I didn’t watch the debate. I came home from lifeguarding ravenous, inhaled a metric ton of pasta, did a little work and went to bed. I’m put off by the endless, ENDless pregaming for these events, the boners sprung by the entire Politico staff, all of it. I asked myself, will anything that happens tonight change my vote? It will not. I figured if Vance ripped open his shirt to show off his new swastika tattoo, I’d hear about it later. So I skipped. Sorry not sorry.

From what I’m reading this morning, I didn’t miss a thing. Republicans think Vance cleaned Walz’ clock, Democrats vice versa. Yawn.

I continue to worry about current events, don’t you fret about that. The Last Good Year is inching toward its finale, one ballistic-missile attack at a time. I read a thread yesterday about the longshoremen’s strike, and about the cozy relationship between the union president and Fat Orange Elvis, and it sounded like the girl in “Jaws” who’s trying to tell the panicking crowd on the beach the shark isn’t there, it’s over here. Last good year.

Speaking of Politico, et al, my friend Ryan — literally half my age, a former student, and author of the Last Good Year theory — said something the other day in our group chat that I’ve been mulling ever since. He said we were a better-informed nation under the old system of media-as-gatekeeper than we are today, which is in large part the utopia the earliest bloggers (99 percent of whom gave it up) dreamed of, back when we were invading Iraq and everything was democracy-whiskey-sexy. “The MSM is a lecture. The web is a conversation,” etc. I think James Lileks said that, and the whole warblog crew lifted him aloft and proclaimed him the pundit in whom they most trusted. (Note that he not only didn’t quit his six-figure MSM job — hard to find another humor columnist opening in our shrinking world — but now that his column has finally been taken from him, retaining his job, he has not ceased bitching about it.)

Anyway, don’t want to re-plow that ground. My point is, the old system wasn’t so terrible, even as flawed as it was. I’m a news junkie, and I only learned of the impending longshoreman’s strike…last weekend, I believe. And now it’s upon us, and it’s not even Wednesday. Once upon a time, an army of labor reporters would have kept us up to date for weeks, maybe months, ahead of the strike, and we’d at least have had time to process it, call our elected representatives, etc. Now there are hardly any labor reporters. One I follow is on Substack, essentially self-employed.

The old gatekeepers were overwhelmingly white and male, also older and well-to-do, if not rich. This undoubtedly left many stories uncovered. It also allowed a rich vein of alt-journalism to flourish, in the ethnic presses and the free weeklies in every city. One made their money on lower-cost advertising targeted directly at their readers, the other on racy personals and ads for escorts and strippers.

And what replaced this terrible system? Some marquee brands (NYT, WP) survive, a handful of nonprofit, serious news sites (MinnPost, Texas Tribune, the outfit I used to work for) and a whole lot of clickbait. Plus, a form of human clickbait — the influencer. The friend who likes all the things you like, will tell you about the things they like (use their product code for 10 percent off and free shipping) and lies happily to your face, but you like those lies, so it’s OK.

And don’t get me started on social media, the great bullshit amplifier of our age. I used to correct people who posted urban legends on Facebook as though they were facts, but I don’t anymore, because I was so often accused of being, essentially, a party pooper. Let people believe, etc. OK.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of these innovations have been welcome. We’re all busy. It’s nice to have some filters in our lives to productively direct our moments when we can be free to pay attention to the world outside our own bubble. And many podcasts are miles better than the hollowed-out husk of commercial radio. But for all the information we process from day to day — that I process, anyway — I still feel like there are yawning gaps in my knowledge.

And I know there are some in yours.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Maybe some photos? OK. A yard sign a few blocks over:

Also, speaking of the MSM, I think this story is the very last place for a play-on-words headline, but no one asked me:

Fibs, not vicious lies, and “dog,” get it? HAHAHAHA.

Talk later.

My friend Jimmy runs a monthly writing group in a local community center for addicts. You don’t have to be an addict to attend, but he’s a recovering alcoholic and thinks writing can be therapeutic for some. He’s very clear that the group is open to anyone, and lately I’ve found it fun and a good exercise, whether or not you’re stuck in a rut. It goes like this: You walk in, and collect four cards from four face-down stacks — a place name, an inanimate object, and animal and something else. You have an hour to write a sub-1,000-word short story incorporating all four. Today, mine were Guadalajara, paint, prairie dog and kerosene.

This is the story I wrote. It’s not Ernest Hemingway, but so what? Low stakes! Fun! Stay away from the news for a while! We can get back to that later this week, and of course you can discuss anything comments. In case you’re wondering, this story is untitled. But here it is:

“Get in the car,” he said for the fifth time. Yelling it this time.

“Guadalajara?” she called back, hand cocked to her ear, like she was having trouble hearing him. “Sorry, I didn’t bring my passport.”

And with that, the girl slipped around the fence and into the alley, where the car couldn’t follow. Tom and I looked at each other, brushes still working, because you didn’t want to be caught as an active spectator to a domestic squabble, not in this neighborhood. “MotherFUCK,” the boyfriend, or husband, or whatever-he-was-to-her exploded, before dropping the Challenger in drive and peeling off.

Tom dipped his brush in the paint and resumed his work on the fence. I had started at the opposite end, and we were working our way to the middle. We were now close enough to have a conversation, or at least the kind of conversation you have when you’re doing a job that doesn’t require much of your concentration. Painting a fence is one of them.

“She was a fine-looking woman,” I said, dipping my own into my personal bucket of Navajo White. Tom’s was labeled Ghost White, and I figured this would be a problem when our work met up in another few minutes, but the guy who gave us the job said it didn’t matter, white is white and stop asking questions. “But fine-looking women often come with a lot of strings attached. Ones you can’t use to pull her back in the car, as that guy found out.”

“Strings?” Tom asked, putting Ghost White stripes on the next panel. “Like what kinda strings.”

“They’re touchy, women like that,” I said. “You gotta pay attention to them all the time, but it’s gotta be the right kind. They want to be told they’re beautiful every day, but if they got a zit or their hair’s a mess or they’re on their period, then they tell you you’re a liar, and sometimes that starts a fight. ‘What else are you lying about,’ etc.”

“And how would you know all this,” Tom replied. “You don’t strike me as a guy with a lot of experience dealing with beautiful women.”

“See, that’s where we’re different,” I said. “I think all women are beautiful, although that one was especially so.”

Tom fell silent, and I continued my Navajo White conquest of the fence. We’d be standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a few minutes.

“My cousin Cheryl’s a woman, and she’s ugly as a dog’s ass,” he finally said. “So I think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Five minutes it took you to think of one woman you know who’s ugly,” I said. “I’d say that proves my point.” The last few words were drowned out by the roar of the Challenger, coming around the corner again. He’s looking for his woman, I thought. I hope he doesn’t have a gun. But who could shoot a fine-looking girl like that?

He stopped the car in front of us, and revved it a couple times. Tom and I turned around.

“Where’d she go,” he demanded through the passenger window. “That bitch. I know you seen her.”

“Mister, she went down the alley and we ain’t seen where she went,” I said, turning up the Downriver twang to about 7. “I’m sorry about that.”

The tires chirped as he roared off, and half a minute later, a head popped up over the fence, like a prairie dog if prairie dogs were hot brunettes. She slipped around the end of the fence as another car pulled up, this one with an Uber sticker on the windshield. “Thanks, guys, but I need you to play dumb if he comes back again.” She blew us a kiss that melted my heart a little bit.

The Uber pulled away, the memory of her long thigh slipping into the front seat still throbbing in my vision as we turned around and saw Ghost and Navajo White close enough to see that white may be white, but these two were still only fraternal twins. A few more strokes and we’d be done.

“Time to clean up,” Tom said. I suggested we use kerosene. Outside, there wouldn’t be a fume issue. Tom went to the truck and came back with the can. The Challenger came around the block and passed us slowly, one more time. We ignored him, but he stopped anyway.

“That fence looks like shit,” he yelled. “It’s two different colors.” And he peeled out again.

“I see why she got out of the car,” Tom said.

I’m sorry I am probably the last person to tell you about the Bridgerton Ball fiasco here in Detroit last weekend. (Not as sorry as the dailies should be, who fumbled a story that went national. New York magazine even had an interview with the pole dancer. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

I’m not a Bridgerton fan, or even a watcher, although I know the premise of the show, which is sort of a fantasy Regency-England costume soap on Netflix, now in its third season. It’s based on a series of books, and produced by Shonda Rhimes. The producers practice what you might call “Hamilton” casting, which is to say, it’s color-blind, and so London high society is chock-full of people of color, which is never remarked upon. Even the queen is black, and it’s n.b.d.

Because of this casting, the show has a lot of black fans, which led to a non-show-affiliated party or parties to get the idea for a Bridgerton Ball in Detroit. Tickets were pricey, well over $100 to start and upward from there, and the idea was that you’d get dressed up in ball gowns and tiaras for the ladies (breeches and tailcoats for the gents) and attend a party on the scale of the ones in the show. (Never seen the show, but I gather it has a lot of balls.)

The first warning sign was when the party was moved from August to September over “venue issues,” but eventually the day came, and guests arrived at a historic event space to find: Scarce food, much of it cold or undercooked. Harsh lighting against bare white walls. No seating whatsoever. No orchestra playing waltzes, but a single violinist. Some paper backdrops for photos. And a pole dancer.

This photo, from the pole dancer’s Instagram, captures so, so much:

Part of me can’t stop laughing. I mean, this interview!

Did you see any of the details that have been reported — like, that there was chicken that was served raw or that plates were being reused?

No, but when I was doing character work for them, I did try going downstairs to see what was going on. The first floor was a mob of people, where you couldn’t really walk, so I just went back upstairs.

What is character work?

They basically just had me walk around and say, “Hello, I’m your Bridgerton fairy,” and just add to the ambience of the night. I don’t know. [Laughs.] It was weird.

Did they tell you to say that? What did they tell you to do?

No, I was going off-book because I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. They just said, “Do character work.” That was it. Usually when I work, I’m going to events as Tink the Fairy, so I just switched it to the Bridgerton Fairy.

Were you dressed as a fairy?

No, I was wearing what you saw in the video. But I did have a short lace robe on over it. I was trying to make the best of it.

And another big part of me feels terrible, because it looks like a lot of black ladies (and white ladies) just wanted to play dress-up for a night and pretend they were members of a royal court, but instead got a royal scam.

I know you will be as shocked as I am that the people who put this on — an LLC called Uncle N Me — is nowhere to be found. I’d say check the Tower of London, but I know we’re in an alternate reality here.

Anything else? Oh, I have some angry JD Vance stuff, but at this point, let’s not spoil the weekend. March into it like you’re Queen Charlotte! We’ll talk after it’s over.

The Department of Justice made public this week a letter written by Ryan Routh, the would-be Trump assassin. In it, he writes that he expects to fail, but that he hopes others will “finish the job” and offers $150,000 to whoever does. This incensed people across the political spectrum, but particularly on the right, and for once I agree. Although I imagine any sane person would understand that a man in federal custody, and likely to remain so for many years, is going to call backsies on the $150K promise, the sorts of people who might attempt it, aren’t. Sane, that is. It just seems there should be multiple ways to indicate probable cause to a judge without revealing that detail.

But I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll leave it to them. However, I am a writer, and I just want to pick a small peeve in these stories, i.e., the labeling of any statement by a person who’s committed an act of violence as a “manifesto.”

Granted, this is mostly done by dumbass news sources, like the New York Post or Rod Dreher, but it bugs me just the same. I suppose it started with the Unabomber, and whatever else you can say about Ted Kaczynski, he took his violence seriously. His manifesto was called “Industrial Society and Its Future,” and it ran 35,000 words. Publishing it got him arrested, but he had something to say, and said it. Supposedly he has a fan club now.

By contrast, the woman who shot up a school in Nashville, Audrey Hale, left behind a journal of sorts, marked with some coherent passages but also a great deal of angry scrawling. The Tennessee Star is the only publication that published selections from it. This photo, with the publication’s watermarks all over it, gives you an idea:

To their credit, they put “manifesto” in quotes in their reporting. I’ve said before that I don’t mind it (too much) when language changes, but every time I hear some racist ranting or anguished scrawling called the same thing that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels labored over, I cringe.

Ai-yi-yi, another bout of insomnia last night. I turned off the alarm and tried to stay in bed as late as possible, but I probably got four hours, total. Since I missed morning swim, I took a bike ride in the cool, cloudy conditions, something that usually makes me feel good, but I multitasked by listening to the “The Daily” podcast, and it just depressed me. It was about the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, and toward the end, the reporter pointed out, correctly, that we have faced extreme housing shortages in this country before, the period after World War II being the most obvious example. It was solved in part by enormous federal incentives to build middle-class housing, the obvious answer today, as well. But will this ever be accomplished? I doubt it.

Even assuming the best-case scenario, i.e., a Harris victory and a Democratic Senate, any effort to enact a large federal program to, you know, HELP PEOPLE would be attacked nonstop by the usual suspects, who will wail and throw sand in the gears and churn out memes and do whatever possible to stop the whole thing.

I also considered how we might leave our current house, maybe downsize to a condo in a different municipality and leave this three-bedroom Colonial to someone with children in the schools. We’d get a decent price for it, but then we’d have to buy in this overheated market, and our taxes would skyrocket. Why? Because Michigan adopted Proposal A 30 years ago, which pegged property taxes to the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is less. When you buy a house, its taxes “pop up” to whatever value the market placed on it by your purchase, but then they’re pegged. During the great recession, when our house lost nearly half its market value, the taxes adjusted downward, a small relief at a very scary time. Now they’re pegged again, and as a consequence, we’re paying far less than newer residents who bought after the recovery, for the same services. If we bought a new place, we’d almost certainly be paying more. So we stay put, empty nesters in a community that desperately needs school-age children, because our taxes-and-insurance nut in our paid-off house is about $500/month.

When Proposal A was passed, real estate wasn’t the volatile market it is today. The population was different. Everything was different. It’s probably time to revisit Proposal A (which had other moving parts about school funding). But the Michigan legislature now has term limits, the worst idea ever, and is now populated by people who whirl in and out of their seats, never stay long enough to develop true legislative skills and pass truly meaningful policy. And like Washington, the camps are divided and dug in. Things only get done when one party has complete control in Lansing. People wonder why the Democrats put the pedal to the floor when they got bicameral/executive control in 2022, for the first time in 40 years. That’s why.

OK, enough of that.

I was reading this Atlantic piece about legal sports gambling this morning, too. It concentrates on the personal price paid by legal gambling — the precarious households made even more so, mostly — but I wonder: We can’t be more than a hair’s breadth away from a Black Sox-style scandal in college or professional sports, can we? And when it happens, what will we do? Stick a stake in the heart of a multi-billion-dollar industry and drive gambling back into the shadows? Don’t be silly.

OK, then. In cheerier news, I have had a pork shoulder simmering in the crock pot since morning, and it’s almost time to shred it into tasty pulled-pork bits. Enjoy early autumn, wherever you are.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an ambitious man:

Here's how we can Make America Healthy Again. Please join me. #MAHA 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/NmGLw1rxcC

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 22, 2024

Over the weekend, he proposed making America healthy again by “getting the fluoride out of the water,” which tells you where this is coming from. He’s previously announced that he only drinks raw milk. And he’s against vaccines. So, bringing back widespread tooth decay, preventable childhood diseases and the constellation of illnesses that can be traced to unpasteurized milk. Make Dentures Commonplace Again!

And still, the race remains tight. Ai-yi-yi.

And then there’s Mark Robinson story. I haven’t waded through the comments on the last post, but again: Ai-yi-yi. The phrase “I’m a black Nazi” got thrown around a lot, mainly because it was the least offensive thing he posted. Not that I ever would quote David French, but for the sake of concision, a snippet:

Even before the primary, Robinson’s horrific character was on display. Among other things, he had called school shooting survivors who advocated gun control “media prosti-tots,” accused Michelle Obama of being a man, and trafficked in so many antisemitic tropes that his election as lieutenant governor in 2020 was an alarm bell for Jewish leaders in the state.

In other words, Republican voters knew he was a bad man when they chose him. Now they know he is a very bad man.

Actually, this isn’t a terrible column, if a bit obvious:

Both parties have always been vulnerable to nominating or electing the occasional crank, but Donald Trump’s ascendance meant that a crank led the party, and the best way to join with him is to imitate him. That’s how you get a Mark Robinson, or a Marjorie Taylor Greene, or a Lauren Boebert, or a Matt Gaetz. The list goes on. That’s how leaders change institutions. They make them into images of themselves.

In this case, Trump has done so explicitly. Almost all the worst figures in the Republican Party have ridden Trump endorsements to the top of their local pyramids. Robinson received Trump’s endorsement and swamped his primary opposition. Trump even called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

The lesson is simple: If you want more Mark Robinsons, vote for Donald Trump.

Ugh, this stupid, stupid country. Maybe we can still save ourselves.

At least it was a good weekend. Went to a film noir screening Friday, “Victims of Sin” and “Night Editor,” both unknown to me. Saturday, enjoyed — or endured — the last hot-and-miserable summer day, which happened to be the last day of summer. Today, work and a change in the weather. And so fall arrives. And the new week begins.

So J.D. Souther is dead. Or maybe he styled it JD, no periods, like you-know-who the hillbilly racist. Still, a moment of silence from me.

:::a moment passes:::

:::blasts this song:::

You probably don’t know him, but I think of him as providing many entries on the playlist from a particular time in my life. He was a songwriter, and wrote a lot for the Eagles, among many others. To me, though, it all comes down to “The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band,” one album that came out in 1973 and I discovered a couple years later. It still evokes that time in Athens, when my world was school, beer in student bars, health-food restaurants, the rural roads around the county, and all that. Later on, Souther would appear on “thirtysomething” as John Dunaway, a crunchy-granola social-justice type who tempts Hope with infidelity, but she resists. When is “thirtysomething” coming to streaming, anyway? I need to reacquaint myself with these people.

Anyway, a toast to JD. Lately, all the sexy men I remember from my youth are revealed as very old men. And I know what that means.

Speaking of the decrepitude of age, let’s hurry up with this new technology, so I don’t have to get a knee replacement:

(W)hy replace a knee if just the cartilage can be repaired instead? That line of thinking has led to new techniques flipping the script on how to mend troublesome knees.

“We’re not going to stop arthritis,” says Cassandra Lee, chief of the division of sports medicine at UC Davis Medical Center, as well as the orthopedic surgeon who operated on McHatton. “But can we push that knee replacement way down the road? That is, I think, the ultimate goal.”

…Wiley and colleague Ken Gall, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke, are instead trying to re-create cartilage in the lab. Over the last several years they’ve developed a hydrogel composed of polyvinyl alcohol, a polymer often used in contact lenses, and cellulose fibers. Tests in a compression machine, Wiley says, demonstrated that the product could support 1,100 pounds of force, simulating five years of use. The hydrogel, which is pressed into the end of the femur bone, is being used in a Phase 1 human trial in Latin America. Wiley and Gall hope to get the green light to begin human trials in the United States sometime next year.

You should not be one little, teensy-weensy, speck of surprised to hear that the guy who killed himself and others in the OceanGate submersible disaster was a prickly egomaniac:

In 2016, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush steered paying customers in the Cyclops I, a Titan predecessor, to the wreckage of the Andrea Doria, a ship that sank in 1956 off Massachusetts, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said during a hearing about the Titan’s implosion.

Yep, ol’ Tock Rush nearly got the thing stuck on the bottom, checking out the wreck of the Andrea Doria, and only turned the controls over to another with petulance. Which he had a lot of:

Lochridge elaborated on Tuesday, testifying about a culture in which his safety concerns were shrugged off to feed Rush’s ego — by accomplishing feats no other reputable deep-sea exploration company had tried because they were dangerous.

You don’t say.

In other news at this hour, happy interest rate cut. And happy birthday to Dexter, before the day slips away.

We’re having a stretch of glorious weather, at least if you’re not a farmer. Those people are never happy with any weather, and ours, lately, has been dry. I don’t think it’s rained since before Labor Day, and the next chance of it — and only a chance — is a week from Tuesday. The skies have been clear and sunny, temperatures topping out around 80 in late afternoon.

Essentially, I’m living in Los Angeles without the traffic. At least for a while.

The weather helps moderate the natural impulse to bang one’s head on the wall. I suppose many of us saw Pete Buttigieg’s comments on the chat shows Sunday, making the very sharp observation that all this talk about dogs and cats and so forth is just dust thrown up to get us to stop talking about Project 2025, et al. I think he’s right. So I’m going to enjoy the weather, ignore the dust in the air, and keep sending a few bucks, here and there, to Democrats.

As for the “assassination attempt” yesterday, well. More will be revealed. But until then, we obviously need to build a wall around golf courses, allow access only through solid-steel gates, and arm caddies.

I keep thinking about November 7, 2020. I’ve written in detail about it before, but the day remains in my brain as the goal for 2024. Vote, win the election, then go play miniature golf on a warm day.

Let’s see if it holds out.

It was a good weekend, in the sense that I got a bunch of stuff crossed off my to-do list for this week, which means I can fritter a little time away here and there as it unwinds. I’ve resolved to try my hand at darning a couple of tiny moth holes in a good cashmere sweater I don’t want to retire just yet. No, never darned before, but that’s why God gave us YouTube. We’ll see how that goes.

Bloggage? Oh, let’s see:

Roy is very smart on the subtext of GOP messaging of late:

What you have to understand is that, while both misogyny and racism are important parts of MAGA, the policy itself is never as important as the hatred and disgust they can engender with them.

That’s why, on abortion, Trump can fudge and lie to his heart’s content. As I’ve explained, he’s worked it so that his fans understand he’s lying and wink at it — they know they’ve already gotten the result they wanted from the Trump Supreme Court, and that their desired further disempowerment and servitude of women relies more on getting the normies to help elect him than on politically dangerous shows of support for the fait accompli.

But his misogynist yap about E. Jean Carroll, Kamala Harris, et alia — and creepy fantasies about women aborting babies after birth — those are non-negotiable. MAGA must have those. Because they demonstrate something more important than policy, or even short-term electoral gain.

An entertaining read on the funeral home used by the rich and famous, in the NYT (gift link). I sent it to a friend here, also a funeral director. Of course he knew it well. A direct cremation there costs around $15K. I guess that’s to be expected. They embalmed Jackie Onassis in her own apartment, which just proves you can get anything delivered in New York.

And now, to work.

I have a friend — a wonderful person in so many ways — who gets upset by the news, so she ignores it. News always gets in over the transom one way or another, so she’s aware of who’s running for major offices in the state and country, etc., but she has some amazing gaps in her knowledge. Not long ago she expressed bafflement that there’s another bridge across the Detroit River under construction. Never mind that the debate over building it lasted years, the construction is visible from nearby freeways, from the riverwalk, and the bridge itself is nearing completion. This was in June:

How do you miss something like that, even if you don’t drive downriver all that often? I’m envious.

And yet, we all have our blind spots. Ask me who played in the last Super Bowl. I couldn’t tell y– Wait, yes I can. Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team vs. San Francisco, and Taylor’s BF’s team won. But the year before? It was…same teams. Everybody in Detroit was carping that NO ONE WANTS A REMATCH OF THOSE TEAMS, right? (See above: Some news comes in over the transom.) But the year before that? Forget about it.

All of which is to say, I feel like I’ve been marinating in far-right content for a while now. I’m not on Rumble and Telegram, but I do have a Truth Social account (BOR-ing), or did. So much of it is in the mainstream now, though. The Overton window has moved so far in that direction it’s around the corner of the house. So I read this story in the WashPost today, about how Trump is suggesting his assassination attempt maybe isn’t what it seems — i.e. stereotypical Troubled Young Loner seeks spotlight through violence — and nodded in recognition. Absolutely nothing surprising here:

On the first night after Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., some supporters and allies, including campaign staff, immediately began blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats before any information was available about the shooter or his possible motive. Trump himself didn’t go there. In his first public statements after the July 13 shooting, Trump thanked law enforcement, offered condolences to the rallygoers killed and wounded, and called for unity.

But his tone changed in recent weeks, as the Republican presidential nominee began promoting conspiracy theories such as those that label the assassination attempt an “inside job” by government agencies or make up Democratic ties to lawyers representing the shooter’s parents. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), frequently portray the attempt as part of efforts by political opponents to prevent the former president from returning to power.

Melania’s recent contract negotiation must have called for something similar, because the ho’ wife* is carrying his water, too:

https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZND pic.twitter.com/KKA6anTEYC

— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 10, 2024

* obligatory disclaimer: Sex work is work. Also, hel-LO filters.

Any assassination is going to stir up conspiracies, and I’ll admit this one is weird in many ways, but one of the weirdest is how no medical team answered questions about the extent of Trump’s injuries. There was some blood, the panty-liner bandage at the convention, and now his ear shows zero sign of having been grazed by a bullet. And Trump continues to say he was “took a bullet the head” for freedom, or whatever.

I’d never say it didn’t happen, as some on the left do. But if we’re talking about people who we haven’t heard anything about in the days since? I’d include the guy who really did take a bullet to the head, for the crime of being a Front-Row Joe, or whatever you call the people who sit up front at Trump rallies. You know, ol’ what’s-his-name. :::Googling::: Corey Comperatore. Hilarious guy who posted videos about his desire to run over cyclists.

The week, it is ending. And next week will be better, unless it’s worse.

P.S. The new bridge will have a pedestrian/cycling lane, and won’t that be fun.

How does anybody keep up with the news these days? Just yesterday I was thinking I’m an empty cup, and then I opened my laptop and WHAM MAGA idiots say Haitians are eating cats and WHAM tropical storm Francine is bearing down on the WHAM debate stage set for WHAM that “Sound of Freedom” guy, who is being sued by a bunch of women for — quelle surprise — being a sexually aggressive creep.

Closed my laptop. Let the room grow quiet again. Took Wendy to the vet (enflamed gums). Picked up a novel (“Demon Copperhead”). Sometimes you have to unplug. Just for a little while.

It’s a shame that the so-called mainstream media have fired or bought out all their columnists (or hired terrible ones), because damn, there are people writing more or less for free who have a lot of smart things to say. This piece on the “sanewashing” of Trump is really good.

If it feels like half the electorate has gone mad, that’s in part because the press continues to fail to present Trump as he truly is. The average voter probably doesn’t spend much time watching clips of Trump’s rants or reading his unhinged screeds on social media. But they might consume reporting that consistently “sanewashes” his derangement.

The sketch comedy series Key and Peele had a bit where the calm, no-drama Barack Obama (Jordan Peele) would have his true thoughts conveyed through a boisterous, profane Anger Translator (Keegan-Michael Key). The press has functioned as Trump’s Sanity Translator, to far less amusing effect: They filter through his nonsensical, offensive gibberish and offer readers a sanitized version that’s more PR spin than actual journalism.

MAGA cultists might consider Trump the second coming, but many swing voters hold a more reasonable, if still inaccurate view: Yes, Trump’s a jerk, but he knows how to fix the economy. The reality is that Trump’s both a bigoted creep and a total buffoon who can barely string a coherent sentence together on policy.

The centerpiece is the word salad served at the New York Economic Club last week, after someone asked him what plans he had, if any, to make child care more affordable. The answer:

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.

But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t — you know, it’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.

Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have — I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country — because I have to say with child care, I want to stay with childcare, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.

But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.

We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about: Make America great again. We have to do it, because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question.

How do people — sane people, members of the fucking NYEC, sit and listen to this and not erupt in jeering afterward. Or just say, “I don’t understand. Please explain again.” The question-asker went on CNN later to complain. She should have complained to his orange face. But as the piece linked above points out, MSM reporters didn’t do much, or any, better. They reported this answer, maybe with an adjective like “jumbled,” as though it played by the rules. And as much as I admire those few soldiers left trying to fight this war, we need new rules of engagement. Because the old ones don’t make sense anymore.

I reckon we’ll have a lively pre-, during- and post-debate commentary here, so let it begin.

Because Twitter has lost virtually all of its legit advertisers — new releases from major studios/publishers, large corporations, etc. — it’s getting interesting. “Interesting” in the sense that if you’re into cheap Chinese gadgetry, hoo-boy. But also certain self-published, or practically self-published, books. You know me; I can resist neither bad writing, nor procrastination. And that’s how I ended up here:

To this writer’s credit, however, at least he’s finished something. Can’t say that here. I look forward to duplicating this exercise when “Melania” drops…whenever. Just looked it up: October 8. Imagine that. I guess we’ll see what that old ho’ has in store.

Speaking of propaganda, I’ve been alternately appalled and amused by the Tenet Media story (gift link). That is, the Russia-buys-U.S.-influencers story. Will Sommer, the WashPost reporter who covers such things, was chuckling through his briefing on “On the Media” the other day. It’s hard to believe anyone could be this stupid, but what do I know:

Most of the six members of Tenet’s “talent” team claim they did not know the money was coming from Russia. (Canadian activist Lauren Southern has not issued a statement as of this writing.) The indictment alleges that Tenet’s founders and Russian backers misled at least two of them, (Tim) Pool and (Dave) Rubin, about the source of Tenet’s funding by inventing a fictitious Belgian investor named Eduard Grigoriann.

Ah yes, an Armenian Belgian with an extra N on the end. I wonder if this real Eduard Grigoryan is getting any mileage out of this. I also wonder if Pool, Rubin and the other dullards on the team saved any of the money Tenet was paying them, as they were standing smack in the middle of a virtual firehose of cash. Because I doubt misfortune will smile on them in that way again.

Finally, the work peak is leveling out. I hope I have more time for you guys. I will. If I wanted to work this hard, I wouldn’t have retired.

More later this week.