I took this photo as I returned to my room in the Marriott during the jazz festival. Those of you who follow me on Instagram have already seen it:

Contrary to the popular belief that Detroit is deserted and desolate, Jefferson was hopping that night. A large motorcycle was idling at the light as I strolled by, with a bumpin’ sound system aboard, blaring “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” And it only occurred to me later that the opening line of that song is, “It was the third of September,” and this photo was taken on September 3. That’s either an amusing coincidence or a reflection of an exceptionally well-curated playlist.

Anyway, also of note with reference to pop music: The “musty old hall in Detroit” where mourners of the Edmund Fitzgerald prayed in Gordon Lightfoot’s song? That’s it on the left. Old Mariner’s Church. Never been inside, but I bet it’s not musty.

So! Midweek, almost! What’s going on? Well, in Tennessee they’re looking for a Taylor Swift reporter, no seriously, they are:

USA TODAY and The Tennessean/tennessean.com, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, seeking an experienced, video-forward journalist to capture the music and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. 

Swift’s fanbase has grown to unprecedented heights, and so has the significance of her music and growing legacy. We are looking for an energetic writer, photographer and social media pro who can quench an undeniable thirst for all things Taylor Swift with a steady stream of content across multiple platforms. Seeing both the facts and the fury, the Taylor Swift reporter will identify why the pop star’s influence only expands, what her fanbase stands for in pop culture, and the effect she has across the music and business worlds. 

The successful candidate is a driven, creative and energetic journalist able to capture the excitement around Swift’s ongoing tour and upcoming album release, while also providing thoughtful analysis of her music and career.

We are looking for a journalist with a voice — but not a bias — able to quickly cultivate a national audience through smart content designed to meet readers on their terms. This reporter will chronicle the biggest moments on the next portions of Taylor Swift’s tour, offering readers of USA TODAY, The Tennessean and more than 200 local news sources an inside view.

This journalist must be willing (and legally allowed) to travel internationally.

Huh.

It so happens I’ve been able to live my life almost entirely unaware of Taylor Swift’s output. When her tour barnstormed the country this summer, I dialed up a best-of playlist on Spotify and listened critically over the course of a few days. My verdict: It’s no surprise why she’s so successful. She has sunk a taproot deep into the hearts and minds of women and girls, ages 14-32, and speaks directly to them. And she, or she and her co-writers, or she, her co-writers and her producers, manage to package this communication in almost flawless pop songs. She’s also social-media savvy in ways that only a digital native can be, and projects a persona that says, “I’m not the one who steals your boyfriend. But I could be your best friend.”

I’ve added one song to my Liked playlist, “Anti-Hero,” and will take it off eventually, but for now, it’s fine.

There. Do I get the job? Yeah, didn’t think so. Not video-forward enough.

Want to know everything about Tim Scott’s love life, such as it is? Interesting and amusing WashPost Style story (gift link):

For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.

“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”

He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.”

He wouldn’t tell me her name, and the campaign declined to make her available to chat, even off the record. Technically I can’t verify that she exists, except to note that for a presidential campaign to essentially reverse-catfish America would be insane. (By way of corroboration, DeCasper offered that she’s personally hung out with her at the zoo.)

Scott said he had theories about why other campaigns might want to draw attention to his being single. It’s just a way to “sow seeds of doubt” about his campaign, he said, a way “to say that, ‘That guy isn’t one of us.’”

“It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott said. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.”

I wonder if she lives in Canada.

With that, I’m outta here. Happy Wednesday.

Another day, another sex scandal at Michigan State. Spartans awoke today to discover USA Today had ripped the sheets back from the bed of their beloved football coach, Mel Tucker. And found him under there, masturbating while having “phone sex” with a woman, a rape survivor, who goes around the country educating college athletes about sexual violence and harassment in sports. Consensual, he says; not so, she says.

I mean.

I read the whole thing, and while I suspect neither party – Tucker or his accuser, Brenda Tracy – is telling the whole truth, at this point it doesn’t matter. When you’re the highest-paid employee (more on that in a minute) at a major university that’s still recovering from the Larry Nassar scandal, you don’t have “phone sex,” or whatever this was, with a woman not your wife. You don’t FaceTime her from your bed, chest uncovered, to complain about your dead marriage. You don’t flirt and comment on her Instagram photos and ask whether she’d date you if you didn’t have the ol’ ball and chain. And so on.

But here’s the thing: Tucker has an insane contract, $9.5 million a year for 10 years, funded in part by two wealthy alumni, the details of which the Free Press had to sue to uncover. He’s the second-highest-paid coach in the country, and the contract is probably responsible for inflating the salaries of many other college coaches. It was forged after a great opening season, and followed by a disappointing one, and now this. At least all the stories so far are pointing out that if Tucker is fired for cause, they don’t have to buy him out. Whew.

I was discussing this with a friend earlier today, and he said, “I guess what we learn from this is, men never learn.”

No, it appears they don’t. At least Tucker is 51, still an age when sex is mostly not a problem. Rudy Giuliani, 79, drooling over an assistant he allegedly called Big Tits, can’t say the same thing. On the one hand, you have to salute the raw biological urge that keeps leading men like this over various cliffs. On the other, holy shit what a dummy.

As another friend said of Bill Clinton at the time the Lewinsky affair broke: “Washington is full of beautiful, sexy, thirtysomething adulteresses who’d have been happy to run over and haul his ashes, but no, he had to pick the 25-year-old intern who was practically doodling ‘Monica Clinton’ in the margins of her notepads.”

He said:

According to Tucker, he became aroused when Tracy made a comment about needing to hit the gym more to look better without clothes on. They then discussed how having phone sex could complicate their relationship, he said, but Tracy suggested once would be harmless and he agreed.

“Unequivocally, there’s no doubt about it,” Tucker told the investigator, case documents show. “She was the one who said we’ll do it.”

She said:

Tracy denies all of that. The call started off normal, she said. But when she sent Tucker a photo of them together from the spring game, she said he responded by commenting on her buttocks and calling himself an “ass man.”

She remembered Tucker’s voice getting deeper and weirder as he continued talking about her buttocks. She asked him what he was doing, and he said he had a “hard dick” and was touching himself.

“You’re touching yourself?” Tracy asked, according to the investigation report. Tucker responded, “Yes.”

Ew.

Once again, however, the larger issue is MSU’s response when they received this report, in July. Did they immediately suspend Tucker? No. Did they suspend him before the football season started? They did not. They only did so after the USA Today story dropped, which is to say: Today.

Well, I hope he’s been saving his money.

After hearing about the earthquake in Morocco, I went into our photos from our trip there in 2019, remembering the charm of the medina, how parts of this thousand-year-old settlement still look like they haven’t changed much. The view from the rooftop of our riad:

I wonder how much of it was damaged.

A few years back we watched a small, amusing movie called “Adventureland.” Starred Jesse Eisenberg, Kristin Stewart and…I forget. It was about a recent college graduate who can’t find a job in his major (Renaissance studies) and ends up at a second-rate amusement park, in a “seasonal job” with a lot of co-workers who are more or less the same age. It was scratching in my brain for the first part of the summer until I remembered why every day reminded me of it, at least a little bit. Not that our waterpark was entirely Adventureland, but there were distinct elements, mainly because for the first time in my life since I was a teenager, I was working with teenagers. It was kind of a shock, but also lots of fun.

The endless energy, oh my god. One day I was sitting on a post next to a crowd-control barrier that was about, I’d estimate, 40 inches off the ground. One of my fellow guards walked up to it and effortlessly leaped over it, box jump-style. Like a deer. At the end of the day, when I’d be dragging my ass to whatever dinner Alan had prepared for us, they’d be on to the second shift. They could walk in hungover and refresh themselves with a short dip in the pool. It was something to see.

On the other hand, I had skills they didn’t, for instance: Telling time. I learned early on that if someone asks, “What time is it” and you answer “ten ’til,” they will stare blankly until you say “two-fifty.” On the other hand, they could communicate volumes thumb-typing their thoughts on their phones, using a million abbreviations that made their texts as hard to understand as hieroglyphics. But it was lovely, lovely, being in their midst after 40-some years of working with so-called adults. Their amusing slang, their incredible knowledge gaps (“man, Hawaii is really out there, isn’t it?”), the way they … well, let’s put it this way: No one knows shit about anyone else’s life. It made me think of the newspaper business, when we’d try to figure out what readers wanted, without talking about whether they were even readers in the first place. We all live in bubbles. It’s good to get out of your own, even if you have to go around for a few weeks as the old-ass white lady in the lifeguard crew.

In a few hours, I have to get up for an early workout. In the meantime, here’s some bloggage:

The bloodbath of the Michigan GOP, thanks to fealty to Donald Trump:

The Michigan Republican Party is starving for cash. A group of prominent activists — including a former statewide candidate — was hit this month with felony charges connected to a bizarre plot to hijack election machines. And in the face of these troubles, suspicion and infighting have been running high. A recent state committee meeting led to a fistfight, a spinal injury and a pair of shattered dentures.

This turmoil is one measure of the way Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have rippled through his party. While Mr. Trump has just begun to wrestle with the consequences of his fictions — including two indictments related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 results — the vast machine of activists, donors and volunteers that power his party has been reckoning with the fallout for years.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of crazy people, if you ask me.

I hope you’re in Adventureland yourselves right now. See you soon.

We went sailing yesterday, and it was perfect for it — clear and sunny and a steady-but-not-overpowering breeze out of the southwest. Motoring into the marina, we passed a smallish Boston Whaler flying a largeish — like, queen-size bedsheet size — American flag from one side of the Bimini top. Behind it, I could see another flag flying, and call me a cynic, but I had a strong feeling what it would be, and sure enough, the breeze lifted it so we could see: LET’S GO BRANDON.

Reader, I flipped him the bird. Don’t think he saw it, but I’m not letting that stuff go anymore.

This will be a bit of a mishmash. As usual, I start with an apology for my scarce presence around here. I’ve been working a second job this summer. Here’s a clue: I have the best tan I’ve had since high school.

Which is to say: I’m a lifeguard at a local waterpark. It has been a crazy summer, and I will tell you more about it when the season officially ends for me after this week. I got into it because I kept reading about the lifeguard shortage keeping pools from opening, or keeping them on shorter hours, but it’s turned out to be so much more than that. The biggest surprise is how physically exhausting it’s been. It’s not the physical activity (which isn’t all that much), but the sitting in the sun all day, even with shade umbrellas and sunscreen and frequent breaks and chugging water, just saps my strength. I can’t believe I actually thought I’d ride my bike to and from the park every day (four miles one way). I often end the day scowling at my car because it’s one space away from the closest possible spot in the parking lot. And there’s a mental exhaustion that comes from keeping focused attention on the water, especially when most of the people in it can’t swim.

Fortunately, Alan has stepped up and usually has a delicious meal waiting for me when I come through the door at 7 p.m. But I go from dinner to a couple hours of TV to a half hour of reading in bed to zzzzzzz.

My thoughts are with our California readers, especially L.A. Mary, as they deal with the hurricane/tropical storm. It looks like the worst of it is over, but SoCal simply isn’t set up to deal with rainfall of this magnitude. (Of course, many areas where it’s common aren’t anymore, either. :::raises hand:::) But I just read the the L.A. River peaked well below flood stage, and is falling now. So that’s good.

Here’s a funny story about Ron DeSantis’ awkwardness, which may have already been discussed in comments because it’s a few days old, but honestly I haven’t even glanced at ye olde comments in that time. Still, it’s a gift link and this made me laugh:

As he sought to connect with voters and donors, critics said DeSantis had resembled — to quote a couple of posts — “a robot put together from scrapped spare parts from Disney’s The Hall of Presidents” or “an extraterrestrial in a skin-suit trying to learn to be human.”

Been there, felt that.

Finally, Neil Steinberg expresses for the millionth time the jeez-would-you-GO-AWAY-already feeling so many of us have, but it still seems worth saying:

It’s the whining that most exasperates me. Don’t they ever tire of it? Yes, Donald Trump is famous for the lies that firehose out of his mouth, as easily as he draws breath and almost as often.

But it’s the constant complaining that drives me mad, if I didn’t tune it out — I can’t imagine watching Trump’s interview this Thursday with Tucker Carlson, his half-clever way of drawing whatever scant interest there might be away from the first Republican presidential debate, a gathering of gnats, all of whom, with the exception of born-again Chris Christie, can’t even muster the internal fortitude to string together a few critical words against the liar and bully, fraud and traitor whom they would defeat.

Yep.

OK, I have to do a few chores around this dump, drink some water, maybe clean my bathroom. I had some photos to share, but for some reason the server isn’t accepting them. I’ll try again later. Thanks for tolerating everything.

There are a lot of special events – attractions – that happen through the year. I’m not into most of them, but that’s fine, not everything is for everyone. Air shows are a particular who-gives-a-crap thing; I mean, stand around craning your neck all day to watch planes fly overhead? For others, maybe, but not for me.

Then, Sunday, this happened not far down the road:

A MiG-23 fighter jet crashed today at the Willow Run Airport of Thunder air show in Michigan. The two pilots reportedly ejected and are both unharmed

pic.twitter.com/0h9LBZ3f1R

— Flight Emergency (@FlightEmergency) August 13, 2023

That’s a Russian MiG-23, part of the Thunder Over Michigan air show near Ypsi, and it did a big ol’ oopsie into an apartment complex parking lot. The pilots ejected safely, and the plane, amazingly, hit only parked cars when it came down.

It’s the ejections that always amaze me. I recall, from “The Right Stuff,” that ejection is incredibly dangerous. Pilots are basically igniting an explosive under their seats, and all kinds of bad things can happen on the way out. Isn’t this how Goose died in “Top Gun,” in fact? Hit his head on the canopy as he was launched into the wild blue yonder? But if the choice is between Maybe Dying and Definitely Dying, of course anyone would choose door no. 1. Still. Freaky.

Anyway, one more piece of Russian hardware gone for good. Sorry, Vlad. Maybe your tech just isn’t what it could be. Or pilot error, who knows.

So much news these past few days. Maui on fire. Trump on fire (in the pants region, anyway). Rodriguez dead. Ohio’s Issue 1, buh-bye. And this bullshit in Kansas. I haven’t been able to keep up, at least not here, but I trust you all have been able to.

This will return to normal soon. For now, watch the plane crash.

I was at a friend’s house Saturday, and as we paddled around in her backyard pool — been doing a lot of swimming this summer — she confessed that she’d mostly given up social media. She’s already someone who pays only glancing attention to the news, and said Instagram was eating her alive, so she just…gave it up. (Mostly.)

I’m starting to see the utility of that. The more Elon Musk screws up Twitter, which could be infuriating but was still mostly entertaining, the easier it seems. I’m not ready to go all the way yet, but hell, maybe I’ll do a few tests fasts or diets or something. See if I can find the good in my fellow man again.

Who am I kidding. There is no good in these dipshits.

That’s the WashPost (gift link), on its millionth Cletus safari of the modern era, circulates through the crowds at an Iowa county fair and learns — YET AGAIN — that nope, they’re still down with the clown:

During a hot, sunny weekend at the Boone County Fair — where hundreds of Iowans came together to eat funnel cakes and corn dogs and to watch their children and grandchildren show off animals from their family farms — the range of Republican voters’ views on Trump, the undisputed front-runner in state and national polls, was on full display. Interviews with GOP voters in the rural county, which Trump carried by double-digit percentage points in 2016 and 2020, show that Trump continues to have a tight grip on the party, even among those who have grown weary of his rhetoric and legal troubles.

…(Vickie) Farmer has been a Trump supporter from the start, but in the years since Biden came into office, her support for the former president has only grown. She said she’s most worried about the economy, because she sees her adult children living paycheck to paycheck and at times struggling to juggle food and gas costs.

“I was very happy with the way things were going. I don’t think he is guilty of nearly all of the things they’re accusing him of,” she said, sitting next to a table she set up with her husband to sell scented wax melts and other home goods. “I think there’s a smear campaign to try to keep him from getting into office.”

Oh, fuck off, Vickie. If you’re dumb enough to believe that returning a psychopathic felon to office will free your children from wage slavery, you’re really too dumb to vote at all.

The point of this story is that in this vast crowd of Iowans, there were a few who confessed to being “sick of the drama,” but will probably vote for him if he’s the nominee, and to these good Germans I say fuck off as well.

In other oh-eff-off news today, there’s this:

Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.

The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.

In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.

Don’t you just hate left-wing political correctness? Oh, wait, this isn’t it?

And the thing is, no one can even say what it is she said that was “disparaging” of the lieutenant governor. Other students can’t remember anything. But one little informant in the crowd disapproved and called her mommy.

For free speech advocates, health experts and students, Texas A&M’s investigation of Alonzo was a shocking demonstration of how quickly university leaders allow politicians to interfere in classroom discussions on topics in which they are not experts — and another example of increasing political involvement from state leaders in how Texas universities are managed.

You don’t say. And this overheated hellhole is where Americans are flocking? No thanks.

Other than that? It hasn’t been a terrible week so far. Nice swim this morning, not too punishingly hot in the afternoon. But I’m crawling to that hump, and will be very happy to see the weekend, when Kate and I will see “Barbie.”

How about you?

I just looked at the weather forecast for the week ahead, and it is…grim. Starting to climb tomorrow, then topping 90 at midweek. It’s our turn in the barrel, which I realize may fall on unsympathetic ears for you guys in the southwest, but trust me, it’s pretty miserable. Although it’s also…summer weather, so you can’t complain too much. That said, I will. Complain, that is. It’s my right as an American, and as a senior citizen.

But a good weekend, all things considered. Made some time for friend relationships, and got in an otter swim with Bill. A freighter went by as we were getting dressed to leave.

The St. Clair River was bracing (70 degrees), but left me feeling a little…filmed, if you know what I mean. A shower took care of it, but you gotta wonder what the hell was doing that. There have been some gully washers lately, and those tend to scour the grosser parts of an urban infrastructure. Whatever. I showered, and that was that.

Speaking of showers, I felt like I needed one after reading this thread, by a young reporter who left the biz earlier this year.

Ok here goes it: During my time as a Capitol reporter in Lansing, I faced burnout, anxiety, and depression, as well as relentless harassment. Despite this, I kept it all to myself, feeling like it would make me seem self-centered or incapable. I finally broke down in Jan. (1/x) https://t.co/ts2IveJJVe

— Allison R. Donahue (@donahual) July 23, 2023

The precipitating incident she obliquely refers to is this, when a state senator made a crude remark to a 22-year-old reporter. She wrote about it, and the usual happened: Other women, including his colleagues, had similar stories. As it turned out, it was a nothingburger, consequence-wise — he lost his committee assignments, but he was term-limited, so he played out his string and ran for Macomb County prosecutor. Which he won.

The 22-year-old, however, didn’t do so well. The usual happened to her, too: Rape threats, FaceTime calls where the caller was masturbating, and — this is particularly galling — “a woman on a livestream making a call out to get people to send me porn,” and there’s a special place in hell for that one, eh? That’s a lot for a 22-year-old to handle. God, what a hideous movement.

And with that, I’m commencing a busy week. I hope yours is cooler and less so.

Alan spent several hours today replacing the battery in my iPad mini, and right now he’s making sure the adhesive adheres. It occurs to me you could get a pretty good sense of us from this random selection of heavy books from a nearby shelf:

Dunno if Italy will happen this fall. We have a wedding in St. Louis on September 30, and we lost our dog sitter when Kate announced she’s going on tour during October and into November, not as a musician, but as the sound tech for a Canadian band. They’ll tour western Canada and the same part of the U.S. So maybe it’ll be spring before we get there, but we’ll get there. I kinda wish I was hitting western Canada with her, frankly. I’ve never been to Vancouver.

Anyway, that leaves us in Michigan for one of the prettiest months of the year, so I can’t complain. We’ll do some weekends here and there. It’ll be fun. I hope.

Meanwhile, news is breaking here. The state attorney general just announced charges against the 16 fake Trump electors from 2020, a group that includes the former vice-chair of the state GOP, and a national GOP state committeewoman. I remember watching live video of them marching to the Capitol on December 14, when the real electors were meeting inside. A state police officer refused to let them in. Later stories would emerge that they’d discussed secretly sleeping in a sympathetic legislator’s office overnight, so they could say they met “in” the Capitol, as the law requires.

One final note: The youngest fake elector is 55, the oldest, 82. There’s your MAGA demographic, right there.

News is breaking elsewhere, too. This story, from the Israeli paper Haaretz, may be paywalled, although I was able to read it this morning, when I nearly woke Alan chuckling over it. The gist: In 2019, the Israeli government loaned some rare antiquities to the White House, lamps made from clay, as part of a Hanukkah celebration. The loan was intended to be short-term, but then the pandemic started, everything shut down, but no fear for the artifacts. After all, they were in the most secure building in the world.

Well, guess where they are now? You get one guess, and it’s located in Palm Beach.

This guy. I mean, this fucking guy.

Here’s another guy, a local billionaire building his dream house. The details are galling, but what did you expect, a log cabin?

I didn’t expect a log cabin. But I probably didn’t expect a trampoline park.

OK, outta here. Into the midweek we go.

Well, this isn’t alarming at all, is it:

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

That’s a gift link, and I encourage you to read it. It details, with receipts, exactly what the velociraptor wing of American politics plans to do with their puppet king. It’s grim.

And you know what? I hate to keep sounding the alarm on this, I really do. I absolutely despise having this stuff in my head, and I despise even more knowing that it’s not limited to Trump. If he strokes out taking his morning dump tomorrow, this will apply to whoever steps into his lifted shoes. I’d much rather be musing about summer movies – Team Barbie here – than this, but like they’re always braying at us, freedom isn’t free. I only wish we had a deeper bench, and a younger quarterback.

What a way to start the week.

Oh, and if you’re a lurking Trump fan, here’s your guy:

Trump is asked by a supporter in Iowa what he would do to save farmland from CO2 pipelines. He seems to have no idea what she is talking about but claims that he “has a plan.” pic.twitter.com/qlp4PsESof

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) July 7, 2023

What would it have taken to say, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t been briefed on that. Give my staff some time, and I’ll have a better answer soon.” Character, that’s what. But this guy is such a natural-born liar that he just can’t stop himself.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr., that croaking fucker:

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately … COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese … We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”

…I’ve seen a number of Kennedy fans, a few of them Jewish, defending these remarks because, they argue, he doesn’t specifically claim that someone deliberately engineered COVID to spare Jews. He just says that there’s “an argument” that it was targeted. But, who knows? Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Again, many people are saying …

…Kennedy also makes the general remark that China and the U.S. are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on “ethnically targeted bioweapons,” as though this is a given, even if his other claims about sparing the Jews may be surprising to some people. I can’t claim to know just what the U.S. or China are or are not doing in what are presumably secret programs. But I’ve been around DC and the national security chatosphere long enough to know bullshit at a distance. Again, I can’t know. Great Powers likely study or consider all sorts of crazy stuff at some hypothetical level. But this kind of talk is generally the fantasy or agitprop of warmongers and xenophobes. I mentioned earlier the factitious nature of Kennedy’s speech. He routinely peppers his comments with “there are papers” or “I could show you papers.” But these papers either don’t exist or don’t show anything remotely like what he claims. In this case he mentions a paper which supposedly backed all this up but which actually notes broadly that some viruses could have differential presentations in different ethnic groups.

Grrr. Monday! I ask you!

So there was a domestic-violence incident in Oakland County the other day, which probably wouldn’t have made the papers were it not for one of the parties involved (a high-ranking Ford exec) and the weirdness of the accusation: He threatened to set two of her handbags on fire. The brand(s) were not named, but the wife reported each had a value of $10,000, which suggests Hermés, and that’s the last time I’m going to put the diacritic over the E, so sorry about that, Académie Française member readers.

My purse-expert friend further speculates they were probably Kelly bags, because a Birkin would have cost far, far more. However, a possible complicating factor would be whether it was purchased used (“pre-loved”) or not. But never mind that.

The wife issued a statement yesterday that confirmed what police know about domestic-violence incidents, i.e., that they suck:

The wife of a Ford Motor Co. executive who allegedly assaulted her over the weekend is defending her spouse, saying she loves and supports him, and that he’s never acted violently in the past.

Soo Louis-Victor issued a statement through her an attorney, Paul Stablein, about a weekend incident involving her husband, Franck Louis-Victor. In it, she called him a “loving partner and father.”

Of course. And yes, they were indeed Hermes:

According to a preliminary investigation and a criminal complaint, the victim told officers that she and Louis-Victor were in an argument when he threatened to burn two of her Hermes purses, each valued at about $10,000, with a butane torch. She told police after she took the purses from him, he turned the torch toward her and said he would harm her if he couldn’t damage the handbags, police said.

Later during the fight, he allegedly slapped her, headbutted her and struck her with a Google Nest Hub device, cutting her under the left eye. She sought treatment at a hospital.

I know domestic violence is a complex issue, that alcohol complicates everything, but this is not the way a loving partner and father behaves during an argument. The Google Nest Hub device did make me shake my head. Get out of the way, frying pans and rolling pins — flying Alexas are the new in-home weapon.

Whatever the reason, I think she’s going to have to pawn those bags before this is all over. A shame.

OK, then: The only other thing in the papers this morning that caught my eye was probably Michigan-specific, i.e., this piece about Gov. Whitmer’s plan to overhaul education in the state. Briefly, she wants to transform the traditional state-level department into a broader one focused on preschool-to-career, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential, i.e. MiLEAP:

The new department will work toward “improving outcomes from preschool through postsecondary,” read a Wednesday announcement scant on details about how that might be accomplished. Governors don’t govern the state education department. It’s controlled by an elected state board and a state superintendent hired by that board, a source of frustration for governors of both parties. The new department will partner with, not replace, the state Board and Department of Education, Whitmer’s office said.

I like the idea, but I’ve been away from Lansing too long to immediately figure the what’s-it-about/what’s-it-really-about situation here. These grafs lower down are the meat of it:

Whitmer’s tactic could, possibly, move education to a new dynamic, one focused on accomplishment. Whitmer’s move could shift school policy more directly and quickly while focusing it more intently. It may give schools and teachers more flexibility to actually teach, and inspire kids to actually learn.

Possibly.

What happens with the still-existing Department of Education? Will the Republicans who backed Bollin’s proposal [who proposed eliminating that department entirely] fight Whitmer’s? Does this actually open schools to more political wrangling, or protests, or parental resistance? How will funding issues be resolved? And could all Whitmer’s efforts be overturned when conservative government inevitably returns to power in Lansing? Are these questions Whitmer considered? If so, does she care about those worries, or is she focusing instead on the chance of great reward?

Good ones to think about, no matter where you live, as the weekend draws near. Have a good one.