All entries by this author

Go back to Lake Wobegon and stay there

Oct 11th, 2017 9:07 am | By

Garrison Keillor is a jackass.

I am off lingonberries for the time being and Volvos and flat white furniture from Ikea. No meatballs, thank you. Once again the humorless Swedes have chosen a writer of migraines for the Nobel Prize in literature, an author of twilight meditations on time and memory and mortality and cold toast by loners looking at bad wallpaper. It’s not a prize for literature, it’s a prize for nihilism. The Swedes said he’s like Jane Austen combined with Kafka with some of Proust, three other writers you’d never invite to a party.

Jesus, where to begin. I guess at the end. Hello? The point of writers isn’t whether you would invite them to … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments
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Where he was been superb

Oct 10th, 2017 4:28 pm | By

The BBC is also asking.

Question: How often does President Trump talk about IQ?

Answer: All the time.

When Mr Trump recently boasted that his IQ was higher than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s, it fit a pattern.

In 2013, he tweeted that his IQ was “much higher” than Barack Obama and George W Bush.

He has also claimed a higher IQ than comedian Jon Stewart and British star of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar.

Despite this, Mr Trump has never revealed his own IQ. So can we work it out?

Sure. We can work it out by watching him in action. We can compare him to other people in the same line of work. We can compare … Read the rest

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One of the highest

Oct 10th, 2017 3:55 pm | By

Trump apparently thinks “IQ” is a straightforward synonym for “intelligence.” He also apparently thinks he has lots of both.

In an interview with Forbes magazine published Tuesday morning, President Trump talks about his high IQ to explain away reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to him as a “moron” over the summer.

Said Trump: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

That’s funny, because pretty much everyone else in the world can tell you otherwise.

This is hardly the first time that Trump has cited his reportedly sky-high IQ — and the relatively low IQs of

… Read the rest

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He is taking the time to focus on his family

Oct 10th, 2017 12:39 pm | By

The Times has a new story to add more to the growing heap of Harvey Weinstein ordure.

Gwyneth Paltrow was one. Rosanna Arquette was one. Judith Godrèche, a leading French actress, has a story.

So does Angelina Jolie, who said that during the release of “Playing by Heart” in the late 1990s, he made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected.

“I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,” Ms. Jolie said in an email. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”

A New York Times investigation last week chronicled a hidden

… Read the rest

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They had the evidence

Oct 10th, 2017 12:10 pm | By

In the New Yorker, a long piece by – of all people – Ronan Farrow on the sexual bullying of Harvey Weinstein.

This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few people were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories.

And they weren’t kidding – women who said no or complained were punished.

In the course of a ten-month investigation, I was told

… Read the rest

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Deals that assure him a win

Oct 10th, 2017 10:58 am | By

Forbes suggests we need to get a grip and understand President Pinhead. He’s a “dealmaker”; he’s in it for maximum payoff for himself, and nothing else. At first glance that sounds to me like just Capitalism, but of course it’s not that simple.

Donald Trump didn’t get rich building businesses, despite years of brand-burnishing via The Apprentice and millions of votes from people who craved exactly that experience. Instead, his forte lies in transactions–buying and selling and cutting deals that assure him a win regardless of the outcome for others. The nuance is essential. Entrepreneurs and businesspeople create and run entities that have any number of interested parties–shareholders and customers and employees and partners and hometowns–that in theory all share

… Read the rest

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Temperamentally unable to exercise anything like mature judgment

Oct 9th, 2017 5:47 pm | By

Corker spelled out that nearly all the Republicans in Congress know Trump is unfit. James Fallows says ok so what are they going to do about it?

Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, deserves credit for saying in public this evening to The New York Times what most prominent Republicans have known and many have said (in careful privacy) over the past two years.

Namely: that Donald Trump is irrational, ill-informed, impulsive, unfit for command, and increasingly a danger to the country and the world. The man who has ultimate authority over the world’s most powerful military, including its nuclear weaponry, is recklessly issuing threats to North Korea and others that set the nation “on the path to World

… Read the rest

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Choices

Oct 9th, 2017 5:13 pm | By

Saturday the white supremacists came back to Charlottesville.

The prominent white supremacist Richard B. Spencer was a featured speaker at a rally on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., where demonstrators reprised their chant of “You will not replace us!” and asserted that the South would “rise again.”

The gathering, which occurred eight weeks after a “Unite the Right” rally resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman, was considerably smaller than the one in August, instead resembling a group of protesters who descended on the park in May.

The Charlottesville Police Department said in a statement that Saturday’s rally began around 7:40 p.m., included 40 to 50 people and lasted no more than 10 minutes.

Good that it was small, … Read the rest

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Emma called Harvey out

Oct 9th, 2017 4:09 pm | By

Harvey Weinstein didn’t just sexually harass women, he also [cough ALLEGEDLY cough] called them fat pigs. Emma Thompson tore a strip off him.

One film industry source told The New York Post that Weistein called then 24-year-old British-American actress Hayley Atwell she was a “fat pig on screen” while cast and crew were taking a break from filming Brideshead Revisited. The Hollywood veteran then allegedly told Atwell she should watch what she ate.

The unnamed source then went on to reveal that Atwell’s co-star Emma Thompson was furious with what happened.

“Emma called Harvey out for being a misogynist and a bully and really gave him a hard time,” the source said.

Hayley Atwell in Brideshead Revisited.

Harvey … Read the rest

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He was a rock star

Oct 9th, 2017 12:59 pm | By

Trump told us over the weekend what fun he had in Puerto Rico. That’s nice. It’s always good to see the misery of millions provide a little entertainment for a head of state.

Over the weekend, President Donald J. Trump praised his response to the devastation caused to the island of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria, which left dozens dead and thousands without power or potable water.

“I was having fun,” Trump said of his four-hour visit to San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, last Tuesday. That visit, most memorably, had him throwing paper towels to an audience gathered to see him inside a church. “They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels,” Trump said. He claimed that the

… Read the rest

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Pence’s pricey junket

Oct 9th, 2017 12:33 pm | By

How much did Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis in order to walk out of a football game cost us? CNN does the adding up.

Here is an estimate of just the air costs (which does not include costs of advance personnel, Secret Service or support on the ground):

According to the Air Force, flying a C-32, the model of plane used for Air Force 2, for one hour costs about $30,000. Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis Saturday took about three hours and 20 minutes, so it cost about $100,000
Pence then flew from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took about four hours and 45 minutes, costing about $142,500.

The grand total: about $242,500.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »


Mr Nomanners

Oct 9th, 2017 12:03 pm | By

The Times has a Republican’s Guide to Presidential Etiquette that it has updated to take in recent incidents in correct behavior.

Republicans used to care a whole lot about how a president comported himself, and whether he acted at all times with the dignity his station demands.

“Is President Obama Disrespecting the Oval Office?” Fox News asked in 2010, with a link to images of Mr. Obama and his aides tossing a football, or eating apples just inches from the Resolute desk.

“Wear a suit coat and tie,” said Andrew Card Jr., President George W. Bush’s former chief of staff, in reaction to pictures of Mr. Obama in shirtsleeves in 2009.

I remember that shirtsleeves nonsense. I don’t think … Read the rest

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La guerre est finie

Oct 9th, 2017 11:14 am | By

The war on coal is over; the war on the environment has intensified.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told coal miners in Kentucky on Monday that he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, assuring them, “The war against coal is over.”

Awesome. Let’s have more and more and MORE greenhouse-gas emissions so that the environment can crash even faster and more destructively than it already is. Those fires racing through Sonoma and Napa counties in California right now? There will be more of those! Yay! And as for the hurricanes – they’ll be like this year only more so. Fun!

“Tomorrow, in Washington D.C., I’ll be a signing a proposed

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


Il ne regrette rien

Oct 9th, 2017 10:49 am | By

Bob Corker, the Tennessee senator who’s been brawling with Trump lately, chatted with the Times yesterday. He apparently gets what a disaster Trump is yet he thinks it will all be ok somehow.

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”

“He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 13 comments
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Virtue signaling

Oct 8th, 2017 3:42 pm | By

And in between threatening new wars and teasing us with military surprises and attacking senators on Twitter, Trump and his people manage to find time to continue their ridiculous fight with football players who have the temerity to protest racism.

Vice President Mike Pence left a football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday after some players knelt during the National Anthem, saying he did not want to “dignify” the event.

“I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem,” Pence wrote on Twitter.

Except that it doesn’t “disrespect our soldiers”; that’s why they kneel instead of sitting: it’s specifically … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


The de facto chief cartoonist for alt-Twitter

Oct 8th, 2017 3:12 pm | By

I hadn’t heard of the cartoonist Ben Garrison until I was looking for something else a couple of hours ago and saw this masterpiece:

ThinkProgress wrote about him last month:

Spend any time on some of the internet’s more devoted pro-Trump sites and you’ll likely come across one of Ben Garrison’s cartoons. Instead of using his artwork to mock the president, he frequently depicts Trump as a young, muscular, all-American hero, standing up to the Deep State swamp monster or slaying the dragon of Political Correctness…

Since 2015, Garrison has been the de facto chief cartoonist for right-wing communities online.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


Tuffer

Oct 8th, 2017 11:59 am | By

Of course he did.

Trump said on Saturday he had a good relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson but that Tillerson could be tougher.

Trump, who made the comment to reporters at the White House, did not elaborate.

“Tougher” in Trumpspeak of course means a more heedless psychotic bully. Yes that’s just what we need more of.

Trump being tough this morning.

The scare quotes on “begged” are helpful. Corker didn’t really beg, Trump is just lying about it for effect. Thanks for the tip-off.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Given what we know about the lies that led up to the war

Oct 8th, 2017 10:14 am | By

No. False dichotomy. We don’t have to choose between highly specialized academic history written for other historians on the one hand, and Ken Burns on the other. The fact that most history is not written for a broad public is not a reason to be uncritical of tedious sentimental Ken Burns.

Historians aren’t very happy with Ken Burns. He’s a simplifier; we complicate. He makes myths; we bust them. And he celebrates the nation, while we critique it.

That’s the party line, anyway, among my fellow academics. And while I agree with some of their attacks on the recently concluded TV series about the Vietnam War that Burns co-created and co-edited with Lynn Novick, there’s something else at work here.

… Read the rest

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When all the rules

Oct 7th, 2017 5:17 pm | By

Harvey Weinstein sent the New York Times a statement after its story on him was published.

It begins:

I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.

I have since learned it’s not an excuse, in the office – or out of it. To anyone.

Oh come on. The rules about behavior and workplaces were not that different. They were not so different that everyone – women included – thought it was just fine for powerful men to make job-seeking women come to their hotel rooms only to jump out at them naked and demanding a “massage.”

That was not “the culture” then.

The … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


Wait and see

Oct 7th, 2017 4:11 pm | By

It’s Saturday afternoon; I guess Trump is bored with watching football.

“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid … hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!” Trump tweeted in two messages on Saturday afternoon.

“Sorry, but I plan to blow up the world.”

“Soz, but I’m a reckless idiot who can’t find his own buttocks in the dark so I’m going to go to war with North Korea and its buddy China.”

“Sorry, but you laughed at me one time too many.”

The president’s latest tweets come as the world continues

… Read the rest

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