Whom would doom!

I'm reading "Joe Biden Had a Big Night. He Needs Another in 72 Hours/For more than 30 years, over three presidential runs, Mr. Biden has been waiting to notch a victory like the one in South Carolina. Now he has to face the test of Super Tuesday." It's Matt Flegenheimer and Katie Glueck in the New York Times:

With a commanding victory on Saturday, Mr. Biden made a compelling case that he is the Democrat best positioned to head off the nomination of Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator whom centrists fear would doom the party this fall.

I'm very interested in the substance, but first, let's talk about grammar. Whom... would doom?! The rhyme is bad enough — whom... doom... — but how can writers at this level not know how to figure out when "whom" is right?! You can take "centrists fear" out of that clause and see that it's obviously wrong to say "the democratic socialist senator whom... would doom the party...." You can also make the mistake easy to see by writing it with different punctuation: "the democratic socialist senator whom — centrists fear — would doom the party this fall." You need "who," because it's the subject of the verb "doom." Bernie isn't doomed. Bernie is doing the dooming. According to those centrists who are doing the fearing.

Anyway... after the South Carolina primary, it's possible that the fearers of socialism and doom will all suddenly get behind Joe Biden. Whatever messages Super Tuesday voters have been hearing up until now, forget about it. This is serious! Either you like Bernie or you'd better embrace old Joe.

[Biden] is convinced that he has done enough to demonstrate his dominance with a core Democratic constituency and affirm his argument that no one is better suited to take on President Trump.... But for all his undeniable success on Saturday, Mr. Biden remains hamstrung on two fronts: by several competitors still disinclined to stand down, even if they siphon crucial non-Sanders votes, and by a campaign organization that party officials have described as jarringly thin in many of the states that will vote on Tuesday....

Why would Michael R. Bloomberg step aside, before the states he is contesting have even voted, with hundreds of millions of dollars already sunk into his bid and a conviction that he is the man for the job? What do Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar owe Mr. Biden, whom they each dusted in New Hampshire (and, in Mr. Buttigieg’s case, in Iowa), where the voters who spend the most time with their candidates decided that the former vice president could not be trusted to defeat President Trump?

If a mad dash toward Biden is really the only way to save the Democratic Party, Obama should break his silence and endorse him before Super Tuesday. But I don't think he will, because I think centrists also fear that Biden would doom the party this fall. Why would Obama stake his reputation on that?

"Donald Trump is the worst person to possibly ease people’s fears. Trump’s whole thing is that he whips arenas into a frenzy of anger and bloodlust. "

That's a line from "SNL"'s "Weekend Update." The topic is, obviously, coronavirus. Here's the clip, which I didn't watch. I just read the text (at the NYT), and I don't even think the text is good enough to copy and paste. The part after what I quoted above is:

Hoping Trump can calm people down is liking hoping cocaine can fight insomnia. And I don’t really trust Trump on medical issues because, remember, this is what he had to say about Ebola. [Plays clip of President Trump saying, “Ebola, you disintegrated. You got Ebola, that was it.”] You disintegrated? Does he think that Thanos was named Ebola?

I think "Ebola, you disintegrated. You got Ebola, that was it" is an excellent, vivid depiction of Ebola.  That would be a good occasion to admire Trump's rhetoric, but they slotted in the usual Trump-is-an-idiot idea and followed up with a joke that relies on the viewer's familiarity with comic-book movies — that is, movies at the lowest level of mass-market entertainment.  But Trump is the idiot.

The rest of the text is worse, but I want to talk about the quote I put in the post heading. This too relies on something the audience is assumed to know: "Trump’s whole thing is that he whips arenas into a frenzy of anger and bloodlust." You know about Thanos by watching the movie "Thanos," but you know about Trump whipping arenas into a frenzy of anger and bloodlust by never watching a Trump rally.

I've watched a lot of Trump rallies, and what I see are smiling faces and lots of laughs. Trump is jovial, telling jokes and comically enacting the foibles of his antagonists. Everyone seems to be having a good time. Trump likes to open his arms wide and ask, rhetorically, "Is there anything more fun than a Trump rally?"

Those who believe those rallies are "a frenzy of anger and bloodlust" — or something that works as a basis for that hyperbole — are more mystified about Trump than their imagined Trump is mystified about Ebola.

The "SNL" cold open mixes coronavirus with the Democratic candidates.

I recommend starting at 2:00, when the "Democratic candidates" begin to appear, with Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg and, tormenting him, Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren:



If you have low patience for "SNL" just watch this clip, with Bernie Sanders/Larry David advising you about washing your hands:



"I might get in trouble for saying this, but you know who was great at washing his hands? Joseph Stalin. Just sayin'."

ADDED: Too bad the cue — "Use Purell" — that brings in Larry — with his "No! No! No!" — is botched by McKinnon's mispronunciation of "Purell."

At the Sunrise-in-the-Woods Café...

Talk about anything you like... except the South Carolina primary. Go one post down for that.



The first photo shows the owl-tree — sans owl. The photos were taken at 6:41. Actual sunrise time was 6:35.

Biden wins South Carolina by a lot.

I'm reading the results at FiveThirty Eight, here.

ADDED: Finally, somebody got a majority somewhere.

UPDATE: In the end, Biden didn't cross the 50% line. He got 48.4%. The Real Clear Politics average of the polls had him at 39.7%, so he was way ahead of expectations.

"As mayor, he famously chose not to live in Gracie Mansion, preferring the comforts of his 79th Street compound, though not everyone is impressed by his old-world décor..."

"'The first time I went to Mike’s house, I was surprised to find the décor very much like a child’s idea of what a rich man’s house would look like,' says an acquaintance. 'Very Citizen Kane.' He kept his social life mostly intact, spending weekends golfing at his home in Bermuda. 'Mike gets loosey-goosey on wine, visibly shining, but if you really try to get him to open up then, sure enough he gets flustered and retreats into his shell,' says a reporter. Bloomberg’s children, Georgina and Emma, are opposites. Georgina, 37, is an equestrian and private-plane-flying Instagram bombshell who, when her dad said he wasn’t going to run for president in March, posted a picture of a faux campaign sticker, reading BLOOMBERG: BECAUSE FUCK THIS SHIT, with the caption 'officially back to being just our family slogan.' Emma, 40, is a policy wonk who runs an education nonprofit. When I meet her in a hotel lobby near Bloomberg HQ, she’s all Tribeca-mom elegance: her brown hair slightly lightened, arms sculpted, and many tiny diamonds adorning her ears and climbing from wrists to forearms."

A nearly random excerpt from "Nevertheless, He Persists The ego and the altruism of Mike Bloomberg" (New York Magazine).

"If purple walls and a red tinted window surrounded you for a month with no color but purple around you, by the end of that time you would be a mad-man."

"No matter how strong your brain might be it would not stand the strain, and it is doubtful if you would ever recover your reason."

Said the Boston Globe in a 1903 article titled "Dangerous Tints: Some Colors Will Drive a Person Mad if the Eyes Are Continually Looking at Them," quoted in "15 Perfectly Safe Things That Were Once Considered Dangerous" (Mental Floss).

[Purple] wasn't the only color to avoid. Scarlet could push you into a murderous rage, while blue “excites the imagination and gives a craving for music and stagecraft, but it has a reaction that wrecks the nerves.” Meanwhile, “Solitary confinement in a yellow cell … will weaken any system and produce chronic hysteria,” and “sheer dead white, unbroken, will destroy your eyesight.”

Sounds like the key is to vary your colors. What drives you mad is the monotone. Do we really know the effect of one-intense-color interiors on people who stay inside all the time?

This question makes me think of Monet's all-yellow (almost) dining room at Giverny:



I love that, but if you lived there, you wouldn't be in a solitary confinement cell. Look at those open doors. You can un-yellow at the first frisson of hysteria. Just run out into the green. "Green is the king of colors... and no amount of it can do any harm."

The one person in Wisconsin with coronavirus has recovered.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

"While parents watch their kids’ games or dance classes, they strategize and share information in ways that help their kids."

"They’ll talk about how to get their children into the gifted classes and who the best math tutors are. In a nutshell, extracurriculars are 'where parents network with each other'... The downside: The kids whose parents can’t afford extracurriculars, and who don’t have the opportunity to network in these ways, might be missing out. Furthermore, the pressure parents put on kids and teens to excel may undermine their mental health.... But... should feel free to enroll our kids in activities they might benefit from and that they enjoy. But we need to let our kids be kids, too...."

From "Are Expensive Activities for Kids a Rip-Off?/Circus school?!" (NYT).

Reading between the lines, I can't help thinking the messages is: Sure, keep fighting for advantages for your own kids, and don't worry about the less privileged kids whose parents can't afford it or can't or won't spend their time networking with other parents who are supercharging their kids for success.

Somehow, reading that article made me think of this thing I was reading yesterday: "8 Fun (and Possibly Dangerous) Activities Enjoyed by Past Generations That Today's Kids Will Never Experience" by Megan Fox (PJ Media). I especially identified with #8: "Play all day with no adult supervision, roaming neighborhoods and friends' houses until dark":

"I got about half way through this and realized I have absolutely no interest in these Instagram accounts, or the mystery — whatever it is."

That's the second-highest-rated comment on the really long NYT article, "A Royal Instagram Mystery/Two royal couples, two Instagram accounts, one conspiracy theory."

The highest-rated comment is:

I know I'm alone in my thinking but having a "brand" and putting your entire life on Instagram (owned by Facebook) strikes me as quite tawdry, especially when you exploit your children in the process. Whether a Royal or a Hollywood star, the shamelessness, the egomaniacal way famous people present themselves in order to self promote and make money is sickening. Whatever happened to mystery, decorum, privacy, and discretion? I do not go on Instagram and never will. It also seems so hypocritical that Meghan left England because she did not want to be the focus of the British press but she is doing all she can to become as famous as possible. You can't seek fame and then complain about the scrutiny you might receive.

"The dissent suggests that Congress cannot fend for itself... [but] Congress can tailor its sanctions to the gravity of the Executive Branch’s offense."

"A congressional inquiry may begin and end with a polite request for information. Or a chamber of Congress may escalate by, say, issuing a formal subpoena, threatening to withhold appropriations, or passing articles of impeachment. By the same token, the Executive Branch’s interest in reaching a mutually agreeable compromise should grow as Congress turns up the heat.... This political process also offers an array of possible resolutions in interbranch disputes—a diverse set of compromises and accommodations. For instance, the Executive Branch might agree to waive executive privilege if the Legislative Branch narrows its document request. Or if the dispute concerns an official’s testimony, the Executive Branch might agree to allow an official to answer written interrogatories or to testify in private.... The dissent’s approach would eliminate this dynamic system of escalating political sanctions and flexible settlements. When a lawsuit is the end-game of any interbranch dispute, the response to an overbroad subpoena isn’t 'Let’s talk' but 'We’ll see you in court.' And the resolution of such a dispute isn’t a negotiated compromise—one that leaves everyone a little dissatisfied—but a rigid judicial judgment.."

From D.C. Circuit the majority opinion (PDF) in the case of the House Judiciary Committee against former White House Counsel Don McGahn. President Trump claimed an absolute privilege to bar McGahn from testifying, and the Committee attempted to use the court to enforce its subpoena. You remember that during the impeachment trial, Trump's lawyers argued that it was wrong to accuse him of obstruction of Congress when the House had not gone to the courts to get an authoritative answer to the question whether he really did have the executive privilege he claimed. Now, at least according to this 3-judge panel, we can see that the judiciary would not resolve the dispute because the House committee does not have the standing that would make this a real "case or controversy" within the meaning of the "judicial power" defined in Article III of the Constitution.

We didn't get any sort of answer to the question what is the scope of executive privilege. The court is defining its own role, and even though a lot of people, during the impeachment proceedings, seemed to think that it's exactly the court's role to say what the law is and let us know how much executive privilege the President has and whether his resistance to Congress was a lofty protection of the power of the Executive Branch or a scurrilous thwarting of the power of the Legislative Branch, the court stopped at the threshold question of the power of the Judicial Branch.

No standing. That's a constitutional decision and it is — as the 2 circuit court judges said — not susceptible to a balancing test about how much we want or could benefit from an answer to the question. The part I quoted above works to say... and that's okay. The court follows a strict standing analysis because it's constitutional law and because it's better this way. It's better because it will be resolved through political back and forth. Interestingly enough, the tools of that political process include impeachment:

[A] chamber of Congress may escalate by, say, issuing a formal subpoena, threatening to withhold appropriations, or passing articles of impeachment.  

"The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on Saturday that sets the stage to end America’s longest war..."

"... the nearly two-decade-old conflict in Afghanistan that began after the Sept. 11 attacks, killed tens of thousands of people, vexed three White House administrations and left mistrust and uncertainty on all sides.... The war in Afghanistan in some ways echoes the American experience in Vietnam. In both, a superpower bet heavily on brute strength and the lives of its young, then walked away with seemingly little to show. American efforts to instill a democratic system in the country, and to improve opportunities for women and minorities, are at risk if the Taliban, which banned girls from schools and women from public life, become dominant again. Corruption is still rampant, the country’s institutions are feeble, and the economy is heavily dependent on American and other international aid.... The withdrawal of American troops — about 13,000 are still in Afghanistan — is dependent on the Taliban’s fulfillment of major commitments that have been obstacles for years, including its severance of ties with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.... The Trump administration has framed the deal as the long-awaited promise made to war-weary Americans, for whom the Afghan war has defined a generation of loss and trauma but has yielded no victory."

The NYT reports.

"Three people have died after dry ice was poured into a swimming pool at a party in Moscow on Friday...."

"Dry ice had been dumped in the pool after guests exiting the sauna complained it was too warm.... Several guests who had been in the sauna dived into the water to cool off. Immediately the swimmers started to choke and several lost consciousness.... Dry ice is a solid form of carbon dioxide and if it is released in an area without proper ventilation, it can cause people to inhale dangerous amounts of the gas."

BBC reports.

The deceptiveness of Politico's claim that Trump called the coronavirus "a hoax."

I watched the Trump rally last night, so I knew as soon as I saw this that it was a serious distortion. Headline: "Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'"

Here's how the text quotes him:

"The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. They're politicizing it,” he said. “They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That did not work out too well. They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax.”

Then Trump called the coronavirus “their new hoax.”

The fact that the quote doesn't continue and  "Then Trump called the coronavirus" is inserted before "their new hoax" should make you suspicious, whether you've heard the original or not. But the purportedly verbatim text above it is not, in fact, verbatim.

Here's the original:



I'll have more to say about all that is left out. But let me give you this for now.

ADDED: Let me do a transcription, restoring the words that Politico elided (without using ellipses to show where they're dropping words and changing the flow of the meaning). The embedded video above has its own cuts, so I found uncut video. Here:



Trump is clearly not calling the virus a hoax. What he's calling a hoax is the political talking point that Trump has been failing to protect the country from the virus!

Now, Politico is pushing a hoax hoax — it's putting out a false story about what Trump called a hoax.

Trump is certainly not "rall[ying] his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'" Trump is rallying his base to believe that he's doing an excellent job of handling the problem and to see the criticism of his work as a hoax. He's not saying they should "treat" the virus as a hoax!

AND: Here's my transcription, with boldface for what Politico left out:

"Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say: 'How's President Trump doing?' They're going: 'Oh, nothing, nothing.' They have no clue. They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. They can't even count. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They've been doing it since you got in. It's all turning. They lost. It's all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. There's 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early. We could've had a lot more than that. We're doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never been more unified than it is now." 

PLUS: Trump really is hard to transcribe. And when you see the transcription, you see the strangeness of his speech. It's impressionistic — short phrases with easy words and lots of repetition. I think it's mesmerizing if you're on his side and incredibly annoying if you are not. He jumps from one idea to the next and makes things feel as though they go together — if you're with him. If you are not, it's crazy talk. Word salad. And you may be grossed out by the people who love the salad. I'm writing from a position of cruel neutrality. I like observing how this salad is made, and I understand liking it and resenting people who don't get it, but I also understand the people who are horrified.

Let me tear into that paragraph. I object to the deceptions in the Politico presentation, but I also see that Trump doesn't make it easy for reporters who are trying to tell it straight. I would suspect that Trump is deliberately laying down traps for them so they'll screw up and he can hit them again for being "fake news." But I've listened to him so many times, talking for so long, and I tend to believe he just flows words and this is the form they take. It's working for him, and he keeps it up and gets energized and inflated by his own distinctive stylings.

But forget Politico for now. I know I've got an accurate transcription, so let me move forward and just criticize this text:

Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. 

This is the big thesis. The implication is that the other party is politicizing something that should not be part of politics, but he's criticizing his political rivals, and that's political too. There's an inherent contradiction.

You know that, right? Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say: 'How's President Trump doing?' They're going: 'Oh, nothing, nothing.' They have no clue. They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. The can't even count. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. 

The can't-count-Iowa line is something he plugs in whenever he wants to note that the Democrats are incompetent. It's a little hard to follow: How did Iowa get mixed in with coronavirus? But I'm used to his rhetoric. Instead of saying the Democrats are incompetent, he leaps back to this notable instance of incompetence. He's using very simple language, but he still trusts listeners to keep track of what's being talked about. Suddenly, we're in Iowa and when you think he might quickly get back to the coronavirus, he's off to Russia:

One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. 

"Russia" stands for the proposition that the Democrats are out to get him: They'll take whatever raw material appears and they'll beat it into an anti-Trump weapon. They tried Russia, and when that didn't work, they tried Ukraine (AKA the impeachment). His next line states the generality:

They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They've been doing it since you got in. It's all turning. They lost. It's all turning. Think of it. Think of it. 

That repeated line, "It's all turning," is the most dreamily impressionistic line in the passage. It's like a line from a psychedelic tune by The Byrds. I sense that it's a view of the swirl of thoughts inside his head, but he's trying, I think, to create a picture of the dizzy disorientation in the mind of Democrats. They're losing everything! Think of it!

As they spin and tumble, they're grasping after anything, everything:

And this is their new hoax.

But all he means is that they're saying he did a bad job — and, of course, they will — when he really did a good job:

But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. There's 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early. We could've had a lot more than that.

That is, we've only found 15 people with coronavirus in the U.S., and without the things he did, we might have had a lot more. He doesn't specify what he did, other than that he did it "early." From there, he jumps to the most generic statement of his overarching idea of American greatness:

We're doing great. Our country is doing so great. 

Then he says something that's completely out of line with the idea that the Democrats are out to get him for anything that happens:

We are so unified. We are so unified. 

Thanks for the repetition, but how can that be true? Oh, I see:

The Republican Party has never been more unified than it is now.

"We" = the Republicans.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Mick Mulvaney... blamed the media for exaggerating the seriousness of coronavirus because 'they think this will bring down the president, that’s what this is all about.'"

The NYT reports on remarks by the acting White House chief of staff at the Conservative Political Action Conference today.

Mr. Mulvaney also criticized the news media for generally not wanting to portray Mr. Trump in a positive light. But he chose a bizarre example, claiming it refuses to cover what he described as Mr. Trump’s loving relationship with his 13-year-old son, Barron.... “[T]he press would never show you that because it doesn’t fit that image of him, the press wants him to be this terrible monster.”