I found some fascinating pictures online the other day:

Portraits of the first lady as a young woman, and as a young model, compared with today. I believe they were offered in the course of a Quora forum on what sort of plastic surgery she’s had, but I find them fascinating for other reasons. The first left-hand shot, I have to think, is Slovenia Melania, a pretty young woman hoping to become a model. Bottom left, Model Melania, already dating her share of wealthy pigs in hope of a permanent life here, but still hopeful in some way; maybe she’ll snag a hedge-fund manager closer to her age, one who stays in shape and remembers her birthday without having his secretary remind him.

And on the right, Melania Trump. I’m sure some combination of surgery and fillers and god knows what other witch-potion has given her that perma-squint, but even if we could see all the way past those flat brows and through the prickly hedge of her lashes, we’d find…maybe nothing? I’d love to put together a timeline of her modeling photos — because a model should have a zillion of them, right? — and see if we could find the exact moment when her soul left her body.

Midweek, feeling…midweek. The humidity is blowing out as we speak and will be replaced by clear, low-humidity, moderate-temperature loveliness, so I guess I will be enjoying it. Summer won’t last forever. Maybe an early-morning bike ride or something. Summer is fleeting; best enjoy it.

I was checking in on this and that today when that and this sent me over to Condoleeza Rice’s argument for why we should leave Confederate monuments where they are:

“I am a firm believer in ‘keep your history before you’ and so I don’t actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners,” she said Monday on Fox News.

“I want us to have to look at those names and recognize what they did and to be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history. When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better it’s a bad thing,” she said.

Huh. I remember when the Oklahoma City bombing memorial opened, an architecture critic noted how hard you have to look to find the name “Tim McVeigh” and there certainly isn’t a bronze rendering of him in that memorial. I haven’t been there, but I suspect he’s right, as someone who’s read approximately 10 million letters to the editor wondering why newspapers put the name of accused killers on the front page, WHEN THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT.

Is there a statue of Osama bin Laden at the 9/11 memorial? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Ignore the typos in this post to get a sense of just how ridiculous the Kid Rock for Senate campaign really is:

The July poll that went viral on the Internet, lifting Kid Rock as a serious contender for U.S. Senate, may have been created by a fake polling firm to cash in on lucrative bets related to the 2018 Michigan elections.

According to FiveThirtyEight, numbers from a mid-July poll incredulously showed the raunchy musician from Romeo (Mich.) leading Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow by a 30-26 percent gap. That raised questions among political pros whether this whole episode was a scam.

First, the so-called polling firm, Digital Analytica, had existed for about a week prior to the highly publicized poll of July 14-18. Second, there are some indications that this shadowy group may be engaged in cashing in on an online gambling website, PredictIt, which offers the opportunity for betters to make wagers on political matters relating to future elections and the advancement of political figures.

People around here are still click-whoring on this nonsense. I hope it can stop now.

Happy middle of the week to you. Next week’s a short one. Whew.

When some of the people I swim with started signing up for an open-water race this summer, I hesitated, then thought what the hell. The thing I always liked best about riding was getting away from the schooling ring circles and doing what the discipline called for — jumping fences, hacking out in the countryside, whatever.

So why not get out of the pool? In entering, I chose a distance other than the shortest one (1.2 miles, with the other choices being .5 mile, 5K and 10K), and set some goals, in order of escalating ambition and reverse order of likelihood of achievement:

1) Don’t drown.
2) Finish.
3) Don’t finish at the back of my age group.
4) Win my age group.
5) WIN THE WHOLE FUCKING THING, GIVE INTERVIEWS TO A CLAMOROUS GAGGLE OF SPORTS REPORTERS, RETIRE IN GLORY.

The swim was Sunday, and I made it to No. 3. It was way harder than I anticipated, mainly because open-water swimming layers on another skill neglected in the pool: Staying on course. Also, navigating a start, when a zillion people all plunge into the lake and start swimming for the first buoy. An older woman I was chatting with beforehand advised starting toward the back of the pack, but we still had a scrum before the faster people surged to the front and the rest of us strung out behind. At one point I reached forward for a stroke and my hand landed flat on some woman’s ass. Sor-reee! But then the hard part started, i.e., figuring out why I’d sight the buoy and start off in that direction, and check again in a hundred yards and discover I was headed in a different direction. Nothing seemed to work, and I think I probably added a big chunk of yardage just zigzagging all over the place, trying to stay on course.

But the turnaround finally came, and as I started back, I thought, man, this is taking a long time. After I finished and collapsed on the grass to recover, a guy eating a banana next to me said he’d been wearing a swim watch, and the course was 2,800 yards, or nearly 1.6 miles. Oh, well. My time was atrocious — 1:05, but I finished fourth in my age group, which I believe was Pre-Medicare Crones. Three other crones were behind me. The age-group winner was 15 minutes faster, however, so better luck next year.

The distance group first-place finishers were 13 (M) and 27 (F). They were probably eating ice cream in Ann Arbor by the time I dragged my ass up the beach. But I’m glad I did it. The weather was perfect and I finally got to experience the culture of the professionally run amateur sporting event. Which is to say, I got a T-shirt, a medal and a new swim cap.

So. Monday is Eclipse Day, and in filling the nation’s pages, feeds and airwaves with related garbage masquerading as journalism, NBC News went with the Scrooge angle: The eclipse will cost America almost $700 million in lost productivity. Please join me in a hearty fuck-you to whichever economist pulled that number out of his butt. Americans really love this sort of self-laceration, which in its own way beats anything ever put on a Soviet propaganda poster. I once read a lost-productivity analysis of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. OMG the carnage in the bottom line. I can’t even.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the path of totality and have clear skies, I hope you leave your work station, go outside and have the human experience of marveling at our cosmos. I plan to.

Some more bloggage, then? Sure:

I know what whattaboutism is, but I didn’t know it was a Cold War tactic, only that it has in my experience been wielded mainly by certain conservatives I’ve known, who couldn’t acknowledge the mistake of one of their own without saying, “But what about Bill Clinton? Huh?” Here’s an explainer on the history of whattaboutism.

And just to tie up last week’s threads, I’m not the only one who has noticed the peculiar influence of the College Republicans on the greater party:

The pool of people the Republican Party will be drawing from when selecting candidates a generation from now will contain these men and hardly anyone else. Cvjetanovic wasn’t the only marcher photographed with a current Republican elected official. Allsup, the erstwhile WSU College Republicans president, was photographed with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. “I communicate with people from their office on a fairly regular basis,” he told his student paper a few months ago, also mentioning that members of his organization had earned internships and jobs in her office.

This is the state of the GOP leadership pipeline. In a decade, state legislatures will start filling up with Gamergaters, MRAs, /pol/ posters, Anime Nazis, and Proud Boys. These are, as of now, the only people in their age cohort becoming more active in Republican politics in the Trump era. Everyone else is fleeing. This will be the legacy of Trumpism: It won’t be long before voters who reflexively check the box labeled “Republican” because their parents did, or because they think their property taxes are too high, or because Fox made them scared of terrorism, start electing Pepe racists to Congress.

Hey, even the National-goddamn-Review has noticed.

Man, am I beat. “Game of Thrones,” then off to bed for me. This girl is going to sleep well tonight. Hope you do, too.

Today’s question: What’s wrong with the College Republicans?

Two of the tiki-torch marchers ID’d by the general public are College Republicans, and anytime I hear about that group, I’m reminded of a Fort Wayne story from 2002. I finally tracked down a copy of it, and since I can’t link, I’ll post larger-than-normal chunks of it here:

A Fort Wayne woman with dementia wrote nearly $50,000 in checks within six months, mostly to political organizations. She doesn’t recall making the donations, but her family wants the money back.

The more Mary donated, the more money the organizations pleaded for. They told the 82-year-old our nation is in danger of communist takeover and implied the letter writers had close ties with President Bush and other high-ranking government officials.

All the solicitations were through the mail.

…It’s a family’s worst nightmare, said niece Jan Rediger of Leo, who asked that her aunt’s full name not be published.

Last summer, her aunt told her, “The bank has stolen $30,000.”

“I knew things were going downhill when I stopped by to see her and there were stacks of mail everywhere, especially from Republican groups.

“There were hundreds of letters, most of them addressing her by her first name. She thought they were letters to her personally. She didn’t realize they were form letters. They all asked for money,” Rediger said.

…Last year, she began getting more letters from the College Republican National Committee, which is affiliated with the Republican National Committee.

Mary also received 20-30 letters a day from lesser-known GOP groups, including the National Republican Victory Campaign, Republican Strategy Headquarters, Republican Headquarters 2001 and the National Republican Leadership Committee.

All her checks were deposited and cashed, including several Mary made out to individuals listed as directors of the organizations.

One of the letters said:

“I need you to send your $200 contribtuion immediately. If I don’t hear back from you, I will be forced to shut down several critical Republican programs.” The undated letter was signed Scott Stewart, chairman of College Republican National Committee.

In another letter:

“I feel that we have gotten to know each other well enough that I may write to you using your Christian name …It always brings a smile to my face when I open a letter from Fort Wayne, Indiana because I know that it is from you. Mary, I am writing to you and sharing all of this with you because I have nowhere to turn. I am writing to you to ask you if you will make a major commitment to Republican Strategy Headquarters now to help President Bush in the amount of $25,000…

“This is the true amount that I need within the next three weeks if I am to help the president’s proposals pass through the Senate …I beseech you, send $25,000 now. Or if you cannot send it all at once, perhaps $5,000 now and the rest in a little while.” The letter, dated June 15, 2001, is signed: “Your sincere friend, David Harris, director of Republican Strategy Headquarters, PO Box 4442 Salisbury, MD 21803.

Although Mary did not send the requested $25,000, within a few months she did send nearly $13,000 to Republican Strategy Headquarters, which listed a different Washington, D.C., post office box on some letters.

…The College Republican National Committee “is not in any way connected” to Republican Strategy Headquarters, said committee Chairman Stewart.

But the family wonders why, in the June 15 letter, Harris writes: “You have been enormously generous toward me in the past and also to Chris, Scott and others.” Chris Tiedeman is general chairman of the National Republican Victory Campaign, a project of the College Republican National Committee.

Stewart said he had no explanation and “is going to be seriously looking into it.”

He said the national committee “does not ask for large sums of money,” adding solicitations usually are for $25 to $50.

In a March 28, 2001, letter, Stewart urges Mary to “rush me back $300 right now. …If we delay then the Rule of Law may be dead and America may turn into a Communist police state.”

There’s more, but you get the idea. A little Googling shows Stewart seemed to be cut from the usual College Republicans cloth — an early sexual harasser who rose like cream to the remunerative top layers of corporate America. And, of course, Mary wasn’t the only one. This was part of a national fundraising strategy, and most of the money went to pay vendors, not elect Republicans.

I had to chuckle over this passage in the last link:

College Republicans serve as the party’s outreach organization on college campuses. The group has been a starting place for many prominent conservatives, including Bush adviser Karl Rove, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed.

Elite company, right there. But seriously, given this history, wouldn’t you think job one would be to rebuild the brand? Rhetorical question, because of course, this is the brand – take-no-shit aggression in pursuit of party over all. Bilk a bunch of seniors? Hey, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few bank accounts. March with racists? A few bad apples, heavy hearts, thoughts and prayers, etc.

Blegh. Enough.

I want to leave you with something delightful after this grim week, I’ve found it, and it isn’t a kitty video, but this breezy history of true-confessions magazines, from their founding to today. Yes, today — they still exist!

The magazines are staple-bound and always 64 pages long—ten stories, two “Inspirational Mini-Stories, and one recipe, released once a month. The paper inside is newsprint, the photos all stock images, and the prose leans toward Kindle single. They’re not exactly the kind of magazines that anyone would describe as “venerable” at a glance, but the goofy covers belie the publications’ age and legacy. The first women’s confessional magazines, True Story and True Confessions are now approaching their centennial.

I think I’m going to have to seek one out. In the meantime, have a great weekend.

The word of the week is emboldened. That is, to make bold, or bolder. I’ve heard it so much in the last six months, and at least half of that in the last 72 hours, that I can’t even. Use it in a sentence? Sure: The new administration has emboldened white supremacists to march in front of cameras without the usual hoods and robes.

After which many whine like little bitches, I might add.

I don’t like words like emboldened. No one uses it in casual conversation. It’s a journalese word/phrase, like solons or controversial or racially charged. And yet I’ve heard it over and over this week, because racists be emboldened. Make of that what you will.

With that, I offer this advice to an emboldened president: Keep digging, and make the grave big enough for two. My alma mater “reluctantly” endorsed Trump, on the grounds that Mike Pence would be both a moderating influence and a steady hand at the helm of the good ship Conservatism. Perhaps this was based on the fact Pence looks like the captain of a cruise ship, or at least the guy in gold epaulets that they send out to schmooze with the paying customers while autopilot and the first mate keep the ship away from icebergs, but man, talk about an ignominious choice. They were one of only a tiny handful of papers to endorse Trump, and that gasbag from Hillsboro, Ohio keeps getting the Washington Post platform to explain Trump love to the nation. And they’re still writing witless editorials about Pence, their great white hope for a less embarrassing presidency. As if he weren’t clapping and smiling and nodding along with every damn crazy-ass thing that’s happened since November. As if he didn’t call serving President Many Sides the greatest honor of his life. As if, as if, as if.

Enough. At least for the next paragraph. I kick off the bloggage with a heartbreaking story from Bridge which is still worth your time, about what really happens after the plucky girl attorney gets the wrongfully accused man released from prison. A sobering look at what our misguided judicial and incarceration policies can end up costing us in the end. Read. It’s really good.

Where is the country’s nastiest GOP primary? In the Hoosier state, says Politico, Rokita v. Messer for the U.S. Senate. Guess who’s the bad guy with the Indiana GOP:

Rokita ran particularly afoul of the state Legislature — where Messer had quickly risen up the ranks during a stint several years earlier — in 2009, as lawmakers began preparing for the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. Then in his second term as secretary of state, Rokita proposed making it a felony for lawmakers to consider politics when drawing political boundaries. He toured the state promoting his idea and drew up sample maps with new boundaries.

The Legislature bristled at Rokita’s suggestion, which would have given his office new power and disrupted lawmakers’ safe seats. The state Senate president — a fellow Republican — said Rokita had “crossed the line.”

Oh, and a small tech note, via J.C.: The company at the center of this story, resisting a warrant for lots of user data on visitors to an anti-Trump site, is the same one that hosts the site you’re reading now. Courage, DreamHost! I’m with you, anyway.

Into the midweek hump we go. I’m still digesting lunch. Damn shwarmas — they lure you in with their deliciousness, and stick around all. Damn. Day.

I guess I picked the wrong weekend to try to stay away from the news, eh? I was happily plowing through an overpriced granola/yogurt breakfast at the Eastern Market when I checked Twitter out of boredom and saw the first reports from Charlottesville, of the tiki-torch march. Had a feeling nothing good would come of it. Was right.

A few thoughts:

James Fields, the young man who was apparently behind the wheel of the car that plowed into the crowd is, as you might expect, yet another young man already in life’s clearance bin. Fatherless, directionless, quiet, “kept to himself,” etc. A lot of these kids find themselves in the Army. As did Fields, until he found himself out of it:

Military records show that Mr. Fields entered the Army on Aug. 18, 2015, around the time his mother wrote on Facebook that he had left for boot camp. Less than four months later, on Dec. 11, his period of active duty concluded. It was not immediately clear why he left the military.

I’ll leave it to you vets to speculate on what might have cut his service short. I saw some Twitter commentary on an interview with his mother, whose own affect seemed a bit flat. She stays out of his politics, she said. No part of this was surprising to me; I have met a thousand versions of this woman, an older, wearier version of her son. They’d been living in Toledo for about a year, in one of those townhouse developments where a person could, if they were so inclined, more or less disappear from the face of the earth. (He had moved out a while ago, however.) The video showed her sitting next to a silver car. You’ve passed a dozen of her on your way into work today. Silver cars blend in. Middle-aged women blend in. Townhouses are pre-blended in housing. Just a reminder you never know. About anyone.

Meanwhile, this oxygen thief (thanks for that one, FDChief!) thinks the whole thing was staged. And some of his oxygen-thievin’ listeners probably believe it.

By the way, if you’re not reading Will Sommer on the various tribes of the right, you’re missing out. Here’s his C’ville report in The Hill. Here’s his Twitter. And here’s a link to his weekly-ish newsletter roundup.

You should also read Roy on this subject, as well.

So. Other than that, how was the weekend? Tiring. I spent most of Saturday cleaning the kitchen, but then cleaned myself up and went out with Alan to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We went to the proverbial chic downtown hotspot, which was crowded and loud and where Alan got the surprise of his life when he ordered a rye manhattan and was charged $19 for it. Yes, $19. For one drink. But that was just for cocktail hour. We went later to a different place for dinner and I’m not sure what manhattans were costing there, but I bet it was less than $19. It was a nice evening. Kathryn Bigelow stayed at the hotel connected to the $19-manhattan place when she was in town last month, but I’m sure the studio was paying.

Sunday was more cleaning, but the house is no longer a Den of Shame and Dust, and we managed a graduation party in the afternoon. The host had a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and was pouring summer refreshments for anyone who wanted more than a beer. “Here you go,” he said to Alan, fortifying his lemonade. “I’ll make it a double and it won’t be $19.”

Have a swell week ahead, all. Let’s hope everybody simmers down.

Did we talk much about Glen Campbell? I don’t think so. Of course his death was coming, everybody knew it. (Yours is coming too, and if you don’t know it, you should.) I took the opportunity to run through a few Jimmy Webb-written classics on YouTube, and thought what I always do: Jimmy Webb is an astonishing songwriter.

“By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman” are two of the best songs ever written about adult heartbreak and loneliness, and Webb was barely out of his teens when he wrote them. He’s only 71!

I just said this again, at dinner. Alan pointed out that Billy Strayhorn wrote “Lush Life” when he was 17, and that song is even more knowing and sophisticated and world-weary. But then, Strayhorn was gay; some of those guys have that stuff baked into their bones. I love those lyrics as much as I do anything by Webb:

I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come-what-may places
Where one relaxes on the axis
Of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life
From jazz and cocktails

The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
With distingué traces
That used to be there
You could see where
They’d been washed away
By too many through the day
Twelve o’clock tales

I snuck a “Wichita Lineman” reference into a Bridge story, because I could. Here’s to Glen, a great artist.

Man, it’s been a long week. Long for the usual reasons (work), long for the newer reasons (Trump), short for more poignant ones (ah, fleeting summer). I want to take two full days to myself this weekend; I think I deserve it.

In the meantime? Some bloggage:

Someone said on Twitter a while back that everything you need to know about dietary supplements can be seen in the fact that so many grifters find their way to them. Alex Jones is no exception, and Buzzfeed sent away for a few of his branded products and had them tested. The good news is, they’re basically what they claim to be. The bad news is, they cost about 200 percent more than they should, but of course, only Alex Jones is sending you Alex Jones-branded patent medicine. For something called Anthroplex, for instance:

Claimed ingredients:​ Zinc Orotate, Horny Goat Weed, Tribulus Terrestris, Tongkat Ali-Longjack, Fulvic Powder

Test results: Labdoor found that Anthroplex passed a heavy metal screening but noticed a discrepancy in the reported amount of zinc in the capsules. According to Labdoor, there’s 31% less zinc than advertised. “When we look into the zinc dosage, it’s so ridiculously low that you’d basically be buying a worthless product for $40,” the report reads.

Review snippet: “This product is a waste of money. The claim that ‘Anthroplex works synergistically with the powerful Super Male Vitality formula in order to help restore your masculine foundation and stimulate vitality with its own blend of unique ingredients’ is fluff on multiple fronts.”

Can’t get upset by this. If you’re dumb enough to believe Jones, someone’s going to get your money. Might as well be him.

From Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post, an essay about his border collie, a rabies scare, and some thoughtful thoughts about how we behave in a crisis:

In a serious pandemic, in a country full of people not just skeptical about scientific consensus but also deeply hostile to government authority, what chance is there that people will abide by basic public health mandates during an emergency? What if the Ebola virus scare of 2014 happened today and was managed from the White House by tweet? Even if you understand the idea of risk intellectually, the words “There’s a very low risk” aren’t comforting when it’s your health in the balance, which is one reason it is so difficult to contain costs in our medical system.

Finally, how you-know-who and his right-wing pals latched onto the death of Kate Steinle and rode it across the finish line. Good policy is based on fact. What is based on distortion of fact?

You tell me. And have a good weekend.

We’re going to war with North Korea (maybe) by threatening them with “fire and fury.” I guess POTUS is a “Game of Thrones” fan.

We’re going to war with addictive drugs by telling kids to just say no. I guess POTUS liked Nancy Reagan, too.

Meanwhile, here’s a delightful piece of journalism you should read before the fireball engulfs the west coast, or maybe Guam, or perhaps Japan:

They hitchhike across Europe, instantly recognizable in the wide-bottomed, corduroy trousers, white shirts and colored jackets that identify them as bricklayers, bakers, carpenters, stonemasons and roofers.

They are “Wandergesellen,” or journeymen — a vestige of the Middle Ages in modern Europe — young men, and these days women, too, who have finished their required training in any number of trades and are traveling to gather experience. Most are from German-speaking countries.

I knew nothing of this tradition, and had no idea why post-apprentice tradesmen and women are called journeymen. Now I do — because they journey, duh. It’s mainly a photo essay, so you can enjoy it without committing to a long read.

There was an election here yesterday. No surprises.

My friend Bill is recently retired, which means he’s in the go-go stage of post-work life. (The other two, of course, are slow-go and no-go.) He’s having a great summer, bombing around the state with “12th & Clairmount,” the documentary film our employer co-produced, and on his travels, he’s developing a new sport. The sport of the future! he says. He calls it ottering – it’s open water swimming in fins and a life jacket. He keeps saying we should go so I can try it out, and Sunday we worked out our schedules and did so.

We drove to St. Clair, Michigan, on the St. Clair river between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair. There’s a park there, with a long boardwalk and seawall. We put on the gear and jumped off into 68-degree water and spent an hour ottering. It’s fun. The PFD holds you up and the fins allow you to master the current, which runs about 3 miles per hour draining the Great Lakes toward the sea. At least half a dozen ships passed us, and their wakes bobbed us up and down pleasantly as we drifted and floated.

Why is this the sport of the future? Because Bill has been swimming there most of his adult life, and in recent years has developed shoulder pain, enough that he fears one day injuring himself climbing back up the ladder on the seawall. Hence the PFD. The fins just make it easy to move around. So the pitch really should be, Ottering: The sport of the future in an aging America.

Now to monetize it. I told him to write the book and I’d contribute a chapter. He could do a merch run. It could be his gift to the world, a way to bring the joy back to swimming for people who don’t feel confident enough to do it in deep water anymore.

Then we had lunch and a couple of beers. Not a bad way to spend half a Sunday.

It was a pretty FUBAR weekend all around, with Alan suffering drug side effects from his oral surgery. He had hiccups all day Friday. Seriously, all day. Was awakened at 6 a.m. by hiccups, in fact. Turns out they’re a side effect of the steroid he’s on. Then you have the antibiotics and the painkillers and a UAW vote in Mississippi on a Friday night, and there goes half the weekend. I had to finish a story to boot, so there went half of mine. I was able to slip away for a while Friday night, for a house music lineup at a local bar.

House music sounds like this, at least this set did. That link is to a short video. (If it gives you problems or won’t play on your phone or whatever, I don’t want to hear about it.) I like it OK, and that was a nice early-evening groove, not too loud, so a pleasant way to pass a couple hours.

And suddenly, there goes the weekend. August is flying by. Next week is the OABI, the Once Around Belle Isle kayak race, which I’m on the fence about entering, and the weekend after that is Swim to the Moon, my first open-water swimming event (besides ottering). And then another kayak thing and into Labor Day. Stay a little longer, summer.

So, on to the bloggage? Sure.

This German dude is a future otter, commuting to work via swimming the Isar River, through Munich.

Man, the Chinese have this hoax nailed. Down.

Another take on “Detroit,” this one calling the film immoral.

Oh, and finally, perhaps appropriate because we spent all weekend working, we watched “Obit” on Saturday night, a documentary about the NYT obit desk. Very enjoyable, and I recommend. Let’s hope the weekend ahead is the same.

OK, so what’s happened in the last…12 hours, say? The WashPost released transcripts of head-of-state calls our own made with his counterparts in Mexico and Australia. And, as we’ve come to expect, it was deeply embarrassing to all of us.

I’m more interested in the backstory here.

Leaks don’t just happen. Reporters cultivate sources and sources return calls and texts. Someone on the inside despises this man enough to leak classified documents to the outside world, documents that show just how deep is this trouble we’re in, where the POTUS behaves as though the presidents of two other countries are somehow obligated to do what he wants. Bullying.

Mortifying. Just another Thursday.

Then, late afternoon, word of the grand jury leaks. (That’s a USA Today link, sorry. Upside: No registration needed. Downside: Autoplaying video, sidebar explaining “what is a grand jury.”

As we’ve said nine million times already: It’s hard to keep up these days. It’s hard to keep up in one day. I was supposed to be off, being driver/cook/nurse to Alan, who had some oral surgery today and came through it like a champ. Which was good, because I worked more or less all day, including when I was sitting in the waiting room.

But now the weekend awaits. A little more reading for you:

How ignorant of basic economics is our business-genius president? This ignorant.

Then there’s this guy, aka the Human Comment Section (but not at this site), running for Sherrod Brown’s Senate seat in Ohio. Don’t disappoint me, fellow Buckeyes.

And just to take you to the end of the week with something other than politics, here’s a great essay on the anti-affirmative action movement forming around college admissions. It’s from last year, but relevant because of… see Wednesday’s entry.

Finally, an interesting piece on how a pair of 1967 grizzly attacks changed the way we interact not only with wildlife, but the greater natural world. Totally worth your time.

I’m outta here.

Eighty-eight degrees out there at the moment. I just walked the dog and didn’t die. Sweating, but still ambulatory. I must be getting older, my decaying body craving heat like the dying husk it is, like an old man craves young women. Soon I’ll start setting my thermostat to 85 and wearing a cardigan sweater with an old tissue shoved up one sleeve.

Which is to say: It wasn’t the greatest Tuesday, but it wasn’t terrible, either. There’s a piece of salmon in the fridge and I’m thinking it’s going to be dinner. Which will help a lot.

But I have a case of the mid-weeks, which means I have a story due at the end of it, my notes are kind of a mess and I have to un-mess them and I’d rather make some of that salmon and open a bottle of white.

What are today’s outrages? What drinks can I put up on the bar to get today’s party started?

SAVE WHITEY! Jefferson Beauregard Sessions shows his worth at the Justice Department, sticking up for poor, poor, discriminated-against white kids. When I was a Fellow, one of U-M’s lawyers did a seminar for us, talking about the SCOTUS argument they made, that diversity was an essential part of the education a student should expect at a university. He convinced me, but Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was not in attendance that evening.

The secretary of defense and new chief of staff had an ad hoc adult daycare going there for a while.

I don’t know if this will be available to all, but a good WSJ story on the chaos of the Indian court system. You lawyers might appreciate this.

And a moment of grim levity from the WashPost: An oral history of last week:

At 4:58 p.m., Ryan Lizza publishes a story on NewYorker.com that recounts his curse-laden conversation with Scaramucci the previous night. By the 6 o’clock hour, chyrons on CNN were including Scaramucci quotations like “F—–G PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC,” in reference to Priebus, and “I’M NOT TRYING TO S**K MY OWN [EXPLETIVE],” a reference to Scaramucci’s putdown of Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Tommy Vietor, former Obama spokesperson: [Former Obama speechwriter] Jon Favreau and I had recently finished recording our Thursday podcast when the story with Ryan Lizza and the Mooch popped up. . . . This was just the latest example of huge breaking news happening every time we finish a show.

I click through and am just flabbergasted. . . . We grabbed [fellow Obama alum Jon] Lovett and read him some choice lines. He couldn’t believe it was real. How can this be real?

And that’s only three paragraphs! There’s much, much more.

Finally, just to leave you with a midweek glance into the void, Jared Kushner on the Middle East, surreptitiously recorded by a White House intern:

Later in the clip, Kushner expresses frustration at others’ attempts to teach him about the delicate situation he’s been inserted into, saying, “Everyone finds an issue, that ‘You have to understand what they did then’ and ‘You have to understand that they did this.’ But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that. We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on, How do you come up with a conclusion to the situation?” He then goes on to lament the press’s treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a family friend who he’s known since childhood.

Kushner’s dismissal of the nuances of the conflict has already been an issue. Last month, when Kushner met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian official told Haaretz that Kushner “sounded like Netanyahu’s advisers and not like fair arbiters” and that they were “greatly disappointed” after the meeting. Abbas himself was “reportedly furious.”

Finally, Kushner closed with the following statement of reassurance: “So, what do we offer that’s unique? I don’t know … I’m sure everyone that’s tried this has been unique in some ways, but again we’re trying to follow very logically. We’re thinking about what the right end state is, and we’re trying to work with the parties very quietly to see if there’s a solution. And there may be no solution, but it’s one of the problem sets that the president asked us to focus on. So we’re going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future.”

It’s moments like this that I feel us trembling, teetering on the edge of something terrible. Back on Friday, when the weekend will be in view. Let’s party then.