

 

You can see the huge set of titles here. 

We chose the one where Hugh Grant says "I hear you're having trouble with a snake."

Pagan vampires, a two-hundred-foot worm, and a profusion of phallic imagery collide in Ken Russell’s typically outré take on Bram Stoker’s most infamous novel. On an excavation in the English countryside, an archaeologist (Peter Capaldi) uncovers a mysterious skull that he comes to believe belonged to the D’Ampton Worm, a mythical snake-like creature thought to have been slain long ago by an ancestor of aristocrat James D’Ampton (Hugh Grant). The strange presence of the enigmatic Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) and a series of unexplained disappearances soon hint that the legend of the D’Ampton Worm may be far from dead.

Did we laugh? Of course, we laughed!

Why didn't I see it back when it came out (in 1988)? I loved Ken Russell. "The Devils" was on my list of 5 favorite movies. And, as a law clerk, I'd worked on the case about "Altered States." But I was influenced by the reviews of the time. Which ones, I can't remember, but Roger Ebert wrote:

People expect something special from Russell, whose inflamed filmography includes such items as “Women in Love,” “The Music Lovers,” “The Devils,” “The Boyfriend,” “Tommy,” “Altered States,” “Crimes of Passion” and “Salome’s Last Dance.” Every one of Russell’s films has been an exercise in wretched excess. Sometimes it works. Russell loves the bizarre, the gothic, the overwrought, the perverse. The strangest thing about “The Lair of the White Worm” is that, by his standards, it is rather straight and square. 

Not enough wretched excess!

A sunrise run.

The full moon was setting...

The sun was rising...

And the leaves were turning orange and red...

"To help game out the consequences of another Trump administration, I turned to 21 experts in the presidency, political science, public administration, the military, intelligence, foreign affairs, economics and civil rights."

"They sketched chillingly plausible chains of potential actions and reactions that could unravel the nation. 'I think it would be the end of the republic,' says Princeton University professor Sean Wilentz, one of the historians President Biden consulted in August about America’s teetering democracy. 'It would be a kind of overthrow from within. … It would be a coup of the way we’ve always understood America.'"

From "What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out. The scenarios are ... grim" (WaPo).

The experts foresee "Phase 1: Trump seizes control of the government... And installs super loyalists.... He governs without Senate advice and consent.... He creates a MAGA civil service."

And then: "Phase 2: Trump deploys the military aggressively at home, while retreating abroad.... He uses the military to promote his own political power.... American global leadership is finished — much to Putin’s delight.... Intelligence work is harmed...."

Next: "Phase 3: Political violence and democratic collapse? It’s possible.... Ideological, racial and ethnic tensions ramp up.... The bonds that bind the Union loosen.... The chances of civil war increase.... It wouldn’t be an 1860s-style civil war of states vs. states; if it did come to pass, [polisci prof Barbara Walter] says, 'the type of war we’re going to see is an insurgency. … [Participants] are going to fight a type of guerrilla war, a siege of terror that’s going to be targeted very specifically at certain individuals and certain groups of people, all civilians.'"

I would think most of us are inured to this kind of fear-mongering by now. They act as though they're desperate to save America, but they evince so little faith in America. They think one man can come along and simply take over everything by sheer will.