Althouse

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• "Sometime in November of 1985, a black bear living in the Chattahoochee National Forest in north Georgia stumbled upon a duffel bag containing about 75 pounds of 95 percent pure cocaine."
• "Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was acquitted Wednesday in a trial stemming from her arrest while covering the George Floyd protests in May 2020."
• "The Biden administration weighed putting the president’s name on stimulus checks to make sure he got credit for helping the millions of Americans who will receive aid — but rejected the idea in recent days."
• "Between the years 1979, when it opened in theaters, and 1984, I saw 'Manhattan' 11 times, after which I stopped keeping count."
• Somebody needs to be famous again.
• "Major, who is 3 years old, is the younger of the two Biden dogs, and has been known to display agitated behavior on multiple occasions, including jumping, barking, and 'charging' at staff and security..."
• "'I went to human resources, and I said, "I just really - I need help,"' says Meghan, adding that her request was denied since she is not a 'paid employee of the institution.'"
• "I like to say that when you see stuff like that you should give me credit for doing it intentionally, so I need to disclaim credit in this case."
• And the ones that you don't confirm — is that because they are not true?

"Sometime in November of 1985, a black bear living in the Chattahoochee National Forest in north Georgia stumbled upon a duffel bag containing about 75 pounds of 95 percent pure cocaine." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 02:33 PM PST "The bear, which only weighed about 175 pounds itself, ate some of the cocaine and died within about 20 minutes.... The chief medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab later estimated the bear had absorbed about 3 or 4 grams of cocaine into its bloodstream at the time of its death. After about a week, a local hunter, never identified, found the bear and told his friends about it, but didn't report it to the authorities.... On the morning of Sept. 11, 1985, Fred M. Myers of Knoxville, Tennessee, found a dead man in his driveway, sprawled out on his back over an unopened parachute, seemingly fine except for a trickle of dried blood from each nostril. Myers later remembered hearing a crash around midnight the night before. The dead man was wearing a bulletproof vest and night vision goggles and carried two different pistols, ammunition, a stiletto, freeze-dried food, six Krugerrands, $4,500 cash, IDs in multiple names, a membership card to the Miami Jockey Club, and several inspirational epigrams, one of which read, 'There is only one tactical principle not subject to change: It is to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.' He also had a duffel bag with about 75 pounds of cocaine, all of which was recovered...." From "They're Making a Movie About the Cocaine Bear! Wait, What?/Here is the true story of the cocaine bear" (Slate).

"Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was acquitted Wednesday in a trial stemming from her arrest while covering the George Floyd protests in May 2020." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 02:26 PM PST "Sahouri was charged with failure to disperse and interference with official acts, both simple misdemeanors. Police claimed she remained in the area of the May 31 Des Moines protest despite orders to leave, and tried to pull away when a Des Moines police officer pepper-sprayed her and tried to arrest her.... The three day trial did not broadly discuss the First Amendment issues but Sahouri, a colleague who was with her and Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter all testified that Sahouri's presence in the protest area was the very core of what journalists do.... Before the trial, prosecutors had offered to drop the interference charge if Sahouri pleaded guilty to failure to disperse. She said it was important instead to take the case to trial and win a full acquittal." The Des Moines Register reports.

"The Biden administration weighed putting the president’s name on stimulus checks to make sure he got credit for helping the millions of Americans who will receive aid — but rejected the idea in recent days." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 02:22 PM PST "The White House is planning for President Biden to hit the road to promote the $1.9 trillion plan, but officials have not settled on where he should go. And there is currently no major advertising campaign focused on the proposal. As Democrats celebrate what they see as one of the most significant domestic policy achievements in modern history, the White House has yet to fully develop a strategy for the next crucial step: selling it to the American public." From "Biden wants to sell the stimulus. The White House is still figuring out how" (WaPo). What's going on? The phrase that comes to my mind is: The President Who Wasn't There.

"Between the years 1979, when it opened in theaters, and 1984, I saw 'Manhattan' 11 times, after which I stopped keeping count." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 08:13 AM PST "The early 1980s marked both the period of my adolescent hunger for an urbane, grown-up life in New York and the dawn of VHS, enabling the obsessive consumption of movies, which in my case meant the obsessive consumption of movies by Woody Allen. In them, I found a vision of the future I wanted, a series of aspirations — to have opinions, to write, to go to book parties but also to make fun of people who approached those things too seriously. The hope was to inhabit the world the way Woody Allen did, as both conspirator and judge.... For all of its visual beauty and brilliant writing, the movie is a shell game in the end. Look over there, the director is telling us — it's pretension and quaaludes and bad sitcoms that are really the problem. Feminists themselves were in on the game. One scene is set at fund-raiser for the Equal Rights Amendment in which the politician and women's rights leader, Bella Abzug, makes a cameo. Reduced to its elements, 'Manhattan' is a movie about a guy who beds a sweet 17-year-old girl, breaks her heart when he leaves her for someone else and only comes crawling back when he gets dumped. It is not simply that so many of us were so besotted with the film for so long; it's that we were perfectly content to look and see virtue." Writes Ginia Bellafante in "Why My Teenage Self Gave Woody Allen a Pass/The urbane paradise of 'Manhattan' looks a lot different through the lens of the new HBO documentary 'Allen v. Farrow'" (NYT). Yes, Woody Allen did create the image of a sophisticated world that a very young woman — like Bellafante, who was 14 when "Manhattan" came out — might want to grow up and inhabit. Movies have always provided dream material for the young. The Woody Allen dream that charmed Bellafante was one where smart people cared about writing, said clever things to each other, and thought they were superior to the people who made up the bulk of America. You know, the deplorables.  The problem Bellafante sees now is that Woody Allen was sexually attracted to young women, like the 17-year-old in the movie. Bellafante says "17-year-old girl," but 17 is and was the age of consent in New York. I guess if only the characters in the movie were more plausibly proximate in age, it would have been just fine to shape your life around high-level literary taste and look down at everyone who's not up there with you.

Somebody needs to be famous again. Posted: 10 Mar 2021 07:23 AM PST I'm reading "Activist Milo Yiannopoulos is now 'Ex-Gay,' consecrating his life to St. Joseph/'Secular attempts at recovery from sin are either temporary or completely ineffective. Salvation can only be achieved through devotion to Christ and the works of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church'" (LifeSite).  Milo: When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn't entirely joking. Of course, I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles. That's not to say I didn't throw myself enthusiastically into degeneracy of all kinds in my private life. I suppose I felt that's all I deserved. I'd love to say it was all an act, and I've been straight this whole time, but even I don't have that kind of commitment to performance art. Talk about method acting.… [T]he more love and the less lust in us, the more we cease to obscure Christ and instead reveal Him, in whose image we are made. I don't mean to suggest it's been easy, just simple: Our Lord endured worse than any of us and promised us that we have to take up a heavy cross each day.... Secular attempts at recovery from sin are either temporary or completely ineffective. Salvation can only be achieved through devotion to Christ and the works of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. St. Joseph is the spiritual father figure of the Holy Family. In this time of gender madness, devoting myself to the male protector of the infant Jesus is an act of faith in God's Holy Patriarch, and a rejection of the Terror of transsexuals. Trannies are demonic: They are the Galli, the castrated priests of Cybele, the Magna mater, whom Augustine saw dancing in the streets of Carthage dressed like women....  Over the next decade, I would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls "conversion therapy." It does work, albeit not for everybody.... I'll let you vote on this one: What do you think of the return of Milo? Pick what's closest to your opinion. He was always awful, and he's figured out a new way to get attention. He used to be good, but this is awful — lying + bogus religion. A mediocrity serves up new bullshit/A confused man is confused. Good or bad, if the religion is at all sincere, we should pray that he finds a way. He's always been sharp and witty, and I like his new targets and themes.   pollcode.com free polls

"Major, who is 3 years old, is the younger of the two Biden dogs, and has been known to display agitated behavior on multiple occasions, including jumping, barking, and 'charging' at staff and security..." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 07:03 AM PST "... according to the people CNN spoke with about the dog's demeanor at the White House." From "Biden's German Shepherd has aggressive incident and is sent back to Delaware" (CNN). We talked about this yesterday, with the same link, but this is newly updated, published just a few minutes ago. What I've quoted was not part of the article yesterday.  Also new: Psaki at Tuesday's press briefing said the trip to Delaware by the family dogs was "previously planned already," and that they were being cared for there by "family friends." Psaki did not say when exactly the dogs might return to the White House, only that it will be "soon." The first lady departed Monday afternoon for a two-day trip to Washington and California to visit military bases and is expected to return to the White House on Wednesday.  First, I don't believe Psaki. Second, notice that last sentence and what it indicates that is not said directly: The dog is Jill's. But they certainly dearly want us to believe that Biden is a man with dogs.  Remember when Barbra Streisand criticized Trump for not having a dog: "How does the president not have a dog? He's the first president in 120 years that doesn't have a dog in the White House."   Trump's reaction was that it would be phony for him to be walking around the White House with a dog.  The explanation came amid an extended riff about the superior abilities of German shepherds to sniff out drugs being smuggled across the border. "You do love your dogs, don't you?" Trump said, as the crowd whistled and cheered. "I wouldn't mind having one, honestly, but I don't have any time. How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?"  "I don't know, I don't feel good," he said. "Feels a little phony to me." A lot of people had told him to get a dog because it would look good politically, he added, but he hadn't felt the need because "that's not the relationship I have with my people."  But it is, apparently, the relationship Biden has with the people — whoever they are — who are his. The dog, however, didn't get the memo.

"'I went to human resources, and I said, "I just really - I need help,"' says Meghan, adding that her request was denied since she is not a 'paid employee of the institution.'" Posted: 10 Mar 2021 05:56 AM PST "'There's no HR department for working royals because it's a family affair,' says BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond. But there is an HR manager for lower level royal staff and the household, as set out on the Buckingham Palace website. Just not for senior household or staff. Buckingham Palace says the HR department recently launched an investigation into Meghan over claims, which she denies, that she bullied several staff members into quitting. It has not responded to the allegation that the same department refused to help her." From "Meghan and Harry: Questions the US had about Oprah interview" (BBC).

"I like to say that when you see stuff like that you should give me credit for doing it intentionally, so I need to disclaim credit in this case." Posted: 10 Mar 2021 05:45 AM PST "If I'd thought of it myself or even noticed it after I did it, I would have rewritten it to avert microaggression. But I'm not so fussy and fearful that I'll change it now, and I'm not such a creature of The Era of That's Not Funny that I feel that I need to strike the 'LOL.'"  That's something I wrote in the comments to the previous post after an "LOL" directed at Jack Klompus. Klompus, reacting to my post, had written:  The "Ah! So..." triggered me into doing an impromptu Charlie Chan impersonation. Very problematic.  I had to look back at the post, which is about a WaPo article, "The Biden administration confirms some but not all of Trump's Wuhan lab claims." Had I written "Ah! So..."? Yes, I'd quoted something from the article, then exclaimed: "Ah! So it's not that you've determined that any of these claims are false." The "Ah!" was independent of the "So," but the "So" directly followed, and I have inadvertently caused the "ah"/"so" combination to come into being in a post about the Chinese.  I'm sure some of you who comment here think there's nothing even wrong with saying "Ah, so!" intentionally, even with a Charlie Chan-style intonation, but I've got to find my own balance of correctness/incorrectness. In this case, I would never purposely exclaim "Ah, so!" while talking about the Chinese or even while talking about anyone else. It's just pointlessly disrespectful. And I do mean to imply that sometimes disrespect is justified and warranted. But casual disrespect — disrespect as a go-to demeanor — is lazy, dumb, destructive, and degrading.  *** For a serious, critically acclaimed examination of the Charlie Chan character, read "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History" by Yunte Huang. I'd read it, but I've never watched any Charlie Chan movies, so I have no context — other than the context of hearing various Americans imitate Charlie Chan, usually by saying "Ah so" (and just meaning something like "Yes, I understand").

And the ones that you don't confirm — is that because they are not true? Posted: 10 Mar 2021 03:59 AM PST I'm trying to untangle the partisanship that I have to presume infects this headline: "The Biden administration confirms some but not all of Trump's Wuhan lab claims" (WaPo).  Text:  In its final days, President Donald Trump's State Department made a series of highly controversial claims about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, and its possible connection to the covid-19 outbreak. Now, the Biden administration has reviewed those claims, and is confirming some of the facts within them — but not, a senior State Department official has told me, the Trump team's theory of how the pandemic broke out. These facts suggest that more investigation is needed into the lab's possible connection to the outbreak.  Ah! So it's not that you've determined that any of these claims are false. They're all either true or — you say — in need of further investigation.  The article ends with 2 paragraphs — a quote from an unnamed senior State Department official preceded by the assertion that credits the Biden administration with an effort to be politically neutral (though, I'd add, the effort to seem neutral is itself political): The origin of the pandemic is not just about blame. If the source of the outbreak can't be determined, its true path can't be traced and crucial scientific information for preventing the next outbreak can't be learned. The Biden administration is trying to take a neutral stance on the issue, even though the fact-finding process has become entangled in domestic politics, as well as U.S.-China relations. "We certainly care a great deal about the origin of this virus, not only for reasons of accountability, but also for public health implications going forward," the official said. "If we are going to prevent future outbreaks, epidemics or, God forbid, pandemics, we need to know how the last one started. . . . Whichever theory the facts bear out, that's where we'll go."

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