Trendlist: Althouse

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Althouse

They're voting on guilty/not guilty. UPDATE: 57 to 43. Trump is acquitted.
"Yet, there was a glaring omission in the substance of the House arguments. The managers... only briefly touched on proving any 'state of mind' needed for such a conviction."
"A perpetual stew, also known as hunter's pot or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way..."
"Heading into the 2020 election, most of the U.S. media was uninterested in, if not outright hostile to, any reporting that might have helped President Trump’s re-election bid."
"While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction."
"Some owners even chose to be buried at the pet cemetery, since they could not be buried alongside their pets at human cemeteries..."
The NYT tells its readers about the woes of life in a "tiny home" during the lockdown...
"The defense lawyers contended that Democrats were pursuing Mr. Trump out of personal and partisan animosity, using the word 'hatred' 15 times during their formal presentation..."
"A few weeks into riding, [Michelle] Schaeffer, 34, posted a suggestion on the 395,000-member Peloton Facebook page."
The Trump lawyers' "Fight" montage is devastating and — if you're not bent on getting Trump convicted — hilarious.
Love story déjà vu.
At the Friday Night Cafe...

They're voting on guilty/not guilty. UPDATE: 57 to 43. Trump is acquitted.

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 12:51 PM PST

That happened fast!

"Yet, there was a glaring omission in the substance of the House arguments. The managers... only briefly touched on proving any 'state of mind' needed for such a conviction."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 12:28 PM PST

"That is why I have referred to their case as more emotive than probative. It lacked direct evidence to support the claim that Trump wanted to incite an actual insurrection or rebellion against the United States, as alleged in the article of impeachment. I do not believe that an acquittal was inevitable in this case, but it was all but assured by critical decisions made by the House in this impeachment. The unforced errors discussed below raise the question of whether the Democrats 'tanked' the trial.... The House is not alleging reckless or negligent conduct leading to a riot. It is alleging incitement to actually seek rebellion or overthrow of the country. The article specifically refers to section 3 of the 14th Amendment in its prohibition of anyone holding office if they 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against' the United States. Even moderate senators who condemned Trump for his speech would be highly unlikely to convict on such an article. The House made it easy on those seeking acquittal.... The House brief in the Senate further highlighted the lack of direct evidence on Trump's state of mind. It laid out an emotionally charged but legally incomplete case for the Senate. To convict, the House needs to show Trump was more than reckless. It crafted the article as inciting an actual rebellion or insurrection, not mere negligence."

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Did The Democrats "Tank" The Second Trump Trial?"

"A perpetual stew, also known as hunter's pot or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way..."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 11:40 AM PST

"... and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary. The concept is often a common element in descriptions of medieval inns. Foods prepared in a perpetual stew have been described as being flavorful due to the manner in which the ingredients blend together, in which the flavor may improve with age.... Wattana Panich restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, has continued to maintain the broth from the same perpetual stew for over 47 years.... William Gibson references a perpetual stew served on the Bridge in his novel Idoru.... Danny Devito, as the character Frank Reynolds, references a perpetual stew served to and from his Vietnamese sweatshop workers in the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

From the Wikipedia article "Perpetual stew," which I'm thinking about this morning... after the Senate voted to allow witnesses at the Trump trial and I think I overheard from the TV that I am not watching that the trial could go on for months. Months? Why not years? Why should it ever end? Keep it seething and quietly simmering forever! Why end it and only create the need to start anew with a third impeachment, a fourth impeachment, a fifth impeachment? Just keep this impeachment going, now and forever, one and inseparable...

I'm curious enough about the William Gibson reference that I bought the Kindle version so I could search for it. Alas! There's only one "soup" in the book and that's not it. No "stew," no "potage," no "chowder"... Yes, I can read the book, I know.... and, of course, that's a better use of my time than watching the pot.

UPDATE: "House managers drop call for witnesses after Trump lawyers agree to admit Herrera Beutler's claims" (NYT). Read that headline carefully. It doesn't mean that the lawyers admit HB's claims are true, just that they agree that her statement can be admitted as evidence. The statement is that Kevin McCarthy said that — while the riot was ongoing — Trump said over the telephone that the rioters were "more upset" about the election than McCarthy was.

"Heading into the 2020 election, most of the U.S. media was uninterested in, if not outright hostile to, any reporting that might have helped President Trump’s re-election bid."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 10:17 AM PST

"As a result, the Lincoln Project continued to enjoy media veneration even as the magnitude of its scam became increasingly obvious. But with Trump now safely vanquished, the Lincoln Project is dispensable, and the protective shield it enjoyed against any real journalistic scrutiny is — like its reputation and prospects for future profiteering — rapidly crumbling.... From the start, it was obvious that this disgraceful collapse was the inevitable end for this group. The very idea that this freakish hodgepodge of life-long D.C. Republican consultants were men of profound conscience defending the Republic was a complete and total joke. They are life-long grifters, responsible for some of the most grotesque and amoral attack ads in the modern era, with a very long and recent history of advocating the exact opposite values of what they claimed to represent once they opportunistically identified the optimal Trump-era profit model: namely, relentlessly fleece scared and gullible #Resistance liberals of their cash by posturing as brave and principled warriors against Trumpism. But their lucrative scheme could never have succeeded without the knowingly fraudulent cooperation of liberal networks such as MSNBC and CNN. Over and over, those Democratic Party spokespeople masquerading as TV journalists — knowing exactly who these bottom-feeding GOP operatives have always been — encouraged their misguided and trusting viewers to regard the Lincoln Project as a selfless and noble bulwark against Trumpism rather than the scamming, grifting, lowlife con it so obviously was from the start."

Writes Glenn Greenwald in "The Lincoln Project, Facing Multiple Scandals, is Accused by its Own Co-Founder of Likely Criminality/Liberals heralded this group of life-long scammers, sleaze merchants and con artists as noble men of conscience, enabling them to fleece and deceive the public" (Substack).

"While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 07:33 AM PST

"The Constitution makes perfectly clear that presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the president has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling 'January exception' argument raised by the House."

Wrote Mitch McConnell, quoted in "Hours before the verdict, McConnell tells Republicans he plans to vote to acquit Trump, calling it 'a close call'" (NYT).

To say "close call" is to hedge his political bet. To rely on the jurisdictional ground avoids the question on the merits. Who knows if he'd consider that a "close call" too?

The NYT seems to know, because it has this:

The leader had let it be known that he believed Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses and told advisers and colleagues he was open to conviction as the best way of purging Mr. Trump from the Republican Party. He even said publicly that Mr. Trump had "provoked the attack."

"Some owners even chose to be buried at the pet cemetery, since they could not be buried alongside their pets at human cemeteries..."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 06:43 AM PST

"'It was so important for some people that they stay together that they decided to be interred in a pet cemetery.'"

From "The Most Popular Pet Name of the Century (Maybe)/A survey of tombstones from the oldest continually operating pet cemetery in the U.S. reveals a passion for 'Princess'" (NYT).

The quote is from Allison C. Meier, "a writer and licensed New York City sightseeing guide who gives tours of the city's cemeteries."

Another quote from Meier: "The way that people refer to their pets changes. On a lot of old dog graves, they call them a gentleman — like, 'He's a great gentleman. He lived like a gentleman.'"

The original meaning of "gentleman" is "A man of gentle birth, or having the same heraldic status as those of gentle birth; properly, one who is entitled to bear arms, though not ranking among the nobility... but also applied to a person of distinction without precise definition of rank" (OED).

Later — and by later, I mean in the 16th century — it became "A man of superior position in society, or having the habits of life indicative of this; often, one whose means enable him to live in easy circumstances without engaging in trade, a man of money and leisure. In recent use often employed (esp. in 'this gentleman') as a more courteous synonym for 'man', without regard to the social rank of the person referred to." And apparently, without regard to the species of the being referred to.

Are you teaching your sons to be gentlemen (with or without the use of that word)? Are you teaching your dogs?

The NYT tells its readers about the woes of life in a "tiny home" during the lockdown...

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 07:20 AM PST

... in "The Drawbacks of Living in a Tiny Home During a Pandemic Lockdowns are harder when you're stuck in a small space and can't stockpile food or toilet paper."

And the 2 top-rated comments are:

I've got news for you: most NYC apartments don't have the storage for weeks of supplies, either.

And:

Hooray for Ms. Jacques' and her children and how they are managing in their tiny home. As a former apartment dweller in New York City, I thought I'd mention that many a New Yorker would kill to have that kind of 660-square foot space...and with a loft!

The article uses the term "tiny home" to refer to all sorts of abodes — a converted "cargo trailer," a tricked-out school bus, and a renovated detached 1-car garage — but never mentions apartments, the tiny homes New Yorker's have dealt with forever and without any sort of trend to create a structure of delusion around the challenge. For those who did let the "tiny home" delusion inflate their spirits pre-pandemic, the cramped space seems to hurt in some special (trendy?) way.

ADDED: Blogger no longer autocompletes tags, so I have to remember or guess what my tag is. Here, I guessed "tiny home." No. It's "tiny house." I have a personal stake in the "home"/"house" distinction — because of my last name — and I rankle at the sentimentality of referring to real estate as a "home." And now I really must quote Bob Dylan:

"What kind of house is this," he said
"Where I have come to roam?"
"It's not a house," said Judas Priest
"It's not a house . . . it's a home"

I say "really" because earlier this morning I had a post with something I termed a "requisite" Bob Dylan quote and in the end I deleted it. It was that post about "hatred," where I'd said, "Trump antagonists 'hate' him — don't they say that themselves? How much power does [the word] have anymore?" The seemingly required quote — which had to go because it broke up the flow — was:

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now

"The defense lawyers contended that Democrats were pursuing Mr. Trump out of personal and partisan animosity, using the word 'hatred' 15 times during their formal presentation..."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 05:38 AM PST

"... and they cast the trial as an effort to suppress a political opponent and his supporters. 'It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints,' [Trump's lawyer Bruce] Castor said. 'That's what this trial is really about. It is the only existential issue before us. It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate. Are we going to allow canceling and banning and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?'"

Write Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos in the NYT, in an article that begins, "Former President Donald J. Trump's legal team mounted a combative defense on Friday focused more on assailing Democrats for 'hypocrisy' and 'hatred' than justifying Mr. Trump's own monthslong effort to overturn a democratic election that culminated in last month's deadly assault on the Capitol."

"Hatred" is a strong word. We're told Trump's lawyers used it 15 times. I would like to understand the usage, but this NYT article doesn't give us even one of the 15 "hatred" quotes. Was it just a hot-headed substitute for partisanship? Trump antagonists "hate" him — don't they say that themselves? How much power does it have anymore?

And here, I found the transcript. Here are some of the hatreds:

[W]e would like to discuss the hatred, the vitriol, the political opportunism that has brought us here today. The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness and to rush an impeachment through the House, claiming ''urgency.''...

Why do we have to skip the necessary due diligence and due process of law and any—that any legal proceeding should have? It couldn't have been the urgency to get President Trump out of office. House Democrats held the Articles until he was no longer President, mooting their case. Hatred, animosity, division, political gain—and let's face it, for House Democrats, President Trump is the best enemy to attack....

And... hatred is at the heart of the House managers' frivolous attempt to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters based on double hearsay statements of fringe rightwing groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation.

Hatred is a dangerous thing. We all have to work to overcome it. Hatred should have no place in this Chamber, in these proceedings....

Politics... has interposed the element of hatred. And the political world changes when hatred becomes part of the dynamic....

"A few weeks into riding, [Michelle] Schaeffer, 34, posted a suggestion on the 395,000-member Peloton Facebook page."

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 03:55 AM PST

"Riders there frequently rave about the soaring emotions and meaning they get from the teachers' words combined with the physical intensity. Posts about crying during rides are common. Wouldn't Christian music — maybe gospel — be even better, Schaeffer wondered, even more intense? Responses were rapid. 'Just stop. Please don't turn Peloton into another political/grievance battle. Drop it,' wrote one. 'Perhaps you could find your Christian ... whatever ... at church?' wrote another...."

From "Peloton makes toning your glutes feel spiritual. But should Jesus be part of the experience?" (WaPo).

How does a modern-day meaning-making community work? And is there room for old-school religion? Americans in recent decades have been rapidly ditching religious services and looking for spiritual uplift, meaning and transcendent community through experiences like yoga and spin classes, political activism and cooking — more and more of it online....

Casper ter Kuile, a Harvard Divinity School... said Peloton is part a much bigger trend he calls "unbundling." Within that, people are now browsing in a variety of places for the things they once got all at a congregation: worship, scripture, life transitions and social justice among them. As a result, he said, American religious life is very unstable, very individualized. "When religion is infusing these secular spaces, it troubles the concept of religion, but also troubles the strict secularity we've come to expect."

Ter Kuile noted the irony of people — Peloton riders — challenging religious institutions while they are themselves part of an activity many see as cultlike. He says that's more about institutional religion's current branding problem. "They'd trust Peloton as a cult but not the Catholic Church as a religion," he said.

The Trump lawyers' "Fight" montage is devastating and — if you're not bent on getting Trump convicted — hilarious.

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 03:22 AM PST

Maybe this cheerful, rousing song with cheer up Trump haters:

Love story déjà vu.

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 03:10 AM PST

On February 11th, the NYT published "What Makes for a Great Literary Romance?/Passion, sacrifice, a twist: 125 years of book reviews offer the clue to Love Potion No. 9.," which I blogged here.

On February 12th, WaPo published "Stop dismissing love stories. They're exactly what we need to survive covid-19." I just saw that headline this morning, and remembering my recent blog post, including a memory that it was in the NYT, I worried that I'd misindentified a Washington Post article as a NYT article.

No. It's a different article. It's also evidence that editors are wracking their brain for stories during the lockdown. And notice the difference. The NYT has gone back into its archive, found a way to make an article collecting snippets of old articles and analyzing them. What are the elements of a love story? WaPo addresses the reader's inner life. It assumes we are struggling to survive in the lockdown and purports to prescribe the remedy. We all need the same thing. Exactly.

And we're all really snooty, too, apparently. We dismiss love stories. We think we're too lofty and intellectual for them. Hah! That's awfully presumptuous. And yet the tone is one of a confidential girlfriend, perhaps someone who, in nonlockdown times, would say I know what you need and force you to go out to a bar.

Oh, no. WaPo isn't copying the NYT. Nor is it scraping the bottom of the barrel of Covid-19 stories. It's doing something even more tedious: Valentine's Day has cycled around on the calendar again. Both newspapers are doing what they think they must do every year — pandemic or no pandemic — publish Valentine's Day articles.

The WaPo article combines Valentine's Day and coronavirus. It notes the "sheer coincidence" that some new movies "star couples who feel trapped or isolated in some way." (It's silly to write "star." Actors star in movies. They play characters. The characters don't star in the movies.)

We're told that all of these movies about trapped/isolated couples deliver the same message:

Honesty is crucial. Candor is hard, even — and maybe especially — when you're stuck in close proximity to someone for an extended period of time.... [P]roximity makes grievances harder to keep under wraps. But rather than treating forced togetherness as a death sentence for a relationship, these stories treat it as a catalyst for their characters to develop deeper understanding of each other and commit to stronger partnerships....

Does that make you want to watch a trapped-couples movie for Valentine's Day? We haven't watched a love-story movie in a long time, unless you count Season 4 of "The Crown" (the trapped couples being Prince Charles and Diana). We rarely watch actual movies, maybe only 2 in the last month or so. Which movies? "The Trial of the Chicago 7" and "Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski."