Althouse |
- "A building, hallowed..."/"this sacred place... We shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free."
- "This is my father. . . . This is dad."
- "'I don’t buy that,' Carlson said. 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t buy that.' The thing is: Carlson shouldn’t have bought it."
- Here's a place where you can write about whatever you want.
- "She wanted that hairstyle. She was so curious about why so many women have that hairstyle, especially on the Republican side of the ticket."
- "[W]intertime beach outings are a quintessential example of uitwaaien (OUT-vwy-ehn), a Dutch word that translates literally as 'out blowing' but is perhaps better understood as 'to walk in the wind.'"
| Posted: 07 Jan 2022 05:12 AM PST Here's the transcript of what Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden said at the big commemoration yesterday. I didn't watch, but I will read, so I'll pick out some highlights for you. First, Harris: Certain dates echo throughout history... dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory, December 7th, 1941, September 11th, 2001 and January 6th, 2021.... The event is known by its date. After all this long history of the world, you'd think every day of the year would already have this status. Personally, I don't like negative events parking on the calendar, darkening our lives on a yearly basis, but that's her point. This is going to be an annual event for the rest of your life. You know, January 6th is a beautiful religious holiday, Epiphany — Three Kings Day. But sorry, adorers of the baby Jesus, the politicos of America need your day for their sacred solemnities. What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders. What they sought to degrade and destroy was not only a building, hallowed as it is.... I am reminded of the Wisconsin protests, when the Wisconsin capitol was besieged and occupied. Did those protesters seek to degrade and destroy? I can tell you they chanted, over and over, "Who's house?/Our house!" The building belongs to the people. If the January 6th protesters had sought to degrade and destroy the building, they would have caused far more destruction. I think it was more of a "Who's house?/Our house!" situation. I'm not approving of what any of these protesters did. I like orderly protesters and deplore chaos. Just don't overreach. These are your fellow Americans, and they are only as bad as they are. Next, Joe Biden: [T]o state the obvious, one year ago today in this sacred place, democracy was attacked, simply attacked.... Reminiscent of George Bush's "Freedom itself was attacked...." Back to Biden: Our democracy held. We, the people, endured. We, the people, prevailed. For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed... The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. We shall know the truth. Well here is the God's truth about January 6th, 2021. Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see?... That's a very distracting Bible verse! It's not about being a good historian and getting an accurate picture of the facts in your head. Quite aside from whether the picture Biden proceeds to describe is exactly true, the truth that Jesus said will make us free had to do with believing in Jesus. Here's Biden's description of the violence, which I presume has been very carefully fact-checked: A mob breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol, American flags on poles being used as weapons as spears, fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them. Over 140 police officers were injured. We all heard the police officers who were there that day testify to what happened. One officer called it "a medieval battle," and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq. They repeatedly asked since that day, "How dare anyone, anyone, diminish, belittle or deny the hell they were put through?"... Were multiple fire extinguishers thrown? Thrown at the heads of police officers? I'm not going to research this, but it's so hard to believe that a misstatement of fact could be in that paragraph. This wasn't a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection. They weren't looking to uphold the will of the people, they were looking to deny the will of the people. They weren't looking uphold a free and fair election, they were looking to overturn one. They weren't looking to save the cause of America, they were looking to subvert the constitution.... He's characterizing the interior of the head of thousands of people. He can't really know, only purport to know, for rhetorical purposes. And I suspect that many of them really believed their cause was to vindicate the will of the people. In fact, that's what you'd need to say to blame Trump: He instilled the belief that Biden had not won the election. Of course, Biden does go on to make that accusation against Trump. How can that cohere? You'd have to say that these people were influenced and incited by Trump, but they still knew he was lying, and they chose to besiege the Capitol not because they believed Trump had actually won, but because they wanted him in power, even if he'd lost. Look, folks, now it's up to all of us, to we the people to stand for the rule of law. To preserve the flame of democracy. To keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk targeted by the forces that value brute strength over the sanctity of democracy. Fear over hope, personal gain over public good.... We are in a battle for the soul of America, a battle that by the grace of God, the goodness, and gracious and greatness to this nation, we will win.... I did not seek this fight, brought to this capital one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation and I will allow no one to place a dagger to the throat of democracy.... We're a nation of laws, of order, not chaos. Of peace, not violence. |
| "This is my father. . . . This is dad." Posted: 07 Jan 2022 04:01 AM PST Said Liz Cheney, quoted in "Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome … from Democrats" (WaPo). Lots of political theater yesterday. At least that was hilarious. |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2022 03:47 AM PST "This, after all, was hardly the first time Cruz labeled Jan. 6 a terrorist attack. He did so the very next day -- 'a despicable act of terrorism' — and in a Jan. 8 tweet. He did so in a local news interview published Jan. 8, as well. Even more than four months after the riot, while voting against the creation of a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, Cruz was still using that word. 'The January 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol was a dark moment in our nation's history,' Cruz's May 28 statement began. That is, indeed, a lot of slipping up to do — over a long time — for a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer.... This wasn't him slipping up; this was him deciding that the talking point was no longer welcome.... Cruz proceeded to say that he has long labeled those who attack police officers as terrorists and that's merely what he was doing here. Carlson was again unimpressed and argued — again, validly! — that people who attack police officers should be put in jail, but that doesn't make them terrorists." From "Ted Cruz grovels to Tucker Carlson over Jan. 6 'terrorist attack' remark" (WaPo). You don't have to trust WaPo. interview: I'd like to see a list of all the times Cruz did call those who attack police officers terrorists. But even if he can claim that consistently, over a long period of time, he's used the word "terrorist" in that specific way, it still wouldn't justify calling the January 6th incident a terrorist attack, only calling a subset of the protesters terrorists. To call the entire incident a terrorist attack, you'd need some sort of pre-existing plan to attack the police. Does Cruz's position have something to do with the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, where many people came out to protests and then a subset proceeded to get violent? Did he ascribe the intent to commit acts of violence to the entire protesting group? If so, that might explain Cruz's effort at consistency, and it might also cause fair-minded people to take better care in demonizing protesters. We need and value our protesters in America. Yes, sometimes, some protesters go too far. They get violent. They break into buildings. But big protests are not terrorist attacks. I can understand the motivation to pressure people to stay home and not even appear in a protest lest they be deemed to participate in terrorism. That's a contemptible motivation. |
| Here's a place where you can write about whatever you want. Posted: 06 Jan 2022 04:33 PM PST This was another day when I passed up the sunrise run, so I have no photography. Once again the "feels like" temperature was below zero. I seem to be spending 2022 indoors. I've only had one sunrise run so far, and I've only gone out one other time, for a short walk. Tomorrow at sunrise, it's going to be -3, feels like -16. ADDED: This might amuse you:
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| Posted: 06 Jan 2022 03:18 PM PST The "she" is Meryl Streep and the quote is from the hair person for the movie "Don't Look Up," in "Micro Bangs, Mullets, and a Republican Bob: Every Out-of-This World Hairstyle in Don't Look Up" (Pop Sugar). Streep plays the role of President of the United States. We're told that Streep kept saying, "Don't try to make it look pretty. I like it when it has this flat weird thing!'" I share her curiosity about why so many women have that hairstyle. It's so incredibly stupid...  It's hilarious to have a President with that hair. Can everyone please stop? It's like Shirley Temple grew up and couldn't figure out she wasn't a child anymore. That is, it's like Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2022 03:55 PM PST "Typically used as a noun, it describes the act of undertaking some sort of outdoor physical activity in windy conditions. Wind, as local wisdom goes, refreshes and recalibrates you.... The Dutch have harnessed the wind as a power source for centuries; windmills have long been so intrinsic to society there that they're practically a national symbol..... Like all lifestyles, uitwaaien has its casual partakers and more extreme devotees. Wim Hof, the Dutch health expert... says: 'We have a physical body, but it is like a radio: It receives and sends signals. And the carrier is the wind. The wind is able to change our biochemistry in the depth of our bodies for the better.... The wind offers the gas exchange between the outside and the inside of our selves. How do we regulate that? By doing the breathing, by letting the wind come into our bodies. That is a foundation of health." From "Forget hygge, it's time for uitwaaien" (WaPo). Last night, Spotify suggested that I listen to a track that was 8 hours of the sound of wind — supposedly good white noise for sleeping. So this Dutch concept intrigues me. But I've been avoiding going out when the wind is high, especially in the winter, when it's not just about getting clobbered by detached tree parts, but it's driving the "feels like" temperature down below zero. I wrote about Wim Hof once before — in a 2019 post that ended, "Like the unfortunate couple who ate raw marmot organs and died of the plague and Willie Nelson inhaling/scarfing down marijuana, there's a thing that can be done and a human mind to imagine that it could work. It could work and it could cause a lot of damage, so... do it!" Read that whole post to see what sorts of things Hof does. I guess Hof formulates his ideas in Dutch. The English translation — "The wind offers the gas exchange between the outside and the inside of our selves... letting the wind come into our bodies" — sounds rather... farty. ADDED: In France, you can walk in the wind indoors: |
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