Photo from last weekend in LoDo.
Discuss any topics in the comments.
October 5, 2019
Roseanne Barr is just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh, Lord, please don't let her be misunderstood.
ADDED: Here's the song Roseanne is feeling:
"Well, there were pictures of naked Trump..."
SHIFTY SCHIFF DUPED BY RUSSIAN PRANKSTERS! pic.twitter.com/CpIL0b5FLW
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
"If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won... He is a pompous 'ass' who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement..."
Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
Somehow the funniest part of this to me is the quote marks on "ass."
David Brooks has "An imagined conversation with Flyover Man."
Should I read that or is everything funny about it already there in that screen grab? I'll be back in a few minutes — very few, I hope — to let you know.
ADDED: From the column (which is much better than the first-impression teaser made me think):
Flyover Man: ... There’s always some fight between Trump and the East Coast media. I guess I just try to stay focused on the big picture. The big picture is this: We knew this guy was a snake...Wait! That's a poetry-reading cue. Pause and listen:
Back to Brooks's imaginary Flyover Man:
... when we signed up. But he was the only one who saw us. He was the only one who saw that the America we love is being transformed in front of our eyes. Good jobs for hard-working people were gone. Our communities in tatters. Our kids in trouble. I had one shot at change, so I made a deal with the devil, and you’d have made it, too. Nothing in this impeachment mess makes me rethink this bargain.... He said some stupid crap on a phone call. But are you going to undo my vote for that?... I would be open to impeachment if you cared about my problems.... I’d be open if there was a moderate Democratic Party that I thought deserved a shot. But I only see Democrats who’d make everything worse: Open the border! Socialism! More power to Washington! You could have paid attention to the forces driving Trumpism, but you ignored us... I used to think Trump was a jerk. Now, after three years of battle, I see him as my captain....
"I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them..."
"... as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being."
From "Martin Scorsese says Marvel movies ‘aren’t cinema,’ they’re ‘theme parks.'"
Of course, literally, these things are cinema. Scorsese is making a witticism in the tradition of Truman Capote's "That’s not writing, that’s typing" (disrespecting Jack Kerouac's "On the Road").
Did Capote actually say that? Here's Quote Investigator on the subject. Truman Capote used various versions of the witticism — against Kerouac and others:
From "Martin Scorsese says Marvel movies ‘aren’t cinema,’ they’re ‘theme parks.'"
Of course, literally, these things are cinema. Scorsese is making a witticism in the tradition of Truman Capote's "That’s not writing, that’s typing" (disrespecting Jack Kerouac's "On the Road").
Did Capote actually say that? Here's Quote Investigator on the subject. Truman Capote used various versions of the witticism — against Kerouac and others:
"Audience members in a Washington, DC, synagogue hurled boos and heckles at journalist Bob Woodward..."
"... when he repeatedly interrupted two New York Times reporters during a discussion about their new Harvey Weinstein book Wednesday evening. Woodward was speaking to reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at the Sixth and I synagogue about their book 'She Said' when audience members began walking out, booing and tweeting criticisms of the questions posed by Woodward.... 'Let her finish!' one audience member shouted from a balcony.... [A]nother shouted, 'All women deserve to be heard!' when Woodward asked the authors about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... 'When @mega2e explained she built trust w sources by talking abt how the harm can’t be undone but together they can build constructive power from pain, Woodward interrupted, giddily, "that was your standard line?"'.... 'Twohey and Kantor told Woodward repeatedly that they believed Weinstein’s assaults were about "power," but he didn’t seem satisfied'.... 'So it’s about power?' she said he asked. 'It’s about sex also though, isn’t it?'"
From "Bob Woodward booed, heckled during #MeToo book conversation" (NY Post).
Show me the video. I'm assuming Woodward did a fine job and the NYT reporters benefited from his keeping it lively. But maybe it was one of these mythic examples of a sexist man controlling women's speech.
From "Bob Woodward booed, heckled during #MeToo book conversation" (NY Post).
Show me the video. I'm assuming Woodward did a fine job and the NYT reporters benefited from his keeping it lively. But maybe it was one of these mythic examples of a sexist man controlling women's speech.
"A surprising new study challenged decades of nutrition advice and gave consumers the green light to eat more red and processed meat."
"But what the study didn’t say is that its lead author has past research ties to the meat and food industry. The new report, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, stunned scientists and public health officials because it contradicted longstanding nutrition guidelines about limiting consumption of red and processed meats. The analysis, led by Bradley C. Johnston, an epidemiologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, and more than a dozen researchers concluded that warnings linking meat consumption to heart disease and cancer are not backed by strong scientific evidence.... Dr. Johnston also indicated on a disclosure form that he did not have any conflicts of interest to report during the past three years. But as recently as December 2016 he was the senior author on a similar study that tried to discredit international health guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. That study, which also appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI, an industry trade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical companies and whose members have included McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill, one of the largest beef processors in North America. The industry group, founded by a top Coca-Cola executive four decades ago, has long been accused by the World Health Organization and others of trying to undermine public health recommendations to advance the interests of its corporate members." (NYT.)
Johnston's response: "That money was from 2015 so it was outside of the three year period for disclosing competing interests. I have no relationship with them whatsoever."
So... okay to eat meat?
Johnston's response: "That money was from 2015 so it was outside of the three year period for disclosing competing interests. I have no relationship with them whatsoever."
So... okay to eat meat?
"When I was at the White House, there was a very deliberative process of the president absorbing information from people who had deep substantive knowledge of the countries and relationships with these leaders. Preparation for these calls was taken very seriously. It appears to be freestyle and ad-libbed now."
Said Joel Willett, "a former intelligence officer who worked at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2015," quoted in "Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides, leaving some ‘genuinely horrified" (WaPo).
But what if — in the end — what really matters is the cake?
Trump has rejected much of the protocol and preparation associated with foreign calls, even as his national security team tried to establish goals for each conversation. Instead, Trump often sought to use calls as a way to befriend whoever he was talking to, one current senior administration official said, defending the president. “So he might say something that sounds terrible to the outside, but in his mind, he’s trying to build a relationship with that person and sees flattery as the way to do it.”...It sounds as though Trump is freakishly comfortable with being President of the United States and actually believes the leaders of other countries are fellow human beings with whom he can have a real relationship. Aides are flummoxed. To them, formality is crucial.
[S]taff fretted that Trump came across ill-informed in some calls, and even oafish. In a conversation with China’s Xi, Trump repeated numerous times how much he liked a kind of chocolate cake, one former official said. The president publicly described the dessert the two had in April 2017 when Trump and Xi met at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort as “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you have ever seen.”...
Though calls with foreign leaders are routinely planned in advance, Trump a few times called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron unannounced, as if they were friends, a former administration official said....
But what if — in the end — what really matters is the cake?
"Is a crop top empowering for girls?"
Asks a headline at WaPo — in a section of the paper called "Social Issues." Social issues. Ah, it was a social issue to me in the mid-1960s when I had to tangle with the school authorities over miniskirts. But these days, the school authorities "rarely call out dress code violations." The struggle, we're told, is with the parents.
What's supposed to be interesting here is that the parents have to grapple with the feminist ideology that the girls use in their defense. The kids are "claiming autonomy over their bodies and calling out clothing restrictions they see as sexist."
Hey, I did that half a century ago! To the school authorities, not to my parents. My parents supported my individuality and freedom.
Anyway, it's always questionable whether a vocalized argument accurately aligns with the real reasons for a person's behavior, and I'll cherry-pick some things in the article that show an awareness of this aspect of human speech and behavior:
What's supposed to be interesting here is that the parents have to grapple with the feminist ideology that the girls use in their defense. The kids are "claiming autonomy over their bodies and calling out clothing restrictions they see as sexist."
Hey, I did that half a century ago! To the school authorities, not to my parents. My parents supported my individuality and freedom.
Anyway, it's always questionable whether a vocalized argument accurately aligns with the real reasons for a person's behavior, and I'll cherry-pick some things in the article that show an awareness of this aspect of human speech and behavior:
Sydney Acuff, a 17-year-old senior at Blair High School, started wearing more revealing clothes last school year after a breakup with a boyfriend who was “very controlling and very manipulative,” she said. “I wanted to rebel against him. That was one way I did it.” She stopped wearing bras and started wearing “a lot of semi-see-through tops, a lot of camisoles,” Sydney said. “My midriff is almost always showing to some extent.” When she was coping with the breakup, she noticed that she was posting more selfies on social media. “Am I doing this because I want to, or am I doing this because I know these people are going to make me feel good for a certain amount of time and then I’ll go back to feeling sad?” she reflected. “That’s something I have to be careful with and have to be mindful of.”...
“My friends and I, our generation, we consider ourselves feminist,” said [Sydney's] mother.... “I would think things like that would be the opposite of being a feminist. Her mother, Sydney argues, views the issue through “a very second-wave [feminist] lens” peppered with “internalized misogyny.”...
These trends are “basically just meant for skinny girls who can pull those clothes off,” [Khushboo Rathore, another 17-year-old at Blair] said....
“The question I have is whether that’s really coming from the inside out, or whether that’s influenced by this rape culture that’s sending the message that your power comes from your looks and you have to put it out there in a way that’s sexy,” [another girl's] father said. “How much of that is really them?”The question to me is not "Is a crop top empowering for girls?" but how can a young person build the capacity to tell the difference between what she wants and what other people want her to be? It's hard — even for a fully grown adult — to truly perceive that these are 2 different things and to understand that the difference matters. It's easy to see that a midriff is or is not visible, but hard to see whether the girl truly knows who she is. Confronted by her parents, she can insist that she is free and strong, but they've got to know that they don't know if she is free and strong on the inside.
October 4, 2019
In the White River National Forest...
... aspen/evergreen contrast was stark.
Photos from Tuesday, when we were in Colorado. All topics allowed in the comments. Enjoy.
Trump says?!!
From the top of the front page of The Washington Post:
I love the way he gets the jump on them by saying what they're supposed to say.
And, look! Schiff got 4 Pinocchios.
The "Trump says" teaser goes to "Live updates: House committees ask Pence to turn over Ukraine information for impeachment probe."
And here's the Fact Checker column, "Schiff’s false claim his committee had not spoken to the whistleblower":
I love the way he gets the jump on them by saying what they're supposed to say.
And, look! Schiff got 4 Pinocchios.
The "Trump says" teaser goes to "Live updates: House committees ask Pence to turn over Ukraine information for impeachment probe."
And here's the Fact Checker column, "Schiff’s false claim his committee had not spoken to the whistleblower":
There’s nothing wrong with dodging a question, as long as you don’t try to mislead... But Schiff on “Morning Joe” clearly made a statement that was false. He now says he was answering the wrong question, but if that was the case, he should have quickly corrected the record. He compounded his falsehood by telling reporters a few days later that if not for the IG’s office, the committee would not have known about the complaint. That again suggested there had been no prior communication. The explanation that Schiff was not sure it was the same whistleblower especially strains credulity. Schiff earns Four Pinocchios.
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