At the Saturday Night Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

"For decades, bench jockeys — also known as 'holler guys' — were a standard feature of professional baseball."

"The best and most effective bench jockeys, who may have owed their success to a fierce wit, a piercing voice or a penchant for creative slurs, could even cling to a roster spot after their actual baseball skills had so degraded that they were as useful to a team as an empty tin of chewing tobacco.... At the most basic level, talking trash raises the stakes of a competitive confrontation. It puts more on the line — like pride and possible humiliation — and that makes the outcome of the contest matter more than it otherwise would. It puts more pressure on the performances of all involved, both the talker and the target, and demands to know whether they can handle that added stress and expectation...."

Writes Rafi Kohan, in "Hey, Losers! Here’s How to Bring Baseball’s Very Boring Era to an End" (NYT). Kohan wrote a book about this: “Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage.”

Kohan never talks about politics in this column, only baseball, so I did a search for Trump and "trash talk," and I enjoyed finding "'He’s Like a Coach in a Locker Room Talking S__t': How Donald Trump Uses Trash Talk for Political Gain/Author Rafi Kohan on the role of smack talk in American political history—and where Trump fits in" (Washingtonian). Here, Kohan says:

"A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females [dominating the culture of the Democratic party]."

"'Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.' The message is too feminine: 'Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.' If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: 'Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?'"

Said James Carville, quoted in the Maureen Dowd column, "James Carville, the Cajun Who Can’t Stop Ragin’" (NYT).

ADDED: The quote above followed the observation by Dowd that "Lately, [Carville] has been obsessed with Biden bleeding Black male voters."

Oddly enough, the very next thing I saw was this clip from the new episode of Bill Maher's show, where he's advising Democrats to give up racial politics:

"As I see it, Google and other search engines are recklessly directing traffic to porn sites with nonconsensual deepfakes."

Writes Nicholas Kristof, in "The Online Degradation of Women and Girls That We Meet With a Shrug" (NYT).

That's a free access link so you can read the description of how easy it is to "nudify" real individuals and make stills and video. Ugh! I realize that giving out that information will cause more people to produce that material, but how else are those of us who loathe this sort of thing going to get outraged enough to have any effect?

"The Islamic State, through an affiliated news agency, claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack."

"U.S. security officials said they believed it was carried out by a branch of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Khorasan, or ISIS-K, which has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. But there were some signs that Russia might try to pin blame for the attack on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility. The F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a statement on Saturday saying that the attackers had planned to escape to Ukraine 'and had contacts on the Ukrainian side,' according to the Russian state media. Kyiv has denied any involvement and American officials have said there is no evidence that Ukraine played a role...."

The NYT reports on the Moscow concert hall attack.

"Former president Donald Trump claimed Friday that he had 'almost $500 million' in cash, undercutting his lawyers’ previous statements..."

"... that he would not be able to pay a bond of more than $450 million to secure a massive judgment in his New York civil fraud case. 'I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president,' Trump said Friday morning in a TruthSocial post in all caps..... Gregory Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University, said the post undermines his credibility and the credibility of his witnesses who testified that he doesn’t have the money. 'It definitely hurts him to say "I’ve got the cash, I just don’t want to put it up,"' Germain said. 'It’s just very difficult to understand why he would do something like that.'... Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown Law who specializes in bankruptcy, said in an email that Trump 'might have cash on hand, but if he has to commit it to posting the appellate bond, it won’t be available for use in his businesses, which require a certain amount of cash for their normal operations.' Levitin added that 'the real question is whether he’ll post a bond in the end, and that hasn’t happened yet.'"

From "Trump claims he has $500 million in cash, undercutting his lawyers/The former president says he has ‘almost $500 million’ in cash, days after his lawyers stated that it would be nearly impossible to post the judgment of nearly half a billion dollars in his New York civil fraud case" (WaPo).

"The Justice Department called out Apple for afflicting Android smartphone users with the dreaded 'green bubble' in text messages..."

"... calling it a mark of 'social stigma, exclusion and blame' as part of its landmark antitrust case against the iPhone maker. 'Green bubble' status has long been a source of mockery online, with some women even jokingly declaring that they find men who own Androids less attractive...."

The New York Post reports.

"In some ways, 'dysregulation' is an updated version of another science-coded phrase we used to like: 'chemical imbalance.'"

"Picture the Zoloft commercial from the early aughts that featured line drawings of 'nerve A' and '“nerve B' on a plain-white background. 'Depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain,' chirped the voiceover, as dots floated erratically between the two illustrated nerves.... A major 2022 umbrella review showed what had been an open secret in the field: There is no substantial evidence that low serotonin causes depression.... Dysregulation... 'implies relationships.'... 'It’s saying your body has been harmed, or decentered, or stressed from a set of traumatic events, so you are dysregulated, and that is just a normal biological consequence of what you’ve experienced.'... The fundamental appeal of regulatory language is the idea that there is a calm stasis to return to, a 'you' separate from your acute distress.... You may be a wreck on a hair trigger now, but that isn’t at the core of who you are...."

Writes Rachel Sugar, in "When Did Everyone Get So ‘Dysregulated’? How managing our mental health became a matter of monitoring our nervous systems" (NY Magazine).

Here's the original Zoloft commercial with the nerves and the dots:

"... Trump doesn’t own Trump Tower.... Trump Tower is owned by the people who own the apartment units...."

"What he actually owns at Trump Tower is 'the parking garage, the valet booth, room-service kitchens, lobby bathrooms, a restaurant space, and one unit.' That’s his apartment.... His basic model is that he goes to a city, lines up money to build the building... essentially licenses his name to operation, builds it and then gets what amounts to an ongoing residual in the form of some kind of servicing contract tied to the structure. You sell the units to a mix of people who are wowed by the Trump name and others from Russia and Saudi who want to park their money through a blind LLC..... [W]hat he does own is by design deeply intertwined with the real stuff that other people own.... The stuff he actually owns owns is the stuff [Letitia] James is going after — golf courses, big houses...."

Writes Josh Marshall, in "We Have Met the Enemy and He Owns the Valet Booth at Trump Tower" (TPM).

At Business Insider, there's this: "Here are 13 Trump properties that NY AG Letitia James can go after if he doesn't pay up."

And at New York Magazine: "What Real Estate Does Trump Own in NYC Anyway?"

Stopping by woods on a snowy noon.

Open thread in the comments.

"The whole point of the First Amendment is to give ordinary citizens the power and the tools to decide for themselves what information to listen to and what ideas to find persuasive."

"That’s the foundational principle of the First Amendment and a foundational principle of any democracy—that the power to decide what information to access and listen to and how much weight to give it are left to the ordinary citizen and not to the government."

Said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, quoted in "The Misguided Attempt to Control TikTok/The freedom to use social media is a First Amendment right, even if it’s one we should all avail ourselves of less often" (by Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker).

I'm afraid that young people today are losing the power and the inclination to decide what to listen to and to sift through things and decide what to think. Why bother when the failure to think the right thing will bring all sorts of trouble? And how can you really believe anything if that's how you acquire your "beliefs"? Everything is completely shallow, even the fear that leads people to say that they believe what they've been told they're supposed to believe.

But yes, at the very least, keep the information flowing, even what the prescribers of correct thought condemn.

"Time will tell whether Mr. Garland and Ms. Monaco made the right calls in the period before they turned the investigation over to Mr. Smith..."

"... who within eight months brought not only the election-case indictment but the separate charges against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents. But like many before them, Mr. Garland and his team appear to have underestimated Mr. Trump’s capacity for reinvention and disruption, in this case through delay...."

I'm reading this long NYT article by Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, "Inside Garland’s Effort to Prosecute Trump/In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland might have made one big one: ending up in a race against the clock."

That's a free-access link. I only get 10 of them a month, and I'm selecting this one so you can do your own reading and help me answer the questions I had when I saw this as the top news article on the front page of the Times today. What are they trying to do with this article and why now? It feels like a pre-post-mortem to me.

A lucky break for Trump.

The NYT reports: "Trump Media Merger Is Approved, Providing Fresh Source of Cash/The deal will pump money into Trump Media, which will allow Truth Social to keep operating. Mr. Trump’s personal stake in the company will be worth more than $3 billion on paper."

MEANWHILE, on Truth Social: Trump writes:

"Acyn Torabi... posted a video clip of the 'bloodbath' quote, shorn of most of the surrounding verbiage, garnering 22 million views..."

"... on X.com. ... Joe Biden’s campaign posted a similar clip soon after Torabi did, implying Trump was fomenting violence. By Sunday morning, Republicans on the news-making talk shows were asked about Trump’s comment. They responded by arguing Trump was just talking about the economy and Democrats were taking the word 'bloodbath' out of context. Ever since we have been subjected to a semantic debate over 'what did Trump really mean.' Such chin-stroking works to Trump’s advantage, dulling the potential for mass outrage when he makes outrageous statements. How can we avoid this semantic trap?... [We need to connect] Trump’s rhetoric to his presidency without burdening Trump’s critics to prove a remark was intended to provoke violence. It doesn’t matter what he meant by any particular riff.... If the Biden team deploys this narrative... then future instances of Trump’s explosive asides tossed in convoluted word salads can be easily prosecuted without a linguistics seminar on what he meant."

Writes Bill Scher, in "No More 'Bloodbaths' or How to Avoid Stupid Debates Over Trump’s Semantics/Forget parsing his words. Democrats should connect Trump’s past rhetoric to the street violence and Capitol insurrection of his last year in office" (Washington Monthly).

Yes, be more substantive. Stop relying on quirks of language to get attention. And speaking of quirks of language, stop saying "garner." 

"But what is interesting is that a few voices on the Left have spoken up to question the fairness of the proceedings."

"Not to defend Trump — they could never bring themselves to do that — but to ask whether the process being used to go after him is fair. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, firmly in the liberal camp and firmly anti-Trump, expressed worries about the precedent the Trump case could set. From her column this week: 'The essence of Trump’s argument on appeal is that the supposed harm he caused was minimal at best — all his lenders were repaid — and that the penalty levied against him was therefore wildly excessive....' Progressive commentator Cenk Uygur, also firmly anti-Trump, had a similar view. 'To me, putting up all the cash upfront before you appeal the case seems draconian for everyone, not just Trump.... But what if he wins the appeal? So you made him sell all of his properties to get the collateral, but then he can’t buy them back....'... Someday, of course, what goes around will come around for Democrats, probably in circumstances that none of them could predict right now...."

Writes Byron York.

Most Trump antagonists seem to be laughing and salivating. I suppose they would enjoy seeing the man tortured. It's bizarrely shortsighted. Do they think Trump is uniquely evil and nothing that happens to him will set a precedent?

"The rule is projected to eliminate more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 30 years...."

That's what it says in "What to Know About the Clean Auto Rule: It’s Not a Ban on Gas Cars/The measure aims to encourage sales of electric vehicles and hybrids. Here’s how it works" (NYT).

Is "seven billion tons" supposed to sound like a lot when we're talking about the earth's atmosphere? I realized I had no idea of the weight of the entire earth's atmosphere. The answer isn't in the article. 

It's 5.5 quadrillion tons. A quadrillion is a million billion.

Also, what's "unclean" about carbon dioxide? When it comes to cleanliness, aren't electric cars worse that gas cars? From a recent article in The Atlantic:

New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates.... In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse.

The use of the word "clean" in the title to the rule is deceptive. And it's deceptive to try amaze us with the number 7 billion when it's in relation to 5.5 quadrillion.