Sometimes I feel bad about calling the First Lady a sex worker. (Or an old whore, depending on my mood.) First, because sex work is work, as we feminists say. Second, because I believe she’s retired from sex work, and maybe that should be acknowledged. And finally, because the current non-occupant of the now-demolished East Wing isn’t much of a First Lady this term, why quibble about what she did to get the job?

First, maybe we might address the question: Was she a sex worker at one time? (And I know we’ve talked about this before. I’m not obsessed. OK, maybe a little.) Not in the stand-on-a-corner-in-skimpy-clothing sense, no. But everything we know about her history as an immigrant, about what she did when she came to New York, the people she associated with, etc. suggests a form of…polite sex work, you might say. She was a “model,” a job description applied to many pretty girls whose photo will never appear in a magazine or catalog, or walk a runway. But she would make herself available for events requiring a certain number of hot women in attendance — parties, openings, nightclubs, etc. — and would be happy to catch the eye of the rich men in attendance. I suspect that is exactly why she came to the U.S., in fact: To find a wealthy man who might marry her and allow her to not only never see the rough side of Slovenia again, but to maybe get her parents out, too.

And that’s exactly what happened. Is that sex work? Probably millions of women consider potential life partners with eyes that cold. I think FLOTUS herself answered that best of all, when asked if she’d be married to her husband if he wasn’t rich: “Would he be married to me if I weren’t beautiful?” A transactional woman.

Her empty, loveless marriage suggests they both got what they wanted from it. After all, this is a woman who wouldn’t move into the White House until her prenup was recast to her satisfaction. At this point, she doesn’t need to have sex with anyone. She has a child and a wedding ring; she will never go quietly, unless it’s with suitcases stuffed with cash.

But I get salty when I hear the most repulsive of the MAGA crowd go on about the warm, elegant, refined Michelle Obama, calling her “Big Mike” because she used to be a MAN, doncha know? They photoshopped dicks onto her dresses and say her husband is gay, then complain that no one will put Melania on the cover of Vogue. “That old whore?” I reply.

This is counterproductive, I know. It won’t bring people together, join hands across the chasm of our differences, etc. But it seems the only response.

What else is going on today? There were some demonstrations in Dearborn yesterday. One was initially organized by a fringe candidate for governor — go ahead, guess which party!!! — protesting SHARIA LAW, etc. He called it off after claiming to have a change of heart about our Muslim neighbors. but the ball he started rolling didn’t stop. This guy appeared to be behind the wingnuts:

At about 6 p.m., there was a growing crowd confronting Jake Lang, a rightwing activist from Florida who organized one of three rallies Tuesday. Police then brought up several metal barriers around Lang and his supporters, keeping them separated from the crowd, who yelled back at Lang at times.

Here’s the gubernatorial candidate:

Another gathering was led by Anthony Hudson, a Republican candidate for governor who initially was planning an anti-sharia rally, but had a change of heart after spending four days last week in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, visiting mosques and Muslim leaders. Hudson told the Free Press in an interview his rally was to promote unity, but also to tell Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud to be more respective of Christians and their concerns. Hammoud faced criticism earlier this year for berating a Christian minister, but later said the city welcomes all.

Note the misuse of “respective” by the reporter. The word he was trying for is “respectful,” but unfortunately, all the copy editors were purged in some previous round of cuts, apparently.

Listen to this douchebag, though:

Hudson said he visited the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Dearborn Community Center, the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights and the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, where he met with Imam Mohammad Elahi, a prominent Islamic and interfaith leader in Michigan. He also visited Eternal Light, a nonprofit in Dearborn Heights, and a food bank.

“We’re proving the point that we didn’t see sharia law in Dearborn,” Hudson said. “We didn’t see women getting assaulted or disrespected. We saw women business owners that were yelling at men, telling them what to do. We saw young women walking at night to go to the bars and they weren’t being harassed. We saw the gentlemen’s clubs, which is against sharia law. We saw the liquor stores, which is against it. We just saw so many things that were against sharia law that I made the determination that during my trip, my four days, there was no sharia law.”

Afer living here all these years, I notice the wingnut panic over Dearborn runs in cycles. They all seem to take their cues from one another, because they have so few original ideas, and the wheel has turned again. The other day I looked up M*ll*ssa C*ron*, the fameball from the 2020 election cycle, and even she was posting “content” from Dearborn during the call to prayer, barking, “How would you like to listen to this five times a day?” And I considered that nearly all the people within earshot are Muslim themselves, and Melly herself lives in goddamn Macomb County, so what’s her damage? It’s just Dearborn’s turn, I guess.

God help us if they discover Hamtramck. OK, then. Time to find a grindstone and press my nose to it. Happy Wednesday, all.

Oh, no. I haven’t written anything today. Or yesterday. I am sorry. But I was cooking for, and wrapping for, the birthday twins’ celebration, which was yesterday. We had dinner, cake, gifts, the first half of the Lions game. I didn’t sleep well, and today I’ve been dragging ass, as they say. But it was a good party.

The individual gifts aren’t as important as my one brainstorm for a family gift that all three of us November babies can enjoy (along with three friends): A two-hour cruise on the J.W. Wescott, i.e., the mail boat that services freight vessels on the Detroit River. It advertises itself as the only floating zip code in the country (48222), based on when it would deliver mail to ships on the Great Lakes for weeks at a time. Now that letters from home aren’t so important, they do package and food deliveries — yes, you can order a pizza or a shwarma to be delivered to, say, the MV Paul R. Tregurtha as it passes through town — as well as pilot changes, which is what I’d really like to see. They pull up next to a ship under way, match their speed, and send the new pilot up a rope ladder, and take on the guy coming off duty.

I think that’s also how they’d deliver a pizza, only with a basket or some sort of conveyance, now that I think about it.

It all sounds exciting, different, fun and very Detroit. I can’t wait. Now to herd all our cats aboard.

The Wescott website talks about how they got their start, ferrying letters to ships in a bucket tied to a rope, and it reminded me of the Columbus Dispatch bucket, the fifth-floor bucket the staff would drop to photographers coming back from breaking news, on deadline. They’d deposit their exposed film in the bucket, and by the time they got parked and back into the building, the film was being processed. Was it ever used by a particular photographer to purchase weed from his dealer down on the sidewalk? I’ll never tell.

(Yes.)

So that’s why I’m so tired and not particularly productive today. But tomorrow is another one, and it won’t involve cake and two bottles of wine. So let’s see how it goes.

How many of you have young-adult children? And how many of them are at least as disgusted with the Democrats than the GOP? Are they even, perhaps, more disgusted, because at least the GOP says it’s the enemy of things that are important to them, while the Dems pretend to be on their side? And refuse to leave their elected positions until, like, oh, Eleanor Holmes Norton, they have to be forced or shamed out due to their physical and mental deterioration? (Note: This hasn’t happened yet, in Norton’s case. She plans to run again.)

How is the Surrender Caucus going over with those young people?

This combination photo of eight senators who are facing criticism from the Democratic party for their deal to end the government shutdown shows Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., top row from left, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and bottom row from left, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. (AP Photo)

Fucking Dick Durbin in particular:

Whoa — Sen. Durbin went to up Leader Thune during the vote last night to tell him that on the shutdown vote and ACA promise that "8 of us are sticking our neck out that you're going to keep your word. I hope you will. He said 'I assure you I will,'" Durbin says just now

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 12:59 PM

We had one week — not even! — to savor our victory before the Neville Chamberlain Caucus ripped it away.

When people tell you that the GOP is unpopular, but the Democrats are even more so, this is why. The scoundrels.

So: With that mood established, I made the mistake of reading comments on a story about a local billionaire’s divorce. Thirty-year marriage, five children, which included one son who died young of an incurable disease (neurofibromatosis). They were together when they were young, and they split up when they were rich. See if you can guess what at least some of the online reaction was?

But of course. She’s a ho’.

Can you tell it’s been cold the last two days? Bitter wind, all of it? Yep. Let’s hope the back half of the week is more promising.

The plan for Saturday evening was fairly straightforward: To head to the Dakota Inn Rathskeller, another beloved Detroit business absorbed by my friend Paddy Lynch so that it may continue. (His previous purchases: The Schvitz and Dutch Girl Donuts.) But! It was also the 250th birthday celebration for the U.S. Marine Corps, and if you’re wondering how the Marines are older than the country itself, well, so was I, but I read up on it.

The birthday is actually celebrated Monday, November 10, but the 8th was a Saturday. It’s also observed with a cake-cutting and various associated rituals, and a German restaurant on a Saturday night with a resident piano player seemed like as good a place as any.

The bad news: The place was a madhouse, packed to the rafters with German-food enthusiasts, and a 1.5-hour wait for a table. We decided to go to the basement Rathskeller to wait for the cake and singing. Which came around 7:30, with a long windup about Tradition, but not so much that it killed the vibe. The cake is traditionally cut with a Maltese Mameluke sword, but we’ll use this knife, etc.

And the cake was cut, with the traditional order of serving: First slice to the guest of honor, who was the guy whose family owned the restaurant for two generations before selling it to Paddy. Second slice to the oldest Marine present, i.e., this guy, who fought at Guadalcanal:

Third slice to the youngest Marine, who was very strapping. And then we all sang the Marine Hymn, which contains my favorite passage in a military song, the dis at the very end:

If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.

And then the friend I went with started feeling ill, so I took her home and met our third for tapas at a quiet Spanish place.

Happy birthday, Marines, including our own Jeff Gill. Glad the pugil sticks didn’t leave you with brain damage.

The rest of the weekend? Shopping errands work workout until Sunday afternoon, when I swam 2,000 yards, came home and ate ravenously, then dozed and read the afternoon away. In other words, a pretty good one.

Hope yours was, too.

In other news at this hour, the GOP is still trash. This is a direct response to the SNAP crisis. I checked.

Sad, sad news came at midafternoon on an otherwise perfect post-election Wednesday. I was going to spend today’s entry gloating, but then word came that Richard Battin, who hired me in Fort Wayne, has died. And so, once again, I find myself overtaken by events.

Grief, too. And recrimination, because I was going to stop in to see him the last time I was in Florida, and didn’t. Next time, I told myself. I am now the second person in my circle in recent days to learn the hard lesson that sometimes there isn’t a next time. But enough about me.

Richard was my first interview in Fort Wayne, which, like other Knight Ridder papers, had a particular style of vetting applicants: You did a round robin of virtually everyone in the newsroom who mattered, and you took tests. Apparently I did well on the tests, which was no biggie, but also was, kinda. It was basic Reporting 101: You’re working alone on a Sunday morning and hear over the police scanner that a plane has gone down at the airport. Who is your first call? Answer: A photographer. There was also some copy editing stuff that boiled down to having an eye for unusual spellings of notable names. Barbra, not Barbara, Streisand. Charles Addams, not Adams.

But after that, you were shipped around to this editor and that, and Richard was mainly my shepherd. You went to lunch, and then dinner. We ate at Hartley’s and Casa d’Angelo. I left knowing I’d get an offer, because my connection with Richard was almost a mind-meld: We got each other’s jokes and references, and had a similar outlook on the world. I also loved his stories about growing up in San Jose, and working for the storied Mercury-News before coming to Indiana to step on the management track. I remember he told me early on that he’d been drafted and refused induction. He didn’t go the conscientious objector route or hightail it to Canada, just flat-out said he wasn’t going. To be sure, he’d have made a terrible soldier. He was slight and not very tall, and while he could wield a wisecrack with lethality, probably would have had problems with a weapon. Lord knows he wouldn’t have thrived in prison. But in a stroke of almost unbelievable luck, his case landed before a San Francisco judge who hated the Vietnam war as much as he did, and gave him community service or something.

As a reporter, his skills were similar to mine: Not much for spending hours in dusty libraries doing research, but a nimble hand with a Page One bright. He showed me a picture once of the time he’d taken a turn on a saddle bronc at a rodeo, for a story, wearing borrowed chaps that said GARY down one leg. He said it was his alter ego.

He loved good writing, and was adept at it himself. He had a brief role in a community-theater production of “A Few Good Men,” playing the officer who gives the Tom Cruise character his mission, then disappears until curtain call. He would deliver his lines, then pop out for a drink at a nearby bar, still in his costume. People would clap him on the back, say “thanks for your service, colonel” and buy him a drink. He thought that was so funny he wrote a play about it, called “Feint of Heart.” He said it was about “love and language,” and contained several lines and speeches I recall from the newsroom.

It also had the story of how he met his wife, Adrienne. She was with another guy, a friend. He saw the two of them walking toward him one day and thought to himself, “What is she doing with him? She should be with me.” Soon, she was. His first wife wanted no children, and insisted he get a vasectomy. He reversed it when he married Adie, who gave birth to two daughters, and then got another, making him the second man I know who’d had two vasectomies. I always found this amusing, and he was always willing to talk about it.

What else? Even in a shitstorm of breaking news, he could keep his cool and often power through on jokes and coffee. On Fridays, during the last morning news meeting of the week, he’d print a little quiz, as a TGIF gesture. The only one I aced was about all the lyrics to “Ode to Billy Joe,” given on June 3, of course. He had a round scar on his jawline the size of a dime; it didn’t look like skilled work. He told me he’d hurt himself as a youngster but his parents couldn’t afford to take him to a doctor, so a local veterinarian did the work. I think about that when idiots discuss health-care policy.

One year, the phone company brought in new phone books for the newsroom, and a stack of the old ones piled up in a wheeled recycling bin where they sat for days and days. (The janitorial services in that building were basically non-existent.) One day Richard pulled one out and said, “I think I read there’s a trick to tearing a phone book in half. It’s not strength, it’s technique.” He figured it out, and tore one successfully. Then I, and a couple more people did, and then David Heath, a reporter notable for his red hair, tried. He couldn’t get it, and strained so hard his face nearly turned purple, an arresting sight under that hair. (He went on to great success as a journalist, so don’t feel bad that he couldn’t tear the Fort Wayne phone book in two.) My point is, that’s the kind of boss Richard was, serious when he needed to be but capable of being a great, merry prankster during down times.

People would be absolutely justified in asking anyone my age why they went into this field, currently stripped to its bones by rapacious vulture capitalists, tech bozos and other horrible people. The reason is, when it was good, it was very good – fun, but also serious, a real public service, from recipes to investigations of corrupt public servants. And one of the people who made it so was Richard.

I hope if there’s something after this, that I see him there.

A few days back I turned on NPR, to yet another — yet! another! — earnest, NPR-like discussion on how to reach out to people you disagree with. How to build bridges, join hands across the chasm of our differences, all that.

And I…didn’t snap, exactly, but I reached my limit. I switched to the AM band, set push-button tuning for a couple of right-wing, all-talk stations. Enough of my NPR bubble; let’s see what the other side is talking about, vis-a-vis their political opponents.

I regret to inform you, although not surprised by it either, that they are not talking about joining hands, reaching out, or making nice. The only time liberals, or even moderates, are mentioned, it’s in discussions like, “How many New Yorkers will flee the city if Zohran Mamdani is elected? Tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands?” “The problem with that party is, they’re not proud to be American.”

And that’s not all. Talk about closed systems: In this world, Fox News at the top and bottom of the hour is nearly as lib’rul as NPR. One of the stations carries a network whose anchors and reporters say “the Democrat party” and “the government remains shut down, as Democrats refuse to budge from their insistence on free health care for illegal aliens.”

So no, I’m not particularly interested in hearing about how to talk to these folks. Really, really not interested.

But the blog today has been, as we say, overtaken by events, with the death of Dick Cheney. His black heart, mechanical though it was, finally couldn’t keep up with his deteriorating body, and he went the way of all flesh. I guess his statement in 2024, that he’d be voting for Kamala Harris, is supposed to redeem him somehow. Huh. Well, strange bedfellows and all that. We’ve talked here before about how Trump has managed to make even ghastly people look good, just because they oppose him. Dan Quayle and Mike Pence as the saviors of democracy – at least temporarily – is only one example.

But to me, Dick Cheney will always be this guy:

Thanks to Jeff G. for the image.

I remember learning about Abu Ghraib. I was finishing up my fellowship in Ann Arbor, driving back from a job tryout in Minnesota. I didn’t get the job, and Wisconsin was under my wheels on the way home, and I checked email during a gas stop. A friend in Fort Wayne wrote about the Lynndie England photos, the one where she’s holding the prisoner on a leash. He wrote something like, “But we haven’t accidentally dropped a nuke out of a Blackhawk helicopter, so I guess the war is going great!”

Very droll, my friends.

And who suffered for America’s foray into torture? Lynndie England, certainly, and a few other soldiers. Not Cheney.

So that’s my near-midweek catch-up. I would save this and post it tomorrow, but it’s time to discuss our late vice-president, so here you go.

I guess I’ve been gone a while. No reason. There are times when the well is empty and must be refilled, especially when you’re making a concerted effort not to think and write about a particular person more than is necessary, and/or part of our patriotic duty of being well-informed Americans.

Then I read about the Great Gatsby-themed party the president threw at Mar-a-lago on Halloween, on the literal eve of millions of Americans losing their SNAP benefits, and I get a goddamn facial tic. Fortunately, there are good people in the world:

That’s at the Eastern Market Saturday. I can’t wait until this motherfucker dies. The whitewashing of JD Vance’s marriage in preparation for that event, we’ll save for another day.

I’ve been walking around woolgathering on a subject that floats in and out of my headspace — transgender…ism? Is that a word? Dunno, but the issue keeps surfacing in connection with terrible crime, and I’m alarmed for the trans people I know, all of whom are not criminals and may end up suffering as a result.

A kid in Indiana, arrested while planning a mass school shooting. Nashville school shooter, maybe transgender. The person just sentenced for plotting to kill SCOTUS Justice Kavanagh? Transitioning.

Anyone with half a brain knows that being transgender makes one far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, not the perpetrator. Yet, we can always count on the New York Post, Rod Dreher and, well, most of the right wing to amplify every incident, and most people don’t pay attention beyond that.

Transitioning is such a huge step to make, I hesitate to suggest anyone does it on a whim. But the sort of people who commit mass shootings or targeted assassinations are not mentally healthy people.

It made me think of the ’80s, and this guy I used to work with. His marriage was clearly not meant for the long run. Every talk show – and there were a lot of them on around that time, from Phil Donohue to Jenny Jones to Oprah – was talking about repressed memories and/or Satanic cults, and especially repressed memories of Satanic cult abuse. And soon enough, she was accusing him of Satanically abusing their kids, or her, or that she was recovering memories of all of the above. I think she may have thrown multiple personalities in the mix, too.

A troubled woman, yes. But not one crazy enough to be committed. Subclinical, as the shrinks say. It made me think about people who believed, once upon a time, that incubi and succubi entered their bedrooms at night and penetrated them sexually, sometimes impregnating them. I saw “Agnes of God,” both on stage and in the movie. Now those people are more likely to believe aliens do the same thing. There are no incubi, succubi or aliens. I feel pretty confident in this.

My point is that every era in history, especially in this media-soaked age, has its high-profile mental issues, and I wonder if the people in that link-filled paragraph are truly trans, or have simple seized on it as a way to explain the static in their own heads. Next year, we may be back to incubi and succubi, who knows.

A passage from the story I linked above:

“They hate your guts. They despise everything you stand for, and we’re running out of time to stop them,” a somber looking Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears says in a recent campaign ad. “This election, don’t let radicals decide what kind of man gets to undress next to your daughter at school.”

Earle-Sears, a Republican, poured millions of dollars into this ominous advertising blitz attacking her Democratic opponent for governor, Abigail Spanberger, as a radical on transgender issues. She blanketed the airwaves with warnings to Virginians that mimicked Donald Trump’s successful campaign against Kamala Harris last year (“Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you”).

But as Tuesday’s election approaches, the line of attack does not appear to be working as well for Earle-Sears as it did for Trump, according to data, raising questions about how potent the issue will be in the future for a party facing voter anger over high prices. Spanberger is leading Earle-Sears in recent polls.

So we may have already passed Peak Trans Panic. Let’s hope so.

It’s the return to standard time this weekend, so expect a tsunami of complaints. It gets dark so early now, etc. I will repeat my twice-yearly opinion about this: Changing clocks in spring and fall is a useful adjustment to the way we live our lives, at most a minor inconvenience, and some people should stop complaining about it.

I see the Free Press – the one in Detroit – is making a fuss over the upcoming 50th anniversary of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. We will inevitably hear the Gordon Lightfoot song over and over in the next week. I’m taking this opportunity to echo something I believe Eric Zorn once wrote, and he may have been quoting Peter Sagal, I’m not sure: That Lightfoot’s song is only the second-best song about a shipwreck. The best is this one. Listen and see if you agree. It’s certainly a good anthem for times like these.

And with that, I’m back in the saddle. Have a good week ahead.

The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has, shall we say, fallen in esteem in recent years, but that’s what happens when your feel-good, rah-rah, only-happy-news nonprofit has $40 million embezzled from it by its own CFO. Nevertheless, the conservancy was able to complete the last part, for now. That’s the Ralph C. Wilson Jr, Centennial Park, at the west end of the Riverwalk, just east of the Ambassador Bridge.

This weekend was the park’s grand opening, and the weather was cool but sunny. Seemed a good day to combine a little exercise with a little exploring. We parked near Belle Isle and rode the bikes four miles down to the new spot.

Bottom line: It’s a very nice park, particularly the children’s play area, which has some wonderful slides and climbing structures. There’s a bear.

And a beaver.

Pretty sure this is an otter.

All species native to Michigan, so points for that. The footing underneath the structures kids would be likely to fall near or from was soft and springy, and I hope it can survive a few winters. Wilson was a wealthy man, of course, and owned the Buffalo Bills, so the foundation his estate formed is spending his money on projects with a physical-fitness and outdoor recreation component. However, there are/were other zillionaires in town, including the Davidson family, who owned the Pistons. Their contribution is an open-air — but protected — pair of basketball courts.

There was also a food-truck row, and one of them was run by a barbecue dude with an array of trophies on display. What do you put on top of a barbecue trophy? There’s the obvious:

And in place of a golden athlete, this:

The angle’s not great on that one. It’s a rack of ribs.

I tried to avoid the news this weekend. It helped. But now we go on to the next one, which feels like climbing back into a demolition derby car. Let’s see what will be revealed.

If anyone is wondering, Fran Lebowitz was great. Maybe that’s the wrong word, though. You don’t go to see Fran to laugh until you pee; it’s more a matter of chortling. She’s not a standup comic, but a wry observer of the world around us, and her friends. She told us about Martin Scorsese, and that photo by Peter Hujar, and Charles Mingus, who came for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house one year.

And she said something about Democrats in Washington. Yes, yes, they can’t get anything done when they’re in the minority and are blocked on everything, etc., but they can do one thing, she said: They can amplify the feelings and opinions of their constituents, and those constituents are furious.

This got a big response from the crowd. And yet, Michigan’s two do-nothing senators, both Democrats, continue to not do just that.

I read a review of Virginia Giuffre’s book, discussed at midweek.

The critic, Emma Brockes, puts her finger square on what I’ve been wondering since we all saw all those photos of Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book:

But so much focus has been put on the prince that after reading this book, it wasn’t him I thought about most; it was the casual visitors to Epstein’s New York mansion, the illustrious men and occasional woman whom Giuffre says she encountered at dinners there.

In respect of these people I’d like to ask: who the fuck did they think the 17-year-old at the table was? What did they think she was doing there? Only Melinda Gates, who met Epstein once and cited him as a factor in the breakdown of her marriage to Bill Gates, sensed what apparently none of these people could put their finger on. Giuffre quotes from a statement made by Gates after her meeting with Epstein: “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified.” It was an insight that evidently escaped geniuses like the MIT professors Epstein continued to advise long after he’d become a convicted sex offender.

Ex!act!ly! It’s my belief that they knew exactly what she was doing there, and didn’t care. Rich people make their own rules. Also this guy…

The closest we get to a fresh allegation is Giuffre’s description of one of the scores of men Epstein forced her to have sex with as a “politician” and “former minister”, who choked and beat her almost unconscious, but who, she writes, is too powerful to name.

…is said to be Ehud Barak.

OK, then, time to wrap the week. The east wing of the White House is a pile of rubble, my massage was heavenly (“you’re very symmetrical,” the therapist said as she worked on my back), and it seems a good note to end on. The pedophiles and current crisis will still be there on Monday.

Do I have any photos to share? Not really. Here was the whiteboard workout for my Wednesday lifeguarding shift. Swimmers, give it a try:

Have a great weekend.