Mostly dog pictures (and other stuff)
Plus: What I'm watching to stay sane
Porn stars, presidents, puppies, and actual brainworms. What a time to be alive, eh?
But since it’s Mother’s Day, we’re mostly about dog pictures today. And a brief thank you to Kristi Noem. Seriously. And some thoughts on cats, Nikki Haley, Aileen Cannon, and a brief list of what I’ve been watching to stay sane. (More or less.)
The obligatory dog pictures…
Saturday in the orchard.
Flashback: Treat time.
Eli. King of the couch.
Another flashback. Moses and Auggie wanted to know when we were coming out.
**
Thank you, Kristi… sort of.
In the end, Kristi Noem seems to have recognized that her post-puppy murder media rehabilitation tour was beyond shambolic. Even so, she merits a dollop of gratitude: For a brief moment, she reminded us what political gravity looks like.
After a decade of mocking POWS and the disabled, shooting and/or raping someone on Fifth Avenue, fraud, theft, deceit, hush money for porn stars, inciting an insurrection, and various and sundry other forms of piggery — it was refreshing to see that there are, in fact, still some consequences for deplorable behavior. At least for someone not named Trump.
Noem thought that bragging about killing a puppy in a gravel pit would show Trump that she had the right stuff — that she was willing to anything “difficult, messy and ugly.” But it turns out that even in our vertiginous times, there is a limit, after all. Sort of.
The repulsion to her puppy killing was bipartisan and visceral. When she was caught lying about meeting Kim Jong Un, even the most diligent turd-polishers (with the notable exception of the Federalist) found the South Dakota governor too feculent to defend.
At least in this one case, up is still up. Down is still down. There is a bottom and Kristi Noem found it for us. Except, of course, for Donald Trump, himself.
So, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Trump supporters were only seven points more likely to say… [killing the puppy] was unacceptable than they were to say it was acceptable, the smallest split of any group. A third of Trump supporters said it [her puppy killing] was acceptable.”
Aileen’s latest gift to DJT
Via Lawfare’s incomparable Roger Parloff. (I’ve unrolled his Xitter thread.)
As Trump’s classified docs prosecution goes forward, now with no pretense of trial before the election, Judge Cannon appears poised to permit him to use public hearings in the case to sound his campaign themes. ...
At first, before Trump sewed up the nomination, he wanted four days of hearings on these themes between July 1 and July 8—the run-up to the July 15 Republican convention. ...
Now those hearings, whose dates Cannon hasn’t reset yet, will come closer to the election, which should be even better for Trump. He may also have more spaghetti to throw at the wall then, because it appears that Cannon plans to give him more, & unprecedented, discovery. That’s the import of the extraordinary 3-day hearing she’s set in June on Trump’s motion to redefine the “prosecution team” to include members of Biden White House, NARA, intelligence community, DOD, etc. ...
You can read the whole thread here.
What I’m watching to stay (relatively) sane
The other day I gave you a list of some of the books I’ve been reading… Today I thought I’d share a short and highly selective list of some of the better stuff I’ve been watching. (I thought I’d out edit out the dreck and the mehs.)
A few outstanding TV recommendations you might have missed:
“Mr. Bates vs The Post Office”
On PBS. This may not be on your radar screen, but it is a fantastic story of how the little guys took on the powerful and the corrupt. Based on a true story.
“Blue Lights”
On Britbox. Best police drama I’ve seen this year.
“The White Queen”
Amazon. Honestly cannot believe I missed this the first time around. Rebbeca Ferguson in a brilliantly conceived 2013 mini-series based on the juicier aspects of the War of the Roses.
“3 Body Problem”
Netflix. Mind-bending sci-fi.
“Constellation”
Apple TV. Even more mind-bending sci-fi. (Watching, but reserving judgment on “Dark Matter.”)
“Bad Sisters”
Also Apple TV. Funny, dark, smart. My favorite series of the year, so far.
“The Gentlemen”
Netflix. Guy Ritchie does not disappoint.
**
Movies
“American Fiction.”
On Amazon. Smartest satire I’ve seen in years.
“Dune 2”
In theater. Amazon. It’s great. But you knew that.
“Easy A”
Apple TV. Kind of a throwback…. 2010 Emma Stone teen comedy, very very loosely inspired by Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”
Nota Bene
Given the latest developments in Florida and Georgia, it seems like a good time to revisit something I wrote for the Wapo a few weeks back: “Donald Trump, luckiest politician who ever lived.”
A federal judge has declared him liable for rape. He faces paying a half-billion dollars in legal judgments for fraud and defamation. Twice impeached, then defeated for reelection, he has been charged with 91 felonies. He has been arrested and his mug shot published; he will spend much of the year in and out of courtrooms. On the campaign trail, his rambling speeches are gaffe-ridden and prone to malapropisms and meltdowns.
In a normal universe, this would not be the description of a fortunate man.
But we do not live that universe, and we must consider the very real — and infuriating — possibility that Donald J. Trump is the single luckiest politician who ever lived.
For almost a decade (though it feels even longer), we’ve watched him trip through minefields, totter on the edge of sinkholes and step on trapdoors, each time thinking: This is it. Now he’s going down. It has become a mantra of dashed hopes: The walls are (once again) closing in on Donald Trump. He’s on the brink, desperate. This time, surely this time. And yet, somehow, he escapes.
**
And now a word about cats, from our friend Tom Nichols, who said goodbye to Carla in his Friday Atlantic Daily newsletter:
We haven’t yet gotten used to a house without Carla in it. Like many who’ve lost a pet, we both still think we see her out of the corner of our eye. I still automatically look into my daughter’s room to see if she’s there. We still expect her at dinner, and Lynn still waits for her to come and say: Time for bed, let’s go. Eventually, we’ll welcome new animals into our home, and I’m sure we will love them. But Carla was a little friend unlike any I’d ever had—and I doubt I will ever owe another cat the debt that I owe her.
**
It is axiomatic in politics that you cannot be all things to all people and that when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. By trying to split the baby, you end up with the worst of both worlds: Nobody is happy.
Biden seems unfamiliar with these laws of politics. He hasn’t traded normies for young radicals, he has simply chosen to offend both groups.
But it’s actually worse than that. Heading into what could be a very close election, Biden has also limited his appeal to Never Trump conservatives, who constitute a non-trivial percent of the Republican primary vote.
Biden’s Rafah comments drew an immediate rebuke from the likes of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who said it sent “a terrible message,” and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who called it “wrong and dangerous.”…
As The Atlantic’s David Frum noted, “Biden will seek re-election in November on a foreign policy record that includes the fiasco of the Afghanistan exit, inconclusive wars in Europe and Middle East, no new trade agreements. He needed one clear success. Israel’s war could have been it. But no. Too simple.”
Nope. As in nopety nope nope.
Is it possible that DJT is more than lucky? I'm not saying intelligent -- as in, he's smarter than the rest of us, at least not in the conventional sense. I just can't get from here to there. But perhaps some darker forces are in play, things that the average person is not aware of or a party to. Consider for a moment that maybe, possibly, perhaps this is a real life Faust and Mephistopheles deal between DJT and the dark side, and we're all obliged to go along for the ride.
Do I actually believe that? No, that's ridiculous. Well, probably not, especially with no scientific evidence to back it up. Well, maybe not, since it seems so unlikely. Well, maybe if you believe in Heaven, can't this sort of Hell on Earth exist? Well, sure, why not, if you believe that ghosts can be real and that there are things that happen that we mere mortals cannot perceive or understand? Well ... (sighs in resignation) ... what do we have to do to get out of this downward spiral of evident fate?
A couple of Noem-related observations:
- Noem found, just as Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingstone did in 1998, that the divine immunity of god-kings doesn't extend to demigod-princes/princesses.
- There must not be a lot of dog owners among Trumpists for the split in Noem's behavior being not-acceptable/acceptable to be that narrow.
As for my viewing, a lot of Smithsonian Channel, the Military Channel era of American Heroes Channel, "Forged in Fire" and "Swamp People" to go along with watching the first-place Milwaukee Brewers.