"I thought you'd be interested that he went on and on about Joe Morgan... and himself"/"Yeah, it's mainly himself."

That was the conversation here at Meadhouse after I read this passage from the transcript "Joe Biden Campaign Speech Cincinnati Museum Center Transcript October 12": 

Before I begin, let me say that I’m saddened to hear that one of my baseball heroes, Joe Morgan, second baseman, Red’s legend, Hall of Famer and a good man passed away. And my condolences to the Morgan family and his teammates and to his fans here in Cincinnati and all across the country. He played one year on the Philadelphia Phillies. Now, I’m going to get myself in real trouble, but I have a bad habit of telling you the truth. I happened to grow up in a household in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where, if you wanted to have dinner, you had to be Yankees fan because that was the farm called, the Triple A ball club was a Yankee ball club.

He obviously couldn't call to mind the name of the Triple A ball club in Scranton.

And my grandpop was an All-American football player, but he was a great Yankees fan. But it wasn’t hard back in those days. There was Whitey Ford and a few others, but in Delaware, if you are not a Phillies fan, and let me put this way, if I were not a Phillies fan, I’d be sleeping alone. My wife’s a Philly girl. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. But Joe actually played for a year in the Phillies if my memory serves me correctly, but he had fans all over the country. It’s amazing to be both the heart when he was a second baseman, and the voice as one of the great baseball announcers in history, of the same club. I mean, that’s a pretty incredible accomplishment. And so, my best to his family and to his fans, and he has fans all across the country. Folks, as my football coach says, “Go time, Joe.” It’s go time. This is the most important election of our lifetimes, not because I’m running, because what’s at stake....

The Union Terminal is a big conspicuous place in Cincinnati. I've been there. Photo from 2010:

 

So I wonder, how many people were there. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports "Biden spoke for about 35 minutes to about 20 local Democrats and union leaders in the massive rotunda of Cincinnati's Union Terminal." He goes to a "massive rotunda" and only got 20 people? Well, the article says "The event was limited to invited guests in order to follow COVID-19 safety protocols." It also says that local party officials "urged Biden supporters not to show up outside for safety reasons." That's lots of safety... and also lots of protection from creating an embarrassing visual if nobody shows up. 

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Scranton triple A baseball team, and the name of the team in the relevant years — 1919–1988 — was Heritage. Something metaphorical in Biden's forgetting "Heritage," but there's also a lot of basis for confusion as the team has a few different names since then — Red Barons (1989–2006), then Yankees (2007–2012), and now RailRiders (2013–present). [CORRECTION: “Heritage” is the heading for a section on a series of names, not a team name. And this team, in the relevant time period, wasn’t located in Scranton. Biden seems to have been talking about some other minor league team in the Yankee system!]

Why RailRiders? "The team name was submitted by Chuck Parente of Duryea. Although 'RailRiders' received the most first place votes by fans, 'Porcupines' received the most overall fan votes on the ballots ranked one through three. As a result, a porcupine was incorporated in the RailRiders' logo. The name of the team was a tribute to the Wyoming Valley's history as an economic powerhouse and railway center in the eastern parts of the state and Scranton's long contributions to the history of the US railroad and streetcar industries."

Liberal fascism.

Last night, I posted a picture of Union Terminal in Cincinnati that made Dead Julius say:

Nice American flag drapped just like a big Nazi flag...

In a train station too... You know who liked trains? Nazis! Therefore...

Althouse is a FASCIST! Q.E.D.  (Meade has too much connection to the earth to be called a fascist... he's just a FASCIST-LOVER!)

That station is amazing. So were the fountain sculptures. I wanna visit the city now. One thing on my to-see-in-Cincinnati list is the sculpture of the great Cincinnatus returning the fasces and returning to the plow... the fasces resembles an Uzi.

The link goes to a photo that I didn't take.

Palladian comes in with:

Cincinnati has a replica of the Capitoline She-wolf in Eden Park, presented to the city by none other than Benito Mussolini himself!

And that link does go to an old blog post of mine — with a photo by... well, that's not by me either. By Meade:



Hey! Look at those teats, Tits! This vindicates Alan Simpson. And Jonah Goldberg.

Romulus, Remus, and Althouse.

Do you understand the inscription?



"Anno X." Get it?

ADDED: Here's the Smithsonian's info on the statue, which is in Eden Park in Cincinnati:

The original image of this ancient Etruscan she-wolf, owned by the Capitoline Museum in Rome, dates from 500 B.C. (The original Etruscan babies were lost long ago and were replaced during the Renaissance period with the present images of Romulus and Remus, which accounts for the difference in sculptural styles.) The she-wolf is the symbol of Rome and is known as the 'Lupa Romana,' or the 'Wolf of Rome,' because she is credited with saving the lives of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome....

The replica of the Capitoline Museum's wolf was given to the City of Cincinnati by the Premier of Italy, Benito Mussolini, through the local chapter of the Sons of Italy. The "Anno X" in the inscription refers the tenth year of Mussolini's regime. The sculpture was given in recognition of the fact that Cincinnati is the only American city to bear the name of a Roman hero, the Roman general Cincinnatus.

AND: Let's take a closer look at those breasts:

Name the sandwich.

Explain the sandwich.



IN THE COMMENTS: Okay, you people are trying, but you are not succeeding.

Oldirishpig said:

"The Mutated Chicken of Death"?

Issob Morocco said:

Prelude to Heart Bypass Surgery.

Peter V. Bella said:

Vampire Chicken.

MadisonMan said:

I don't know the name, but I do know you can't kill a sandwich like that with a knife -- you need a silver bullet or a cross.

An Edjamikated Redneck said:

MM- I'll have you know I killed that sandwich with nothing more than a fork and a large appetite.

And a little ice tea to wash it down.

Of course the fork may have been silver; I didn't stop long enough to check.

Yes, that was an Edjamikated Redneck's sandwich, which I photographed at the Cincinnati blogger-commenter meet-up at Arnold's Bar and Grill. Now, the menu is not available at the link, but I can tell you that it was listed on the menu as a hot brown.

And thanks to all who came to the meet-up. I've done meet-ups in NYC, San Francisco, and LA, but those are larger cities than Cincinnati. It's incredibly cool that we can get together a good crowd in Cincinnati.

Politico headline that makes no sense: "Reporter asks Trump about Cincinnati gorilla, is shamed."

I watched the whole Trump press conference, and it did include plenty of attacks on the press, but I absolutely do not see how Trump can be said to have "shamed" the reporter who asked about the killing of the gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo. Trump treated the question as an appropriate question for a presidential candidate and gave a serious, thoughtful answer:

"It was amazing because there were moments with the gorilla, the way he held that child, it was almost like a mother holding a baby. Looked so beautiful and calm and there were moments where it looked pretty dangerous.... I don't think they had a choice. I mean, probably they didn't have a choice. You have a child, a young child who is at stake, and, you know, it's too bad there wasn't another way. I thought it was so beautiful to watch that, you know, powerful, almost 500-pound gorilla, the way he dealt with that little boy, but it just takes one second. It's one second. It's not like it takes place over, well, he's going to do it in 30 seconds from now. It just takes one little flick of his finger, and I will tell you they probably had no choice."

Oh, I see. Boy, that headline threw me off. It wasn't Trump who shamed the reporter. The reporter, whose name is Hunter Walker, was shamed by other reporters. A Politico reporter, Edward-Isaac Dovere, said: "If you are looking for what's wrong with political journalism, this would be a good place to start." And a Wall Street Journal reporter, Reid J. Epstein, tweeted: "Whoever asked about the gorilla should meet the same fate as the gorilla." That is, Epstein said Walker should be shot to death. Incredible.

ADDED: I wondered whether Epstein is one of these characters who bemoan the decline of civility in politics. I found this of his from last August:

Donald Trump is turning the schoolyard taunt into a political art form.... [T]he intensely personal nature of Mr. Trump’s insults, sometimes mocking his rivals by mimicking them, is startling even to those who have grown accustomed to the sometimes low levels of civility in politics today.... So far, Mr. Trump seems to be paying no political price, so there is little incentive to ease up. But his critics say he is debasing the political discourse in an unprecedented fashion....

Sounds like maybe Epstein admires the aggressive rhetoric, so I'm not going to call him a hypocrite.

The Cincinnati meetup.

It's on and it's today, so if you're in Cincinnati and you'd like to hang out for an hour or so with me and a few other commenters, email me — at my gmail address (annalthouse) — and I'll tell you the time and place.

"I wait for him to misspell or mispronounce something, and then I wait for my Serial Brain to decode."

Said Michelle Sellati, who attended Trump's Cincinnati rally last night, quoted in "Fear and gloating in Cincinnati" (WaPo). She was one of the "noticeable contingent of rallygoers wearing the symbols of the QAnon conspiracy theory." WaPo explains that QAnon "helps explain the president’s foibles to those who see him as the author of living scripture" and that Serial Brain is "a YouTube channel that she says analyzes the missing letters in the president’s tweets — and the garbled words in the president’s mouth — for clues to what’s going to happen in the future." Asked to explain something that did take place after a coded clue from Trump, Sellati said, "The chemtrails are gone. Since July 4. Look at the sky. It’s beautiful." I'm just going to hope Sellati and Serial Brain are wily pranksters.

What if I did a summer trip, going to U.S. cities where I could do meet-ups with readers...

What would be the top cities? Help me devise a travel route. I have this idea of a big summer road trip, made sociable with reader meet-ups. What cities should mark the way? I also want bloggable, photographable landscapes in between, but at this point, what I'm looking for are the rest spots, the nights, the local cafés and taverns. Throw some suggestions at me.

IN THE COMMENTS: chickenlittle said:

Althouse needs a US map with little pins stuck in it showing the locations of commenters. That might help her visualize her trip.

Aren't such maps easy to create in Google?

Thanks for the idea. Here's the map.


View Larger Map

Add a pin if you think you might be interested in meeting in a group of readers at a bar or café. I need to see places where there are clusters of readers. [ADDED: The way to add a pin is to get the left sidebar open, find the "edit," button, and then click on the button that looks like the pins that are already on the map. Thanks to Portly Pirate for helping me figure that out.]

Meade said:

Speaking of Cincinnati, just outside Cincinnati, to the east, by a river called the Little Miami, is a rest spot called Meade's Rest Spot. It's also where you will find Meade's Café and a tavern called Tavern Meade where you can order a plate of barbequed short ribs, a draft Guinness, quaff a fermented honey wine called "mead," and then, as they say, get a room.

All the smart road trippers, when traveling through the heartland, always stay at Meade's due to its reputation for a hospitality that darn near approaches a hoosier level of friendliness.

LOL. Yeah, I should quaff some mead.

Is Joe Biden excluding the public from his campaign events only to be safe from COVID and to keep us from seeing how few people would show up? No!

I think the answer is no. In the previous post, about an appearance in Cincinnati — "in the massive rotunda of Cincinnati's Union Terminal" — where there were only invited guests — "about 20 local Democrats and union leaders" — and the publicly stated reason was "to follow COVID-19 safety protocols," I wrote: "That's lots of safety... and also lots of protection from creating an embarrassing visual if nobody shows up."

I'd only thought of one unspoken reason for closing the event to the public — to shield Biden from making a spectacle of his inability to draw a crowd. But after publishing the post, I thought, no, there's clearly another reason. It's not merely that he might not draw a big crowd. It's that he might draw the wrong crowd. Even before the George-Floyd-inspired protests began, protesters were ambushing Biden events. Remember this, from March 3rd? No COVID precautions at that time, I see. That's almost 2 months before the current wave of anti-police protests (and riots) began. 

One can only wonder what sort of chaos might flare up within a public Biden event if Biden dropped the COVID shield. So remaining closed to non-insiders is overdetermined.

Side note: I needed to look up when George Floyd died, and I was surprised to see how Google responded — and not just to see who the most Google-important Georges are:

I was surprised to see George Floyd identified as "American hip-hop artist." I really thought that was simply a mistake, but clicking through to the Wikipedia page "George Floyd," I see what Google is doing. It is identifying a person by his life, even when he is far more famous — or perhaps only famous — because of how he died. This might be a standard Google policy. The Wikipedia biography does show some experience as a "hip-hop artist" (along with other, varied forms of employment):

Did you notice that Hillary Clinton gave a speech on "American exceptionalism" yesterday?

"I don't like the term. I'll be honest with you....  I don't think it's a very nice term. We're exceptional; you're not.... I never liked the term. And perhaps that's because I don't have a very big ego and I don't need terms like that. Honestly.... I watch Obama every once in a while saying 'American exceptionalism.' it's [makes a face]. I don't like the term. Because... I want to take everything back from the world that we've given them. We've given them so much. On top of taking it back, I don't want to say, 'We're exceptional. We're more exceptional.' Because essentially we're saying we're more outstanding than you. 'By the way, you've been eating our lunch for the last 20 years, but we're more exceptional than you.' I don't like the term. I never liked it. When I see these politicians get up [and say], 'the American exceptionalism'... I think you're insulting the world. And you, know... if you're German, or you're from Japan, or you're from China, you don't want to have people saying that. I never liked the expression. And I see a lot of good patriots get up and talk about Amer—you can think it, but I don't think we should say it. We may have a chance to say it in the not-too-distant future. But even the, I wouldn't say it because when I take back the jobs, and when I take back all that money and we get all our stuff, I'm not going to rub it in. Let's not rub it in. Let's not rub it in. But I never liked that term."

Oh, that was Trump, of course. How far did you get before it became obvious? He said that back in April 2015.

Why am I quoting this now instead of quoting Hillary Clinton gave a speech on "American exceptionalism" in Cincinnati yesterday? Because all the news today is about Donald Trump. I know Hillary gave that "American exceptionalism" speech yesterday, but can you find a news story about it?

I'm looking at the front page of the NYT and there's nothing about Hillary — and plenty about Trump — in the whole top screen. I do a search-the-page for "Hillary" to find something, anything, and I find, down at the bottom, in tiny print: "News Analysis: Trailing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Turns to Political Gymnastics." That's about Donald Trump! Further down: "The 2016 Race: Could ‘a Better Trump’ Be Leading Hillary Clinton Right Now?" That's about Donald Trump!

There's only one other thing, in the "Recommended for You" list at #5: "ON THE RUNWAY/Fashion Extends Its Support for Hillary Clinton." Ugh! She gave a speech on "American Exceptionalism" and the only news on the front page of nytimes.com is non-news from 2 days ago about how people in the fashion industry are doing something utterly predictable. And some fashion designer opines about Hillary's clothes: "She’s very tailored now. But I think she could go more feminine, and flowy."

Oh, yeah, well, how about some feminine and flowy American exceptionalism?

Did Hillary say anything in Cincinnati? Is it too boring to memorialize in a brief squib of a news article? Was it embarrassing or off-the-mark in some way?

I searched the NYT website for Hillary Clinton American exceptionalism, and I came up with an article, published yesterday: "Hillary Clinton, Swiping at Donald Trump, Argues U.S. Is Vital World Leader." It's off the website front page already, but it does exist. And yet the main point seems to be about Donald Trump. Maybe that's why it's not on the front page. The front page is already overloaded with Donald Trump material.

Here's the Hillary quote about American exceptionalism the NYT puts in paragraph #3:

"If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this: The United States is an exceptional nation."

Why does everything sound like a lie? Compare the Donald Trump quote that begins this post. The words do seem to be coming unfiltered from his brain.

That's... exceptional.

IN THE COMMENTS: The very first comment comes from Rob:

Hillary chose her words carefully: "if there's one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way . . . ." In fact, there is not one core belief that has guided her--unless you count ambition as a core belief.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: So I answer Rob: "Rob, are you a lawyer? Good catch!"

And Rob says: "Ann, I knew Hillary at Yale Law. We go way back."

David Begley erupts: "As a classmate of Hillary's you can't leave it at that! Throw us a bone."

Rob says: "I was a year ahead of her, David. She was fine at law school, and far less militant and angry than several of the women there. Subsequent developments like her reported behavior on the impeachment staff, her commodities trading, her role in quashing bimbo eruptions and of course her private server have all seemed unlike the person I thought I knew, and apparently didn't know very well."

"It's a shame. He took over management in 2008 and he turned the team around, getting into the playoffs..."

"... but they just can't win in the playoffs. That's very important. That's baseball. They say that about all kinds of things, but when a team does not advance, then it's management. I'm sad for Dusty, because I think this will be the end of his career. He had that heart attack last season, and he's 65 or 64, and now, if you'll excuse me, I have things I need to know, like 5 things I need to know about Jodie Foster's new girlfriend."

That's what Meade said when I requested a quote on the occasion of the Cincinnati Reds firing Dusty Baker. Meade, who moved to Madison from Cincinnati, has been a Reds fan since 1972, when the Reds were in the World Series and — Meade starts talking again — "they were just an exciting team. That was the beginning of The Big Red Machine. Probably what really drew me to them in 1972 was Pete Rose. I kind of hated him, but I was fascinated by him."

"So have you learned anything about Jodie Foster's new girlfriend?"

"Yeah, she's Ellen DeGeneres's old girlfriend...."

"Anything else?"

"She's tall, dark, and handsome."

"That might offend people. Is that in the article?"

"Yeah. No."

About those Cincinnati sandwiches.

Trooper York has quite a picture — in a post that's about the Althouse Cincinnati meet-up (which I talk about minimally, with pictures, here). In Trooper's comments:

An Edjamikated Redneck said...

Now dag nab it Trooper; I ate the Hot Brown (which was actually more like a Hot White -- being chicken & all and not the original Roast Beef -- but the chicken is healthier, not that I'm worried about my health, but... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

(Ha ha. Hot White. Here's my pic of the Hot (supposedly) Brown.)

Any way, it was not a crap sandwich as you have portrayed (yeah it did look pretty wild when it came out of the kitchen with a knife stuck in it -- and this was a classy place; well classier anyway -- I mean it is usually the dives where something comes out of the kitchen with a knife in it- and its usually the cook... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

It was a pretty good sandwich (I mean the comments over at Althouse; Heart attack on a bun! It was CHICKEN for cryin' out loud! It’s the original white meat! Not like it was pork or something… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

And I was with some classy folks (not that I would meet and tell you understand, but you know Althouse was there; how much classier can you get? And the place actually served long neck PBRs! Do you expect a place like that to serve a crap sandwich? I mean hell, it’s not the Congressional Dining Room for Pete’s sake! I mean there they KNOW a carp sandwich when they serve one… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Carp sandwich?

So, I want y’all to lay off my dinner; it was a great place and a helluva good time (you know the place has been open since 1861? My Great-Granddad ran a hotel on that block in the 1870’s; most likely he probably had at least one beer there himself, back in the day. He was German ya know we seem to have some sort of reputation as beer drinkers… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Redneck responds to Darcy's request for details about the meet-up:

Any way Darcy, as much I would like to accommodate you and spill the beans on last night (now there’s a meal that would deserve comments! What if I would have had a plate of beans and rice? Not like a place classy as that, and on the northern side of the river would even serve beans, but… Dag nab it; did it again! Where was I? Oh, yeah).

A gentleman never tells the details. We had a good time, ate a good meal and all parted amicably.

One detail I will spill; Not only did I get to meet Althouse; I also got to meet Silvio.

And he took me at the light. I got to admit THAT was not the highlight of the evening (no redneck, even us edjamikated ones, like to admit that we lost a drag race, but her ‘chauffer’ caught me flat-footed trying to retune the radio when the light changed. First I knew the light was green was when I heard the roar of an Audi’s exhaust… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

The End.

Ha ha. Makes me think of this:

"President Joe Biden and numerous mainstream media outlets have touted the story of an unidentified 10-year old girl who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion..."

"... that was illegal in her home state of Ohio. Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, claimed a child abuse doctor referred to her a 10-year-old patient who was pregnant and seeking an abortion a few days past Ohio’s six week limit. The story was originally published in the Cincinnati Enquirer then quickly picked up by national outlets including Politico, The Washington Post, CNN, Teen Vogue, The Hill and numerous other outlets, which did not claim to have independently verified the story and in several cases simply cited previous reports. Bernard’s account did not mention specifics such as the name of the young patient’s doctor, any of the towns where these events took place, whether charges were being pressed against the child’s alleged rapist and at what point, if at all, Bernard or the child abuse doctor contacted the authorities regarding the individual who had impregnated the 10-year-old."

The Daily Caller reports.

Yes, I have been waiting to hear the name of the rapist and news of his arrest or details about a rape by an unknown man who has eluded arrest. Of course, I care about a 10-year-old girl facing pregnancy and denied access to abortion in her home state. But rape is an even more serious problem! 

Boehner: "At one point several weeks ago... the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' "

"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system."

Boehner's repeated response to that was: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem."

[T]oward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."

And then there's Harry Reid:

"Those days after Christmas," [Boehner] explains, "I was in Ohio, and Harry's on the Senate floor calling me a dictator and all kinds of nasty things. You know, I don't lose my temper. I never do. But I was shocked at what Harry was saying about me. I came back to town. Saw Harry at the White House. And that was when that was said," he says, referring to a pointed "go [blank] yourself" addressed to Mr. Reid.

It's best, by the way, if you're going to say "Go fuck yourself" never to say it in anger.

There's lots more in that article (in the Wall Street Journal). I was interested in this little bit at the end:

[Boehner] sees debt as almost a moral failing, noting that when he grew up in a "little middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood" outside of Cincinnati, "nobody had debt. It was unheard of. I just don't do debt."

If he's not bullshitting, he's revealing a shocking lack of sophistication. Should families pay rent on apartments until they can put down the entire purchase price of a house? Should businesses expand only through the cash they have on hand? But it's the WSJ that inserts the phrase "almost a moral failing," so I shouldn't read too much into Boehner's simple-Cincinnati-guy posing. He didn't say debt is immoral. Only that he comes from a background where the norm was to follow a budget and pay your bills. How sophisticated is he now about the good use of debt as opposed to the bad? Who knows?

"People with Down syndrome are pure in heart and spirit."

Did you know that there is an especially high demand to adopt children with Down syndrome? There are long waiting lists to get such a child. When I first saw this surprising fact, I thought it was part of the pro-life movement, an expression of opposition to the practice of aborting fetuses found to have Down syndrome, but that's not it:

Most who seek to adopt Down syndrome children have had a family member, friend or acquaintance with the disorder, or work with them in medical or school professions.

"People think they are just great kids, people feel like they are very lovable," said Rachel Crews, a social worker with the Special Additions adoption agency in Stillwell, Kansas.

Changing attitudes toward people with all disabilities and improved medical treatments also are helping unite these children with families, advocates say.

"Society as a whole is much more accepting," said David Tolleson, executive director of the National Down Syndrome Congress in Atlanta, Georgia. "You are much more likely today to see people with disabilities in the media, places of worship, schools.

"Whereas in a prior generation, mothers were told when they had a baby with Down syndrome or another disability, put the child in an institution and forget about them."

That's what happened 34 years ago to a little girl named Martha, whose single mother gave her up for adoption. She was diagnosed with Down syndrome and placed in a group home in Cincinnati, Ohio.

But when Martha turned 4, Robin Steele and her husband met her and fell in love immediately. With one son already, they adopted Martha and have gone on to adopt nine other children -- three of them with Down syndrome.

"We just knew we wanted to make Martha part of our family," Steele said.

Martha's adoption also spurred the Steeles to help connect other families like theirs with families who felt they could not raise children with Down syndrome.

So, 23 years ago, they started the Adoption Awareness Program in conjunction with the Down Syndrome Association of Cincinnati. Steele connects people who want a child with Down syndrome with birth mothers or adoption agencies.

In the first year, she helped find homes for three children with Down syndrome. Now, Steele works with three to five situations a week, she said, and has a waiting list of 150. Waits average six months to a year.

"People with Down syndrome are pure in heart and spirit," said Amy Allison, executive director of the Down Syndrome Guild of Greater Kansas City. "They keep you grounded."

Allison said the organization does not monitor trends, but "there are easily more people contacting us interested in adoption than we have ever seen before."

Would you get amniocentesis for the purpose of learning whether your child would have Down syndrome, so you could abort that child? Do you think ill of those who do? What would you do if you had tried to get pregnant and believed in the importance of loving whatever child you were blessed to bear and your husband revealed to you that he would reject a child with Down syndrome? Would you have amniocentesis and abort a child with Down syndrome so you could go forward with another pregnancy that, you hoped, would produce a less flawed child? Would knowing that there are long lists of would-be parents who especially hope to adopt a child with Down syndrome affect your decision? Would it make a difference if those waiting to become adoptive parents had put their names on the list to discourage abortion or if, on the other hand, they simply had a special love for persons with Down syndrome?

"How does he whistle like this? I can't even whistle at all!"

John asks, linking to "The Jazz Whistler - Ron McCroby."

I clicked and played it out loud here at Meadhouse.

Me: "Listen to this. He's whistling."

Meade: "It's not that good. If that was a flute, I'd say, get a better flute."

ADDED: Jay Gilbert sends an important email:

I wish more attention would be given to Ron McCroby's other contribution to American culture: most of the TV ads for Kenner Toys from the 60s through the 80s.

I worked in music for advertising during the latter part of that era, and met Ron a few times. Kenner was based in Cincinnati then, as was its ad agency (Leonard Sive Advertising). Long before his notoriety in whistling, Ron was composing and producing music (and many of the voiceovers, serious $$$) for the latest spots featuring Play-Doh, Easy-Bake Ovens, Baby Alive, etc. He probably could have made a case for being the most consistently-heard talent on Saturday morning TV.

A superior expanse of roadway.

(Enlarge.)

... somewhere in Cincinnati. This is the kind of thing you know isn't pretty and you'd hate to have in your neighborhood but you have the feeling that if it were a photograph, it would take on a strange, evocative grandeur. Is it wrong to feel that way? Should I be ashamed of myself to find this scene beautiful... but only because I'm not there?

National Anthem standoff.

There's that NFL kneeling, but there's also the MLB standing and standing to the point of not being able to stand it anymore.

Hernan Iribarren of the Cincinnati Reds and Manny Pina of the Milwaukee Brewers engaged in a pre-game standoff after the national anthem.

Both players stood with their hats and hands over their respective hearts as their teams walked back into the dugout before the game.

Pina moved first, which gave the Reds the victory.

"Scientists at Harvard have spent the past five years building robot bugs..."

"... that can move with the same dexterity and speed as real-life insects."



This post is for betamax3000, who said, in last night's Koi Café:

I Am Going to Try an Experiment to Determine the Depths of My Althouse Comment Addiction: I Will Not Post a Comment for the Next Twenty-Four Hours. God, Give Me Strength. And -- Please -- No Robot Posts.

And I said:

But I have a Google alert on "robot."

And as long as you're over there rooting around in the Koi Café, I'm seeing Titus's list of what's hot this summer in Ptown, which he says "will arrive in Jesusland, in approximately 9 months," which makes Inga say "I got the no bra and kale thing, woo hoo! I'm ahead of the game!" and Palladian says "Kale? Varvatos? LOL. Poor Titus, about 2 years behind the trends. What a drag it is getting old."

And Meade says "Ha ha. Cool woud be growing ornamental kale in an old pair of Varvatos boots you bought in SOHO a dozen years ago. Hot: Italian wedding soup." I extract the information that it was Varvatos boots that Meade acquired — on the advice of his Cincinnati-based style consultant — to look good enough for me the first time we met, in January 2009, which was 4 years ago.



Now that you've got your shoes on...

Release the robot insects!

"Investigation finds no evidence of ‘racist or offensive statements’ by Covington Catholic students during incident on Mall that went viral."

WaPo reports.

The report, prepared by Greater Cincinnati Investigation, Inc. and dated Feb. 11, employed four licensed investigators for approximately 240 hours to take statements from students and chaperones, as well as to interview third-party witnesses and review about 50 hours of video....

The investigators said they found no evidence that the students responded in an offensive manner to the Black Hebrew Israelites or that they chanted “Build the Wall.” After asking chaperones, they performed a school cheer, according to the report, to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites.

Other key findings include testimony that the students felt “confused” by Phillips’s approach. Investigators said they found no evidence of “racist or offensive statements by students to Mr. Phillips,” though some performed a “tomahawk chop.”

According to the report, one of the chaperones told students that if “they engaged in a verbal exchange with the Black Hebrew Israelites, they would receive detention when returning to school.”...

The top-rated comment at WaPo is: "I trust this information because the truth always comes forth when the Catholic Church investigates itself."