El-em-en-o Poop, Barley Wine, Regular-Sized Male Teens, and More

Jonathan Karl is interviewing J.D. Vance on This Week on Sunday. He famously interviewed Trump, pressing him for his thoughts on the January 6th crowd chanting to hang Mike Pence. 

Trump clearly saw the mob's point of view, equivocating, "Well, the people were very angry." Then he went into a tirade saying that it was "common sense," that you can't confirm an election that you know was fraudulent. 

One minor point... Pence knew it was not fraudulent.

I don't know about you, but I'd be a little bit nervous if I were Vance, aiming to take Pence's place!

So what should Karl ask Vance? How about this:

"Let's say you win in 2024, and by every measure other than Trump's own mouth, the Democrats win in 2028. You know that the Democrats rightfully won, yet Trump presses you to not certify the election. Would you fear for your life if you went against his wishes?"

Entertain the fact that it's a fair question. That alone is a ridiculous illustration of the world we are living in. The simple truth that we can even make sense of the question is something of a tragedy in itself.

His honest answer: "Hell yeah!"

His actual answer: "I'm not going to get caught up considering hypotheticals that have no chance of happening."

What would actually happen: There's no chance Vance would certify an election that the Democrats won. He already said that he wouldn't have certified the last one (no doubt as part of his job interview), and the results don't get any clearer than that. Again, by any measure other than Trump's own mouth. 

It's only my opinion and maybe I'm wrong, but I think if Trump wins, he'll find a reason to delay the next election. That's what authoritarians do. I guess the good news for Vance, is that he wouldn't have to fear for his life.

August 9, 2024

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Pretty succinct summation! I've heard others sum it up even more succinctly though- "pew pew." But seriously, I would be for an international agreement banning the militarization of space. Seems safest, least expensive, most reasonable.

Dan Rather- "When I hear the term "Space Force" I think of boys playing in a sandbox with their G.I. Joe's and model rocket ships, not a sober or coherent evaluation of the risks of military escalation in or on the final frontier."

August 9, 2018

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The president's solution to the opioid epidemic is to tell kids that drugs are "no good, they are really bad for you." On a scale of vocabulary level from 1 to 100 where 1 is Frankenstein and 100 is Lincoln, this president is... maybe 1.5?

August 9, 2017

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Zuzu's not quite 2 and she knows 10 letters of the alphabet. Well 9... she thinks P is poop, but that's pretty close.

August 9, 2017

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It's reported that the president's aides have said his nuclear threat toward North Korea is not to be taken seriously, that "he was just in a bellicose mood." So who is running the show? The president will agree he's not one to make idle threats. If he drops the bombs, will his aides then say he was just in a bellicose mood?

August 9, 2017

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I love the sound of locusts in the morning. It's the sound of not having to go back to school.

August 9, 2016

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Arthur C. Clarke- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Yes, and I suppose that means that a being from a sufficiently advanced civilization would be indistinguishable from a god, therefore we have no way to distinguish between a being with supernatural powers and a being with unknown natural powers.

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Voltaire- "Optimism is the folly of maintaining that everything is all right when we are wretched."

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David Frum- "It's been awhile since I formally studied law, but as best as I recollect, one can escape a perjury trap by telling the truth."

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American Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau published his memoir Walden on this day in 1854. Bill Bryson had this to say about Thoreau's idea of roughing it, in A Walk Through the Woods:

The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the cored. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbiggind, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical."

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Nagasaki was leveled on this day in 1945 when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. Thirty-five thousand people are killed outright, including 23,200–28,200 Japanese war workers, 2,000 Korean forced workers, and 150 Japanese soldiers.

First it was Little Boy, then Fat Man. What would have been next- Regular-Sized Male Teen dropped on Osaka?

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Tragedy on this day in 1969, when Sharon Tate, Steven Parent, Wojcieck Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Jay Sebring were brutally murdered by the Manson family.

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Richard Nixon became the first President of the United States to resign from office on this day in 1974. I don't know, I thought he looked totally stoked.

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Swiss psychologist and philosopher, Jean Piaget, joined us on this day in 1896. Need some parenting advice?

"Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely."

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Hermann Hesse left us on this day in 1962.

"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation."

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Another notable birthday- Audrey Tautou (1976)

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The psychologist Edward Thorndike left us on this this day in 1949.

"Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure."

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We lost David Rakoff in this day in 2012. His friend, David Sedaris, had this to say about him finishing his final book, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

"I can't imagine writing a book when you're feeling so sick, and being so dedicated and focused in spite of everything, when you have a deadline, literally." 

Quite an amazing book!

"Being a stranger was like being dead,

and brought to mind how, in a book he had read

that most folks misunderstood one common state:

The flip side of love is indifference, not hate."

The whole book is written like that. I don't know how he did it.

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Want to know why you like "Weird Al" Yankovic? Here's the analysis.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/weirdly-popular

August 9, 2014

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Stephen Pinker's review of Coyne's book Faith vs. Fact:

"Coyne quotes several historical and recent writers, particularly Carl Sagan and the philosophers Yonatan Fishman and Maarten Boudry, while adding some examples of his own, to show how the existence of the God of scripture is a testable empirical hypothesis. The Bible’s historical accounts could have been corroborated by archaeology, genetics and philology. It could have contained uncannily prescient truths such as “thou shalt not travel faster than light” or “two strands entwined is the secret of life.” A bright light might appear in the heavens one day and a man clad in white robe and sandals, supported by winged angels, could descend from the sky, give sight to the blind, and resurrect the dead. We might discover that intercessory prayer can restore hearing or re-grow amputated limbs, or that anyone who speaks the Prophet Mohammed’s name in vain is immediately struck down by lightning, while those who pray to Allah five times a day are free from disease and misfortune."

August 9, 2015

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God damn! A behind-the-back home run.

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/08/random-softball-slugger-hits-mind-boggling-behind-the-back-home-run

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2815%2900743-5#.VcddZp47N50.facebook

August 9, 2015

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The Hill- Anne Frank Center Compares Trump Era To Pre-Holocaust Germany

I'm not in to bringing up Hitler willy-nilly... oh who am I kidding? But why not bring up Hitler as an extreme example to prove a point? Why not bring him up as an example to avoid at all costs? Why not ask yourself WWHD and the do the opposite? Why not learn from the mistakes of the past? Should we listen to the Anne Frank Center? These parallels are disconcerting, right?

"In its list, the group said Trump creates his own media; exploits youth at a rally; endorses police brutality; demonizes people who believe, look or love differently; strips vulnerable people of their families, jobs and ability to live; and believes Congress should change its rules to give him more power."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/345856-anne-frank-center-compares-trump-era-to-pre-holocaust-germany

August 9, 2017

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I might puke. Best optical illusion I've ever seen.

August 9, 2017

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Trouble keeps brewing in North Korea.

"The U.S. President at [golf] links again let out a load of nonsense about 'fire and fury,' failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation. It seems that he has not yet understood the statement. Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work with him."

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/345984-north-korea-says-plan-to-attack-guam-will-be-complete-by-mid-august

August 9, 2017

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Ironically, if I cut open a watermelon and saw that, I might see it as proof of god!

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The Atlantic- Trump's Words Are Poison, by Peter Wehner

From the article:

At this point only the truly devoted and the truly deceived can deny what is playing out. Donald Trump is doing as president what George Wallace did as governor of Alabama—using words to incite feelings of revulsion and detestation toward “the other,” men and women who are the “wrong” race or the “wrong” ethnicity. For Wallace, the primary targets were black people; for Trump, the primary targets have been both Hispanic and black. (“The two greatest motivators at [Dad’s] rallies were fear and hate,” Wallace’s daughter Peggy Wallace Kennedy recently said. “There was no policy solution, just white middle-class anger.” And she hears echoes of that in Trump’s rhetoric."I saw daddy a lot in 2016,” she said, adding that “they both were able to adopt the notion that fear and hate are the two greatest motivators of voters that feel alienated from government.")

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-trump-has-done/595585

August 9, 2019

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Did you know that Belinda Carlisle was paraphrasing Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas- "the kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth but men do not see it.” I made that up- but this song and The Gospel of Thomas are straight-up Buddhism. If you disagree, then I'm mad about you.

On another topic, I loved the Go-Go's documentary on Showtime. My favorite Go-Go's tidbit- they were so poor when Beauty and the Beat came out that their manager returned the towels they posed in. If they kept them, what would they be worth now???

Martha Quinn calls them effervescent. Yep, if you want to describe the Go-go's in a word, you can't do better than effervescent.

https://youtu.be/NOGEyBeoBGM

August 9, 2020

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The Creepiest Things Ever Said By Kids:

I was with my sister, her husband, and their two year old daughter. We were talking about loved ones that had recently passed (my father had died sometime recently). My brother in law went and grabbed a picture of his mother, who had died in a car crash when he was six, to show me.

When my niece saw the picture though she started laughing. We asked her what was so funny and she looked at us and said "that's my special friend who sings to me".

I still shiver a bit just thinking about it.

And another...

Walking past an old cemetery, my (then) 3-year-old son casually said, "My brother is in there." When I reminded him that he didn't have a brother, he said, "No, Mama... from before. When the other lady was my mommy."

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What a great Phillies game! Nick Castellanos hit career home runs number 199 and 200, twenty-eight year-old Weston Wilson hit a home run in his first career at-bat, and Michael Lorenzen pitched the 14th no-hitter in the Phillies' 140 year history. Lorenzen thanked the lord after the game for helping keep him calm but I don't get it, he has Zen right there in his name.

August 9, 2023

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Hermann Hesse- "Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours."

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James Baldwin- "Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."

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Flannery O'Connor- "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."