This is a terrible time for an opening on the court

164 Replies

First, I pray for God’s blessings and comfort upon the family of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She fought a long, hard and brave fight not only to stay alive, but to stay at her post, doing her duty. I honor her, and I feel for her loved ones.

After that, I pray for the country. Because this is an awful time to be having a big fight over a Supreme Court vacancy. I’m sorry for the country’s sake that we’ve lost Justice Ginsburg. But I’d be saying that, and feeling that, if it were Justice Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, or, yes, Gorsuch or Kavanaugh.1920px-Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_2016_portrait

We just do not need this now. Our attention needs to be on saving our country, by electing Joe Biden to replace Donald J. Trump.

Joe Biden is the candidate of the things that unite us. That’s what he’s about, and what he appeals to. Donald Trump is precisely the opposite. He has based everything he is, politically, on the things that divide us. He needs us to be at each other’s throats.

And of course, nothing divides us like a battle over a Supreme Court seat. On that we can rely, and it has been thus ever since 1973.

This is why he so absurdly released a list of potential court nominees last week. We all ignored him, because it’s hard to imagine much that he could have done that would be less relevant — last week. He and his supporters were so upset that they didn’t get to provoke Biden into putting out a list, so we could all have a great, big fight over the lists — a huge, divisive fight over something that might happen next year, or the year after or the year after.

Of course, the stage was fully set for this to be horrible even without Trump in the White House. Even before that great misfortune befell us, we had learned that Mitch McConnell was a man without a conscience, a man with absolutely no sense of duty or responsibility to his country. For him, all that matters is his party and its ideology.

His refusal to even consider a qualified nominee put forward by the president of the United States — his clear responsibility under our Constitution — was one of the most shocking, nakedly unprincipled things I had seen in our politics for many a year. We’ve put it out of mind with the multiple daily outrages of the current president. We’ve gotten used to thinking, several times a day, “Is it all falling apart? Can someone actually do these things to the country with impunity?” But at the time of what McConnell did, those were fairly new questions to be asking ourselves.

And now, it’s hitting the country with full force, right in the face. If there was a single GOP loyalist out there who sincerely believed that it was a matter of principle for McConnell not to consider a nominee only eight months before a presidential election, that fool now knows what he is.

Oh, for those of you who don’t know who I am writing this: What I say is not about Merrick Garland. To me, there’s not a great deal of difference between a Garland and, say, a Gorsuch. Both were, as far as we could see on the surface, qualified nominees. They both deserved the same careful, deliberate courtesy from the Senate. (Oh, and for those who really don’t know me — if it’s about where a nominee stands on abortion, I’m on the pro-life side. But it’s not about that, to me. It’s about qualified justices deliberating and deciding difficult issues based on the law — not us deciding it all for them ahead of time. If we do that, we’re betraying the Constitution. No, I don’t think the Court was right on Roe, or on Griswold. But I don’t think ideologically stacking the Court is the answer. Both sides trying to do that has driven us to this moment.)

If McConnell had a ghost of a point in his favor in 2016, it would have been that a Senate nomination should not be rushed.

But we’re assured that, while it’s unlikely that the Senate would do the deed before the election, it seems clear that McConnell intends to see to it that a lame-duck Senate confirms the nominee of Donald J. Trump. Even if Trump has lost the election, and McConnell has lost his majority.

Of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the election. But we now know that the bitterest warriors of left and right are going be be charging out onto the field, and that everything just got uglier…

How do my ancestors keep moving around? They’re dead, right?

31 Replies

OK, this is getting ridiculous.

I found my last “ethnicity estimate” from Ancestry pretty befuddling. But that’s nothing compared to the new one they just gave me.

Last time, here’s what they came up with. And while the changes they had made from before were pretty confusing, it mostly made sense, from what I’ve seen doing my family tree:

new estimate

Now, they’ve sent me a whole new ballgame, and I don’t understand it at all:

now scottish

Oh, come on!

Before, I was 29 percent “Ireland & Scotland,” total. Now, I’m 40 percent “Scotland,” alone. I used to be 65 percent England and Wales (yes, it said “England, Wales & Northwestern Europe,” but the “Northwestern Europe” part consisted of a pitiful few acres on the coast of France), and now I’m 17 percent English and 8 percent Welsh.

If you look at my tree, I’m mostly English. I have an occasional Scottish ancestor, but probably just as many Welsh ones. The 8 percent seems about right for Wales, but only 17 percent England? (Of course, some of my lines don’t reach back to the Old Country. And a small minority of lines go back more than a few centuries. Maybe I seem English because the English have more intact records. Maybe all my missing ancestors were Scots.)

I don’t get it…

When Ancestry does this — and I think this is my third “update” or so — they always say something like this:

Don’t worry, your DNA hasn’t changed. What has changed is how much we know about DNA, the amount of data we have available, and the ways we can look at it for clues to your past. You’re still you.

Oh, that makes me all warm and fuzzy.

But how did all my ancestors move to Scotland when I wasnae lookin’?

if-its-not-scottish-its-crap-funny-if-you-ask-38188219

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got a ruling from Rudy Mancke: It’s a copperhead

11 Replies

We went back and forth on that last post about the snake — here and on social media. We were starting to stagger toward a consensus that these creatures all over my neighborhood are indeed copperheads. But we were far from certain.

And you know, when I’m practically stepping on these things right in the middle of the street, I kind of want to know.

Rudy Mancke

Rudy Mancke

So I stopped fooling around. Last night I wrote to Rudy Mancke himself for a ruling.

I hated to bother him with something so common. On his segments on public radio, people have usually sent him a picture of something rare and interesting. But based on what I’ve been seeing, these snakes are as common as Republicans in my precinct — maybe more so.

But Rudy got right back to me, and I’m very appreciative:

Brad, The photo you sent is of a Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), the most common venomous snake in SC. The dark, wide-narrow-wide bands across the body and the copper-colored head are diagnostic. They are found throughout SC. I have seen more of these snakes this year than I normally do. They feed on any animal small enough to eat. During hot weather they are active mostly at night…

I thought that was really nice of him, especially since as he himself mentioned, these critters are, you know, common.

Which brings me to another subject…

Look at us. We’re pretty smart people, generally speaking. We have a lot to say about a lot of things, and we flatter ourselves that what we have to say has value.

But when it comes to something as simple as staying alive while walking down a suburban street — much less in the woods, or tall grass — we are shockingly ignorant. With the exception perhaps of Jim Catoe, who owns some land out in the country that has a crowd of snakes on it, we’re kind of a bunch of dummies.

What’s happened to us, people? Our ancestors used to know the creatures around them, and the names of the trees, and what was edible and what wasn’t (to us, “edible” means packaged for sale in a supermarket, but not on the detergent aisle).

But when confronted by an animal that can kill us — a common animal, in fact the most common venomous snake in SC — we are clueless!

In those books I love — as do Bryan Caskey and Mike Fitts — there are certain things Jack Aubrey assumed any man knew back 200 years ago. And when the smartest person he knows — physician and naturalist Stephen Maturin — asks him something any ship’s boy would know, such as, “When is the dark of the moon?”… Jack hesitates to answer, hoping that Stephen is making a joke by asking such a thing. (But he never is. Stephen’s more like us.)

Personally, I have no idea when the dark of the moon will be. Occasionally when walking with my wife at night, I’ll look up and recognize Jupiter in the sky, and Saturn off to the left of it, and I’ll say so in a vain attempt to be impressive. But she knows I only know that from wondering “What’s that bright thing in the sky?” and looking it up on my phone’s astronomy app. And she’s tired of my mentioning it.

The problem is, if you’re walking at night and holding up your phone to the sky to figure out what that bright thing is, you’re likely to step on a small creature that can kill you.

Sheesh.

Anyway, thanks very much, Rudy!

I think the snake made me forget the rules

14 Replies
The distracting creature.

The distracting creature.

I kind of lost my head last night. I walked up to two people, and got right in their faces, and none of us had masks on. My wife witnessed this, and said she was really surprised to see me do something so careless.

I blame it on the snake.

We were out walking around the neighborhood, at dusk. There was still enough light to clearly see the snake on the road right in front of us, but I didn’t, until my wife warned me to watch out. Which is weird. My brain must not have been functioning right, because I don’t like snakes at all, and the sight of one, even a photograph, usually sets off alarms. Any such movement — and there’s nothing else on the planet like the movement of a snake — in any corner of my field of vision should have had me on full alert.

It was interesting that we saw it right there, because it was only a few yards from one that had been run over a couple of days earlier. Its flattened carcass had still been in the street when I had walked that way earlier in the day.

But this one was very much alive. And we stopped to observe it and debate its nature. I immediately said “copperhead,” but admittedly I tend to call almost anything that has a visible pattern of those colors a copperhead. My wife said its head lacked the menacing triangular shape we tend to associate with pit vipers. I acknowledged this, but stuck to my standard policy of treating it as a copperhead until proved innocent. Which meant staying away from it.

I assure you, I used the limited zoom feature on my phone to take the above photo, which I thought came out rather well, considering the low light. I still don’t like looking at it.

Anyway, about a block and half past that, with the light further dimming and the shade of trees lowering it further, we saw a blackness in the middle of the road that looked remotely like it could be another snake, curled up. A bigger one.

As we cautiously approached and debated, and I had just about decided it was a clump of foliage of some kind, someone asked what we were looking at. It was a teenaged boy who I think had just rolled a garbage bin out to the street. I told him. And I told him about the snake just up the street — well, the two snakes, counting the dead one. And he seemed interested. And I thought, Maybe this is one of those people who are into snakes, and maybe he knows something…

So I said, “I’ve got a picture. Want to see it?” When he nodded, I walked straight over and showed it to him on my phone. Only when we were looking at it with our heads about a foot apart did I realize we weren’t wearing masks.

Then a woman — possibly his mom — arrived and asked what it was, and I immediately forgot what I’d just realized, and went over the show it to her. Only this time I handed the phone to her rather than standing right next to her. Still, too close, not to mention handing the phone back and forth.

I don’t think either offered any expert advice. I didn’t get a ruling on the type of snake it was.

Do y’all know? I’d send it to Rudy Mancke, but I don’t think anything this common would interest him.

Anyway, I waited until we were about half a block away before expressing to my wife my surprise at myself for having forgotten basic COVID precautions. She said she was pretty amazed, too. I don’t think she had fully realized what an idiot I can be.

I blame it on the snake….

Thoughts on the new ‘Dune’ trailer?

13 Replies

One of my kids asked me if I’d seen it, and until moments ago, I hadn’t realized it was out.

Anyway, I just saw it.

I’m not going to say what I think until I hear what y’all think, except to say this: So far, it looks much better than the abomination David Lynch unleashed upon the world in 1984. That, of course, was the worst large-budget motion picture in history.

Worse, it was the most significant betrayal ever of a ready, eager, trusting fan base. All those millions of people who (like me) ran to the theaters and bought tickets — finally, we were going to see Arrakis ourselves! And then to watch that nightmare unfold before our eyes. Frame after frame, Lynch must have stayed up nights screaming to himself, How can I screw THIS part up? And it’s got to be more extreme than the frame before it!!!! (Imagine him doing this in a voice like Bobcat Goldthwait.)

Don’t agree with me? I have two words for you — “weirding modules.” Enough said.

Oh, as for the made-for-TV series that came out in 2000… that wasn’t bad. I liked that they called it “Frank Herbert’s Dune,” to distinguish themselves from David Lynch’s horror. Probably the biggest letdown in that was the casting of William Hurt as Duke Leto, but then Hurt has been miscast in everything except “Altered States” (he was totally believable as that guy) and maybe “Broadcast News.” But it wasn’t bad. Still, in those days, TV wasn’t yet the medium it is now. So we’ve waited another 20 years for something to be attempted on the grand scale.

Which means at this point, my expectations are unreasonably high. I know this.

Anyway, tell me what you think of the trailer, and we’ll discuss…

Dune still

Bob Woodward’s book

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Rage_(Bob_Woodward)

Hey, if you thought the Five Points picture fully illustrated how messed up our world is, check out this tweet, which was brought to my attention by Chad Connelly:

I think he was serious. I think maybe this guy actually thinks a “fantasy baseball” list of candidates for nonexistent SCOTUS vacancies is more interesting and newsworthy than the bizarre things POTUS said on the record about REAL policy actions in a series of 18 extraordinary interviews with one of the two journalists most credited with bringing down Richard Nixon.

Really. I think he means it.

I mean… why didn’t Trump release a list of candidates for openings on the Court a century from now? He won’t get to nominate those, either.

You want something else to worry about? That guy has 279,300 followers, all of whom presumably live on the same planet as you.

Anyway, the Woodward book…

I haven’t read it. I’ve just read about it. But here’s enough points to get you started:

  • As the headline in the Post reported, “Trump says he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and worse than the flu while intentionally misleading Americans.” I mean, you know — he doesn’t want us to think he was stupid or something. Because he’s a real stable genius.
  • Two days after forcibly clearing Lafayette Square so he could wave a Bible around (but not open it, of course), Trump called Woodward to boast about it. When Woodward suggested maybe white men such as themselves should try to better understand “the anger and pain” of black Americans, Trump said, “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”
  • The Hill pulled this from the book: “Trump lashed out at generals, called them ‘a bunch of pussies'”… So… do you think that meant he wanted to grab them or something?

Oh, regarding that last item about disrespect toward the military… for those of you sufficiently detached from reality to dismiss the report the other day in The Atlantic about the gross things Trump has said about dead American heroes (ones other than John McCain) because the sources declined to be named, well… there are some unnamed sources in this one, too — I guess because Woodward wanted to get some perspective from people with normal, functioning brains. But a great deal of the book comes from 18 on-the-record interviews with Donald John Trump. As noted above, sometimes, Trump called Woodward to say these things.

How’d you like to be this guy’s campaign manager?

Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina, 5:48 p.m. today

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Five Points in Columbia, SC: 5:48 p.m., 9/9/2020

Five Points in Columbia, SC: 5:48 p.m., 9/9/2020

This seemed to provoke some interest on Twitter today, when I posted it a few minutes after it was taken, so I thought I’d share it here for my readers who don’t do the tweeting thing.

The picture above was taken at 5:48 p.m. today in Five Points.

As I explained on Twitter, the kids weren’t waiting to get into Subway. They were waiting to get into the bar next door. As I said, I don’t think Subway serves beer. Although why they don’t, I don’t know — look at the crowd they could gather!

No, they were going next door.

One friend who was recently in college herself expressed some surprise at that, saying “They don’t even have a great selection!”

Yeah, well. I don’t think think they were lined up for “selection.” Unless you mean “natural selection.”

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? They think they’re invulnerable. Using the term “think” loosely, of course.

The tweet drew reactions from Bryan Caskey, Doug Ross, Phillip Bush, and “Mayor Bob” Coble. But I think my favorite was this one:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1303851673442545665

Noah Barker: ‘Make the president Christ-like again.’

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Noah may love Joe almost as much as I do. That's him in the white shirt and no jacket, very excited to be right next to the ex-veep the day he came to campaign for us in 2018. That's me in the middle in the back, next to Campaign Manager Scott Hogan.

Noah may love Joe almost as much as I do. That’s him in the white shirt and no jacket, a 17-year-old pretty excited to be right next to the ex-veep the day he came to campaign for us in 2018. That’s me in the middle in the back, next to Campaign Manager Scott Hogan.

Today I called my young friend Noah Barker, fellow Smith-Norrell veteran, to talk about yard signs. He’s the one who got me some Biden signs for my neighbors, as related earlier.

Noah, who’s now a student at USC, happened to mention an opinion piece he had written for Medium — a website I had not been familiar with, but which seems to have been around for several years now. He wanted me to take a look at it and see what I thought.

I got a little panicky when I saw the headline, “Make the president Christ-like again.” I thought, whoa, Noah — we both love Joe, but let’s not go overboard! But almost immediately after that, I knew what he meant, and it worked. I could tell that from the photo with the piece: There was Joe with his head humbly bowed standing with his mask on among fellow worshipers — as human as you can get. (It would have gone well with that Facebook post I cited awhile back from Sister Nancy Hendershot — which you should go read if you haven’t.)

I read on, and saw that Noah had done a good job. Here’s his piece:

I don’t often write about my faith. I usually refrain from these types of writing because of two different lessons that I was taught as a child.

The first one was a favorite saying of my grandfather, Wilson Bryan, who would say “Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words.” He believed that you shouldn’t have to utter the words “well, you know, I’m a Christian.” The way you treat others should show folks that something is fundamentally different about your life.

The other lesson was from Jesus, who according to the Book of Matthew said, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (6:5–6).

However, I’m breaking this rule to write this essay. After watching the Democratic National Convention this past week, I couldn’t keep these thoughts to myself any longer.

It has been hard for me to watch fellow Christians continue to support a man like Donald Trump. He lies, he cheats, he steals. He spews hatred and breeds bigotry. He makes fun of others and he is never hesitant to give an opponent of his a childish nickname (see “Slow Joe” or “Pencil-neck Adam Schiff”). He never forgives and he never asks for forgiveness.

Sometimes, when I am listening to him rant and rave I’m reminded of the words of Paul the Apostle. In his letter to the people of Galatia, Paul outlines the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. In case you haven’t walked by your old Sunday school class and seen that poster in a while, these nine attributes are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I think of these nine attributes because I have never witnessed Donald Trump show any of them in his public life. Now, this has nothing to do with me being a Democrat, which I am. I saw these nine attributes present in the life of George W. Bush, a man that I almost never agreed with. They were also present in the lives of almost-presidents, like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

This is not about politics. It’s not about policy. It’s not about the Supreme Court or abortion. This is about character.

Now, let me say, I am in no position to question whether someone is a Christian or not. Donald Trump has said that he is and that is between him and God. Full stop.

However, when it comes to electing a president, I want someone who shows me that they are Christian, not tells me. I want a leader who isn’t just a Christian, I want someone in the Oval Office that acts Christ-like.

I don’t mean performing miracles or being perfect; we all fall short of the glory of God.

But, I at least want someone who tries.

Who tries to be kind.

Who tries to be honest.

Who tries to heal the wounds of our nation.

I want a president who uses love to unite us.

Who loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him.

That’s not Donald Trump. That’s not his story. It’s not his life.

On the other hand, Joe Biden isn’t perfect, and unlike Donald Trump, Joe would be the first person to tell you that. He’s not the second coming and he’s not the Messiah, and he certainly doesn’t act like he is.

We’ve all heard the countless stories of Joe Biden comforting those with a sick loved one, helping those with a stutter, or just being kind to the people that are around him.

I believe he is a fundamentally decent man, warts and all.

I don’t agree with Joe Biden on everything, but I believe it is our job as voters to choose the better person and in this case, the better man.

That choice is clear to me.

This November, I’m voting to make the president Christ-like again.

Noah describes himself at the end as “78th Governor of Palmetto Boy’s State | Son of Lugoff, South Carolina | UofSC’23 |”

1_uHNEUWpv6eWsgVJUwINFaQ

Well, my signs are out now. Happy Labor Day, y’all!

40 Replies
I live on a corner, and if you look over the hill to the right, you can see one of the signs I have posted on the OTHER street.

I live on a corner, and if you look over the hill to the right, you can see the very top of one of the signs I have posted on the OTHER street.

I had a nice surprise this morning. My mobile rang, and it was E.J. Dionne! I hadn’t spoken with him in a while, so assuming he was looking for a quote about S.C. or something, I took another swallow of coffee in a desperate and vain effort to make myself sound intelligent.

John

One of my neighbors’.

But no, he had just called to chat. Turns out he is, like me, obsessive about getting his steps in every day, and this is what he has taken to doing while walking — calling people. (I find myself doing the same — that, and listening to podcasts.) We had a wide-ranging conversation. At one point, we got to talking about yard signs. He mentioned having recently discovered a commonality with Rep. Abigail Spanberger — the former CIA officer who was among the cadre of moderates who gave Democrats their House majority by winning purple districts in 2018. They are both big believers in yard signs.

What a coincidence, I said. This being Labor Day, I’m about to put out my yard signs! And now I have, as you can see above.

This, of course, is only my second time ever. My first was 2018, when I dramatically broke with a lifetime in which I was not allowed to do such things. I put out the signs, and proclaimed, “I refuse to be an ‘idiot.’ I’m joining the ranks of the involved.” Those signs were for James Smith (this was a few weeks before I joined his campaign) and Micah Caskey. This time, my Republican state House member has no opposition, so the two candidates are ones James, too, would enthusiastically support: Joe Biden and Jaime Harrison.

I’m hardly the first in my neighborhood. Others didn’t quite wait for this official start of the general election season. Two of my neighbors already had up signs for Joe and Jaime. They had obtained them from me. A couple of months back, one of them — a retired Methodist minister — stopped me on one of my walks to say he needed some signs, and he figured I knew how to get them. I said I’d try to help.

Another neighbor.

Another neighbor.

The Jaime Harrison sign was easy. His finance director had the same job in James’ and Mandy’s campaign, so I reached out to her, and she fixed me up with several. But Biden had shut down his Columbia campaign office immediately after the primary (the resources being needed elsewhere), so I wasn’t sure where to go. As it turned out, another fellow Smith/Norrell veteran — now-college student Noah Barker — drove over and dropped some off in the bed of my truck.

So I gave them to John and Jim, and they put them out, so that’s three of us now in my Republican neighborhood who have signs out for both Joe and Jaime.

And when I took my own walk after talking with E.J., I saw a new Harrison sign on my street, which was great, as this was five minutes after I’d put out my own. And it hadn’t been there yesterday. (Obviously, this neighbor is also strict about following the traditional calendar.)

The new one on my street.

The new one on my street.

But no Biden sign. Which reminds me of my brother’s yard in Greenville. We went to see him back in the first week of August, and he already had a Harrison sign out. Which both pleased me and made me feel guilty. I had obtained one for him when I got those from my friend on the campaign, but had forgotten to take it to him. He got this one from a neighbor who had an extra.

And that one, and the new one in my neighborhood, bring up a worry: I think maybe it’s easier to get Jaime Harrison signs than Joe Biden signs here in South Carolina. Jaime has an active, well-funded, energized campaign going here in the state (and I celebrate all of that), but Joe had no reason for a campaign office after Feb. 29. Those resources were needed elsewhere.

So where do you get Biden signs? Well, I suppose you could get some from the state Democratic Party, but I don’t know; I haven’t checked. Having my own sources, I haven’t needed to — but I suppose that’s where I’d have gone next. But if you live in a Republican neighborhood, like mine or my brother’s, do you think in those terms? Probably not.

I’m going to poke around on this a little more. If there are people out there who would put up Biden signs if they had them, they need to be more available than they are now. Because like E.J. and Rep. Spanberger, I think they help…

My brother had this one up a month ago, in Greenville.

My brother had this one up a month ago, in Greenville.

Netflix is trying to guilt me into bingeing. Really…

1 Reply

Netflix IT

In the course of my life, I’ve had many people try to make me feel guilty about many things — usually successfully. Often, this has involved tasks I started but had not, at the time of being nagged, completed. I have at times become a bit sensitive on this point, I’ll confess.

Now, Netflix has weighed in, via email. But this time, the charge of not having followed through is utterly unjust, and I stand before you an innocent — even laudable, in terms of having applied myself assiduously to the task — man.

I’ll have you know that when it comes to watching “The IT Crowd,” I am an over-achiever. I have “finished” it multiple times. I have watched certain episodes, such as the one Netflix attacks me for stopping on in this instance (“Are We Not Men?”), many more times than that. That is one of the very best in the series, if not the best. It shows what can happen to guys like us — I mean, guys like Roy and Moss — when they make deceitful use of a website that empowers them to talk about football (soccer, to American friends) and therefore seem to be “proper men.” The site teaches them to say things like, “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?” I’ve used that one myself on several occasions (but not always, I’ll admit, with impressive success).

I only stopped on that one this time because I wanted to save it to savor on another occasion. I didn’t want it to get stale on me. It was like not allowing myself to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” more than once a year, on Christmas Eve. That sort of thing.

I have never been a slacker when it comes to watching. I have not been a Roy. Whenever anyone has asked me to help him or her by watching “The IT Crowd,” I have not hesitated. I have not tried to put anyone off by saying “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” I have immediately stopped whatever I am doing — reading my iPad, playing a video game — and watched it from start to finish.

And I just wanted all of you to know that….

are we not men

He thought I’d be interested, and he was right…

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without

I was doing one of my walks around the neighborhood yesterday, and a guy in a white pickup truck stopped beside me. I figured he wanted to ask directions or something, but that wasn’t it.

A selfie I shot on the same walk. How could he tell I'd be interested?

A selfie I shot on the same walk. What made him think I’d be interested?

He said that looking at me, he thought I might be interested in seeing something his wife had made for him.

I said “Sure,” and he put it on.

Above you see him without it. Below you see him with it.

Pretty amazing, huh? When I got home and showed my wife, on the small screen of my phone, she couldn’t even tell at first that it was a face mask. I had to point it out.

Don’t know how his wife did it. Maybe took a picture of him, and sent it off to be printed on cloth? I should have asked.

In any case, I was suitably impressed…

with

 

Obscene foolishness on the lawn of the People’s House

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White House desecrated

I guess the McCloskeys were right when they warned that mobs of crazed people were coming for all of us. There they were Thursday night on our own lawn, the lawn of the White House. A great mass of people crowded together, mostly without masks, in the midst of the pandemic, standing repeatedly to cheer lie after trite lie coming from the strange orange man who is their master.

A truly disturbing display.

I had wisely taken Jennifer Rubin’s advice and stayed away for most of two nights. When I clicked it on sometime well after 10 and saw one of the orange man’s children — the only supporters he fully trusts — standing on that monstrous platform in that location, I figured he’d be out soon, so I kept the tube on with the sound off until he made his big entrance with OUR house as his backdrop.

I saw all the comments out there about the listlessness of his delivery, which I chalked up to the fact that he was reading a speech put together by people with a passing familiarity with the English language. Which is not his thing. Later, I started hearing the kinds of things he says on his own, as he built toward the end, and the suicidal crowd tried their best to evince enthusiasm, apparently hoping to please him.

I heard the usual lie after lie as he faithfully followed the Bernie strategy. He and his campaign had failed to come up with another approach after the Democrats rejected Bernie and went with Bernie’s opposite, the very personification of what their party traditionally stands for. But what were they going to do? There’s nothing frightening or outrageous about Joe, so they have to fulminate about the socialists.

Beyond that, nothing is memorable.

But I’ll share some things I read this morning, so you can have the benefit of other views.

Fact Checker: First the boring business of reviewing some of the lies themselves and dissecting them. As the Fact Checker says, “President Trump ended the Republican National Convention on Thursday with a tidal wave of tall tales, false claims and revisionist history. Here are 25 claims by the president that caught our attention, along with seven claims by speakers earlier in the evening.” Unfortunately, they don’t do Pinocchios in these roundups, which removes some of the fun.

The rage that fuels Trumpism still burns — David Ignatius provides a warning for everyone to heed, that “smoldering at the center of the populist Republican Party, there’s still the bright orange ball of fury that is Donald Trump — wounded and angry and promising White men in his trademark, code-worded slogan that he’s going to ‘Make America Great Again.'” He warns Joe Biden as well as the rest of us that we have to do more than beat Trump; we have to address the loss of hope among uneducated white men that brought us to this pass. (Of course, now we have a bigger problem than that. Those guys might have brought Trump to prominence, but then the entire Republican Party decided to prostrate itself at his feet. I doubt you’d find many in the audience at the White House who fit in the demographic Ignatius is describing.)

Trump presented the mother of all fabrications on the White House lawn — Dana Milbank addresses the weirdest falsehood on display this week: “Four years ago, when the United States was in the eighth year of an economic expansion and enjoying a time of relative peace and prosperity, Donald Trump saw only carnage. ‘Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,’ he told the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, describing a nation full of ‘death, destruction . . .’ and ‘weakness.’ Now, America actually is in crisis… And Trump, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term on Thursday night, offered a most counterintuitive assessment: Everything is awesome!”

Biden needs a Sister Souljah moment — George Will’s column basically says that Joe needs to find a way to distinguish himself from the more extreme elements in his constituency. Of course, he’s done that over and over, contrary to all the lies this week about him wanting to “defund the police” and such. But I think Will is trying to tell us he needs to do it in a way that will be understandable to the kind of people who are actually susceptible to Trump’s lies, such as those Ignatius wrote about. Not sure he’s right, but I can see how that would occur to someone this week.

The perfectly logical case for Donald Trump — Alexandra Petri makes similar points to Dana Milbank, but as is her wont, has more fun with it: “Under Donald Trump, America has never been safer. It has also never been more dangerous. We must elect Donald Trump to make us safe again, which he has already made us, never more than we are now, although we also aren’t, and won’t be, unless we elect him! If you see.” Yeah, that’s pretty much what I heard.

And now I look forward to YOUR thoughts…

orange 3

OK, now I’m numb. And I don’t mean comfortably…

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Melania

Today, Jennifer Rubin said it’s OK not to watch the RNC. After all, most people aren’t:

And do not worry that you are missing out on what others are absorbing. “The first night of the Republican National Convention averaged 17 million viewers on Monday, a sharp drop of 26% from 2016,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “The audience figure from Nielsen was also below the opening night of last week’s Democratic National Convention, which averaged 19.7 million viewers” over the three major English language broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels.

Relatively few people, it turns out, want to subject themselves to monotonous speeches delivered at high decibels….

Nevertheless, not having read that, I tried again last night. And… I ended up with nothing to say. The only thing that really occurred to me would be to express distress at the way they keep repeating the same absurd lies, over and over: They’re socialists! They want to defund the police! They hate America! Yadda-yadda! (And I’m still puzzling over that one the McCloskeys — Mr. and Mrs. 2020 Republican — trotted out Monday night, that the Democrats would do away with suburbs…)

They just keep shouting those idiotic falsehoods, over and over.

But there was nothing new about that. I experienced the same all Monday night, as well. I think on Tuesday night I just reached the point of being numb. And not comfortably so.

Is that the point? Is that the strategy? Make everyone so numb they can’t think any more?

If so, it’s working. By the time Melania spoke, I was no longer forming impressions. I have nothing to say about anything she said. I did wonder briefly about what she was wearing — was it a dress? a coat? is there a message on the back of this one? — so apparently, the brain still retains the potential to be distracted by trivialities.

Don’t know if I’ll even try tonight. Or if so, I’ll just keep it on with the sound off and then turn it up to listen to Pence. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the man deliver a speech in the last four years, and he is (shudder) vice president, so I should probably check it out, right? (Please tell me I don’t have to.)

Those who were there for a night of weirdness, and those who were not

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Yikes.

Yikes.

I just thought I’d throw out a few scattered thoughts, which is probably an appropriate way to deal with the odd time I spent watching weirdness on the Boob Tube last night.

I’ll divide this into two chapters: People who were there, and people who were not.

We’ll start with the weirdness — people who were there.

The McCloskeys. I would see these people as a parody, an SNL skit — except there was nothing about them that was in the slightest way funny. You’d think there would be, after having seen photos of them on the day that brought them celebrity. I mentioned a couple of days ago that after I rewatched “Spaceballs” during a workout, it hit me “that the tubby guy with the pink shirt, too-long khakis, bare feet and ‘Look at me; I’m a soldier!’ rifle reminds me a lot of Rick Moranis spoofing Darth Vader. The McCloskeys looked so absurd holding their weapons, like they’d never held such objects before, and had no idea what they were for. Like Trump holding that Bible. But then, they came on television unarmed, and all the humor of the situation disappeared. Sitting there, they were like some disorienting twist on “American Gothic.” And then I heard them speak, and their words seemed to have been written by some BLM wokester trying to show us what modern racist white people sound like. All I could say on Twitter was, “Wow, they actually did it! They actually trotted out that sad, strange couple from St. Louis! Now that I’ve heard them speak, I feel MORE embarrassed for them…”

Kimberly Guilfoyle. Wow, OMG, etc. I had recently heard of this person in a context that caused me to Google her. But I had never seen her “live.” It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen on a convention stage, real or virtual, and I’m including Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair. All I said was, “So THAT’S Kimberly Guilfoyle, huh? All righty, then. What’s she on?” Initially. Later, I added, “My, my. She got MORE worked up at the end…” Someone explain to me the thought process that led whoever was screening speakers to put this person on the program. Or her strange boyfriend, for that matter — although we know why he was on the agenda, don’t we? I later heard that the word “cocaine” was trending during his performance. I’m glad I missed it.

The rest of the Trump family. I’m sort of looking ahead here, since I see several others of his familial entourage are going to be on tonight. Everyone except, perhaps, his sister. Because, of course, this is not a Republican Party convention. It’s a Trump personality cult convention. As I’ll mention below, you don’t have the usual dignitaries who would place the event within a historical GOP context. You have the kinds of whackadoodles who will pledge everlasting loyalty to the Trump brand. Which includes the family, and a family member’s girlfriend. Which I guess answers my question above as to how Kimberly “I Want to Bite the World with My Big Teeth” Guilfoyle got onto the podium.

Nikki Haley. I missed this. I’m going to go back and find and watch it. But my understanding is that she was sort of the calming influence to set up fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott. Part of the process of transitioning from the loudly crazy. I’ll bet she was good at that. Disappointing that she was there, though. For some time, she’s distanced herself from the Trump circus. It’s rather awful, and something that will always attach to her name to her discredit, that she showed up now to pledge her fealty.

Tim Scott. This was the highlight of the evening. It was a stunning contrast to everything that had gone before, a speech that would not have been out of place at a real Republican convention 30 or 40 years ago. Which is the moment Sen. Scott seems to think he’s living in, speaking of a GOP that’s all about personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, and loving America. I don’t know Tim Scott, by the way. He emerged beyond local Charleston politics after my time dealing professionally with state leaders. I’ve never even met him. But I have the impression that he’s a nice man, a sincere man. A good man, although a terribly deluded man to let himself be used this way. And he brought that to the screen last night. A person who saw nothing but his speech might convince himself, “It’s OK to vote Republican this year! It really is!” But that person would have to do what Tim Scott has done: Ignore everything we’ve seen over the last four years. It was a stroke of towering manipulation to put this nice, decent thoughtful black man on in the slot of honor on the first night, after a couple of hours of manic racist rants. Surely no one’s buying it. Right?

Then, there were the people who were not there:

Any former president or nominee. OK, so only one former president is alive. But this is pretty jarring — the complete lack of anyone whose presence puts a stamp on the legitimacy of the gathering, who says Yes, this is the convention of a party that is both Grand and Old. We’ve never seen this before, and surely no one has missed the point — that all this is about is Donald J. Trump and those who will remake themselves in his image.

Lindsey Graham or Henry McMaster. Not that I missed them at all. But it’s interesting. Before becoming Trump’s mindslaves, these guys pretty much represented what Republicanism was about, in South Carolina anyway. Remember, Henry was Ronald Reagan’s appointee as U.S. attorney, and that sort of affiliation was what defined him for decades. But these South Carolinians were set aside for two who represented a momentary, shockingly bold attempt to pretend that the rest of the evening hadn’t been about white people being terrified by dark people (I mentioned the McCloskeys, right?). So it’s worth noting.

Bob Inglis. God Bless Bob. Bob, of course, was one of the original religious-right conservatives who took over the party in the first half of the 1990s. He was the prototype of the sort of Republican Tim Scott sees himself as. He was a man of principles then, and he’s a man of principles now. Which we saw yesterday.

That’s enough to start a discussion. Have at it…

I shot this in 2004, on actual film -- which I had to take to a Duane Reade and have digitized so I could send it back to Columbia. As you see, a typical GOP convention of the past -- with Bush 41, and Rudy before he became Trump's boy.

I shot this in 2004, on actual film — which I had to take to a Duane Reade and have digitized so I could send it back to Columbia. As you see, a typical GOP convention of the past — with Bush 41, and Rudy before he became Trump’s boy.

Good job, Joe! Now, let’s get on with saving the country

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"The choice could not be more clear..."

“The choice could not be more clear…”

I was really puzzled at first by the Kathleen Parker column The State ran this morning, panning the Democratic Convention. She seemed to get it all wrong. She griped about how “the only thing I dislike more than a circus ringmaster running my country is manipulative, emotion-mining propaganda,” and said she could barely watch it.

Which is how I feel about MOST conventions, regardless of party; I have to turn them off or walk out of the room periodically to keep my head from exploding — all that throwing of red meat to snarling partisan mobs.

But as I said on the second night, this convention wasn’t like that — which I finally decided was because the mobs weren’t there! They weren’t feeding off each other in ways calculated to turn off anyone who isn’t one of them. As I said that night, “The thing I hate about conventions is missing!”

Then I saw that this was Kathleen’s impression of the first night — this is what you sometimes get these days from print outlets that go to bed in the early evening. What you read is often days past the sell-by date. (The rather belated post I put up about the second night ran two days ago.) I didn’t watch that first night, so I guess I can’t argue with the column.

Anyway… now that it’s over, I can say this was the best convention I’ve seen in many cycles, maybe the best since the days when the gatherings actually had a purpose, and did work and made decisions.

It had a big finish, with Joe doing a great job in his acceptance speech. I loved it from the start:

And I loved it at the end:

But there was so much more. Like that amazingly brave kid talking about his and Joe’s stutters. This did so much, including shaming the idiots who try to attribute Joe’s occasional flubs to cognitive weakness. I honor that kid. The boy’s story of his interaction with Joe also caused one pundit to say something like (I can’t find the link right now; I read so much this morning), can you imagine Donald Trump making the effort to help a child? (See this update.)

Before that, there was the neat thing with all those former contenders simply talking about what a great guy Joe is. That was really nice. And what they said came across as more sincere, and certainly more relaxed, than the things they had said on the stump. I say that not to denigrate their candidacies, but to emphasize how real they seemed in talking about how and why people love Joe.

That got taken down a notch by Michael Bloomberg’s solo shtick. He didn’t say anything wrong; he’s just so awkward as a speaker.

The previous night had been a little flat, except for Barack Obama’s masterful speech. No, I wasn’t impressed by Kamala’s. Nothing wrong with it; there was just nothing great about it, either. Hillary Clinton was forgettable (which may be a good thing). But Obama lit up that dull night.

The ending, though, was great. There’s no way any rational, fair-minded person in America saw and heard the convention and came away from it wanting to do anything but get out and vote, immediately, for Joe Biden.

It’s a shame we have to wait so long. And endure such wretched stuff between now and then. I expect to be nauseated by this time next week.

Anyway, here’s Joe’s speech if you missed it:

I’m really digging this sort of convention

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Hawaii

Well, Bud already kind of said what I wanted to say — or part of what I wanted to say. But dang it, I said it on Twitter last night!

Anyway, I mentioned before that I sort of didn’t get around to watching the first night of the DNC. But I did watch last night — although I missed maybe the first hour — and almost immediately loved it. My first, rather tentative, impression:

Normally, I tend to stew a lot during these things, whichever party is doing its thing. I might be watching the convention of the party whose candidate I wholeheartedly support, but dang — so many of those other people, throwing out all their partisan talking points, get on my nerves. There are high points, such as Bill Clinton’s magnificent speech in 2012, but then low points, such as Elizabeth Warren’s speech that very same night. And then there are all these speeches from people I never heard of, whose distinguishing characteristic is that they are enthusiastic partisans, and they’re standing there tossing out trite red meat to the crowd.

But I didn’t feel that way at all last night — even during the odd few seconds when AOC was on. She’s on, and suddenly you realize she’s… nominating Bernie Sanders? Did no one tell her what’s going on? Oops, she’s gone…

But hey, there was nothing partisan about it. Just AOC interrupting the party shindig to nominate somebody who isn’t actually a Democrat. Someone Democrats had decided rather firmly to pass on. It was just… odd.

What followed that, though, was wonderful:

Those vignettes from across the crunchy were both goofy, and wonderful. Celebrating what America is about, a snapshot at a time. These delegates didn’t just represent their states, they brought their states with them! And it was fun.

Quite a few people reacted by saying there seemed little reason why this would ever be done the old way, after this. And at least one I saw pointed out that this far better way was also quicker. Yup.

Finally, I realized why I liked ALL of this. Sally Yates, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell — all of it:

Far as I’m concerned, this is the way it should always be done in the future.

Indiana

Aw, is The Nation getting all surly? Things must be going well.

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I didn’t actually watch the first night of the DNC last night. It seems to me appropriate to watch the first night of the first virtual convention in the modern fashion. I didn’t watch it while it was “on,” to use a 20th century term.

Instead I’ve been streaming bits of it, as I have felt like it, today.

I like what I’ve seen, but I don’t really have any general observations to offer about the whole thing. But apparently The Nation does, based on this email I got:

surly

Looks like the first night made The Nation kinda surly. Check out such nonsense as “Democrats err by amplifying Kasich’s claptrap over AOC’s progressive vision.” Wow. I thought Kasich’s clip was great. It was essentially, “Here’s why everybody should vote for Joe — especially those in the overwhelming majority of the country that doesn’t drink AOC Kool-Aid for breakfast.”

This is good news. It underlines that the convention is appealing less to the “woke” crowd, and more to the rest of us — the aforementioned overwhelming majority.

This is excellent. I like this. This is exactly what we need to end the Trump nightmare…

Here’s why I’m worried about voting on Election Day

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I had an enjoyable chat with Bryan Caskey via Zoom today, but I didn’t see this Tweet of his until after:

So I guess I’ll answer it here.

First, it’s not save enough to shop in grocery stores. But we’ve got to do it. Gotta eat. And finally, in recent weeks, people are playing it pretty safe in every store I visit — people wearing masks, staying away from each other, and so forth. Not perfect, but WAY better than a couple of months ago.

Second, grocery shopping is way different from voting.

To give you an idea what I mean… check out this photo from Election Day 2008. It took me an hour and forty minutes to vote that day. Look at the picture and you’ll see why (sorry about the quality):

voting4

And that’s what’s got me worried.

Here’s the thing:

I don’t plan on voting by mail. Y’all know how I am. When it comes to turning out with my neighbors and voting, I’m a fierce traditionalist. I get to talking about it, and I’m like Oliver Wendell Douglas on “Green Acres,” blathering on about the importance of the American farmer, with the fife playing “Yankee Doodle” in the background.

And this may be the most important election of my life. I don’t intend to miss it. My wife will probably vote by mail, as she did for the primary. But not me, baby. Election Day is the day, and I do it in person.

But here’s the thing: What if it’s like 2008? OK, so first, we’d have to spread all those people out. That’s probably doable, but what if there are other complicating factors, and what if, when the day is over, I didn’t get to vote?

Or worse, what if I actually GOT the coronavirus, a few days before Election Day, and I can’t go vote — and it’s way too late to apply to do it the other way?

I keep thinking, maybe I should GET a mail-in ballot, but not use it unless for some reason I can’t vote on the DAY, and mail it in then? But I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules.

Anyway, I’ve been worrying about it. You?

Quail Hollow precinct, Nov. 4, 2008.

Quail Hollow precinct, Nov. 4, 2008. Sorry about the quality.

The magical reason why Phil Collins is a hit again

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This is just pure fun.

Heard this on NPR One while walking this evening, and had to share.

Phil Collins’ 1981 hit “In the Air Tonight” is currently the No. 2 best-selling song on iTunes.

Why, because of the above video, which has had 5.5 million views so far.

It’s 22-year-old Tim and Fred Williams of Gary, Indiana, just shooting video of themselves reacting to songs they’ve never heard before. Which is something they do:

The Gary, Ind., twins have also recorded their first time listening to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” which she responded to on Twitter. “No point in begging…Jolene already stole these two,” Ms. Parton said….

If you don’t watch the whole video, you at least have to watch until… well, you know what part I mean. Then, you’ll listen to the whole thing.

This is an illustration of a phenomenon that may be unexpected to you. Kids today actually have to go out and hunt for great old songs to listen to. I’ve written about this in the past — you know my shtick about how, back in the day of variety shows on TV, if it was popular you heard it, whatever the genre — rock, pop, soul, adult contemporary, Broadway showtunes. It was all out there for everybody on our relatively few broadcast outlets, and we heard it wherever we went.

Now, music has become so narrowly focused, and made available through such personalized algorithms, that to do what these kids are doing is rare — and kind of thrilling. To find something that hasn’t been preselected for you, you have to go out and dig:

“The algorithm is built around user behavior,” Ebro Darden, the global head of hip-hop and R&B at Apple Music, said. “As more consumption options became available for music lovers, platforms got narrower and more targeted.”

Discovering classic jams on the airwaves seems hard to do now, too, as radio stations have also become more personalized, Mr. Darden said.

“You are beholden to a platform, whether it is a radio station or a streaming service, whether it is a human curation or an algorithmic curation, but you can go into these services and start looking around,” said Mr. Darden, who also hosts Ebro in the Morning at the New York radio station, Hot 97.

On streaming services like Apple Music or Spotify, users can decide if they want to go down a rabbit hole and listen to music based on the era, genre, producer, or artist, but they have to take the first step, which seems to be a hurdle….

Anyway, never mind the why. Just watch the video, and enjoy. Enjoy the twins enjoying…

In the air tonight

Your reactions to Kamala Harris announcement?

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Joe and Kamala

I’ve been too busy to write another full post this afternoon, and will be for awhile.

But I thought I’d give you a place to discuss Joe Biden’s decision to name Kamala Harris as his running mate.

A couple of you have mentioned it already on other posts. For instance, Randle said:

Biden chose wisely. Not my first choice, but it gives us another window into his character. No grudges, a willingness to accept criticism and no fear of an “ambitious “ woman. Onward.

That says it well. It’s so much a part of who Joe is that he dismissed my biggest objection to her — her particularly egregious attempt to sabotage him in that first debate. Joe doesn’t care. Maybe I shouldn’t, either.

But now that I’m faced with it, I realize that was more or less my only objection. By contrast, I had many profound objections to Elizabeth Warren, and we all dodged a number of bullets when he didn’t name Susan Rice. I was worrying again about her just this morning. In a piece that was pretty much a roadmap to the problems the GOP could have thrown at her, Bret Stephens reminded me why she was my least-favorite member of Obama’s national security team.

So, welcome, Kamala. Let’s get this done now.

If y’all start discussing it, I’ll join in later….