Greetings on cat shabbos, Saturday, January 21, 2023: National Clam Chowder Day (clams, like all shellfish, aren’t kosher). Remember, always get the New England style with cream and potatoes, not the so-called “Manhattan style” chowdah with tomatoes. Ecch!
Good:
Bad:
It’s National Granola Bar Day, Squirrel Appreciation Day, Own Your Own Home Day, and National Hugging Day
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*This is likely the reason our trip to Peru and the Galápagos was canceled yesterday: political riots have moved into the streets of Lima as protestors call for the ouster of the new President. There are clashes with the cops and the potential for severe violence is high:
Thousands of protesters demanding the ouster of President Dina Boluarte poured into Peru’s capital, clashing with police who fired tear gas. Many came from remote regions, where dozens have died in unrest that has gripped the country since Peru’s first leader from a rural Andean background was removed from office last month.
The protests have been marked by Peru’s worst political violence in more than two decades and highlighted deep divisions between the country’s urban elite, largely concentrated in Lima, and poor rural areas. Former President Pedro Castillo has been in detention and is expected to be tried for rebellion since he was impeached after a failed attempt to dissolve Congress.
Protesters were expected to take to the streets of downtown Lima again Friday, although the city was quiet in the morning, with less movement in the center of the capital than is normal for a weekday.
Thursday was mostly quiet, but punctuated by scuffles and tear gas. The government called on everyone who could to work from home. After sundown, clashes escalated, and late that night, a major fire broke out at a building near the historic Plaza San Martin, although no connection to the protests was immediately clear.
. . . Anger at Boluarte was the common thread Thursday as protesters chanted calls for her resignation and street sellers hawked T-shirts saying, “Out, Dina Boluarte,” “Dina murderer, Peru repudiates you,” and “New elections, let them all leave.”
It’s gonna get worse in Peru, I suspect, though I don’t mind being in the middle of political turmoil, just out of general interest. When I was in Valparaiso, Chile several years ago, waiting for our trip to Antarctica to begin, there were demonstrations that were met with the army in tanks bearing water cannons. I ran TOWARD the tanks, as I wanted to be in the middle of a political protest, but my companion held me back.
*The NYT has a good guest op-ed by political journalist Jonathan Alter, “Oh, Biden, what have you done?“. It’s about the classified documents found in Biden’s Delaware home and VP office, and how they may be pivotal in turning voters against him should he run again. It’s mainly because the atmosphere of trust and honesty that surrounded the Obama administration and, up to now, Biden’s, may be corroded. A few excerpts:
The optical equivalence between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden is phony, of course. Mr. Trump is a grifter who appears to have intentionally taken hundreds of classified documents, bragging that he kept the folders marked “classified” or “confidential” as “‘cool’ keepsakes.” He said of his stash of classified documents, according to several advisers, “It’s not theirs; it’s mine,” and seemingly defied a subpoena to return the documents, thereby exposing him to possible prosecution for obstruction of justice. Mr. Biden, by contrast, was sloppy and slow to search for and disclose the existence of about 20 stray classified documents but is fully cooperating with authorities.
Unfortunately for Mr. Biden, this distinction cannot easily survive the miasma of congressional and special counsel subpoenas, relentless questions from reporters and fresh allegations of impropriety that signal the arrival of a new episodic political drama. Many voters with better things to do with their time than parse the nuances of presidential record keeping may casually conclude that both men are careless, lying politicians.
. . .All 10 American presidencies since 1973 have faced investigation by a special counsel or independent prosecutor, except one: Barack Obama’s. For eight years, Mr. Obama and his vice president and other high-ranking officials were seen as figures of unusual rectitude, and the impression of integrity returned when Mr. Biden took office after four years of wall-to-wall corruption. But now this sharp ethical contrast with Mr. Trump has been dulled. That complicates the president’s expected re-election campaign — and could even short-circuit it.
Most Democrats still think Mr. Biden is honest, and they view his accomplishments on the economy, climate, infrastructure and defending democracy as far more significant than this lapse. But it’s hard to exaggerate the level of Democratic exasperation with him for squandering a huge political advantage on the Mar-a-Lago story and for muddying what may have been the best chance to convict Mr. Trump on federal charges. Mr. Biden’s more serious problem may be with independents, whom he carried by nine points in 2020. Unforced errors can take a toll with them. Even as the classified documents story eventually fades — it will most likely not be a first-tier issue next year — swing voters may see him in a harsher light.
. . .But even if Mr. Biden puts wins on the board, survives venomous Republican lawmakers and gets off with a slap on the wrist in the special counsel’s report, the classified documents story has likely stripped him of a precious political asset with some independents and Democrats: the benefit of the doubt. The general feeling that Mr. Biden — like Mr. Obama — is clean and scandal-free has been replaced by the normal Washington assumption of some level of guilt.
Republicans are ferocious attack dogs, especially when they have something to chew on. And Mr. Biden, a better president than candidate, has never had the nimbleness necessary for good defense.
And the rest you can read for yourself. Frankly, I don’t think Biden should run for a second term (I favor Mayor Pete), but it looks as if he has the self-confidence to declare himself a candidate again. And no other Democrat will put their hat in the ring if Biden does first.
*Andrew Sullivan has a huge paean to the movie The Banshees of Inisherin on his website, a movie I also loved, though a few readers didn’t. His take is somewhat political, seeing aspiration to leave as a liberal trait and staying on a dull island a conservative one (keeping the status quo).
Even by the standards of Martin McDonagh’s lifetime of work, The Banshees of Inisherin is a masterpiece. Like all masterpieces, everyone will have their own interpretation, because the layers of meaning are complex, multiple and interconnected. So what follows is just my own reflection on the piece — because it’s been hard to think about anything else this week. I watched the movie twice, and the first time I was riveted to my seat by the sheer emotional rawness of it all; and the second, I just couldn’t stop laughing. I suppose all dark comedies are a bit like that. But this one was darker and funnier than any I recall.
“What makes life worth living?,” the film asks insistently. Is it love and friendship and community and shared meaning? Or is it achievement, ambition, aspiration and individuality? The answer is both, of course. But the two instincts — the conservative one and the liberal one — chafe at each other. The trade-off is real — and modernity is the stage on which this conflict takes place. McDonagh sees both human urges lovingly — and puts this drama of modernity on a symbolic island.
The charm of pre-modern life is undeniable: that Irish blend of bluntness and humor, rage and gentleness, all moderated in the fog, is real and connected to the long living in this bleak, beautiful place. The pudgy priest, the bully cop, the sharp emotional insights of a “slow” kid called Dominic, the gossips and drunks and oddballs: what a place to live and die!
And yet also McDonagh lets Colm decry the banality of it all. . .
I won’t give any spoilers but please do see this movie. It’s infinitely better than “Top Gun: Maverick”, even if you do say they’re apples and oranges. I’d rather watch the apple five times than see the orange just once more.
*Over at the Free Press site, Nellie Bowles produced her weekly semi-snarky news summary; this week’s is called “TGIF: I love Davos“. Here are three of her shorter items:
→ Biden admin softening on notion of World War III: The president of the United States is now toying with the idea of helping (nudging?) the president of Ukraine to retake Crimea, which Russia took from Ukraine in 2014. Time magazine has this headline: “The Liberation of Crimea Is a Must.” Crimea, by international law, does still belong to Ukraine. But it would be a major escalation in an already expensive and drawn-out war—expensive both in U.S. dollars and in Ukrainian lives.
→ “There is no more room in New York”: Eric Adams, mayor of America’s largest city, announced that his town is just totally full and cannot accommodate any new immigrants. “Our cities are being undermined,” the mayor said this week. “We don’t deserve this. Migrants don’t deserve this and the people who live in the cities don’t deserve this . . . There is no more room in New York.” The liberal response to the surge of migrants goes like this: First of all, the border crisis is fake and racist. Second of all, it was caused by Trump, who is still the president. Third, Park Slope is at capacity.
→ Madonna announces a new world tour: Madonna, 64, is planning a new mega-tour to sing her greatest hits. There are worlds in which this would be good news, a farewell tour for an incredible pop star. But to say Madonna isn’t aging gracefully doesn’t quite capture it. She is rage, rage against the dying of the light. Face like a cat, implants in the butt (I think?), photoshoots meant to look like porn sets. Whatever these clips by the NFT artist Beeple were about.
Me, I plan to age gracefully. A little Botox when I hit 38, a facelift at 45, and then, at exactly 51 years old, I release—grow my hair long and gray, light the patchouli, and greet you at the door inexplicably holding a squash. Readers, there will be caftans.
*I recently watched “Top Gun: Maverick” with Tom Cruise, and while I found it an engrossing adventure flick, I couldn’t believe that it would be nominated as a potential Oscar-winner. It’s already appeared on many lists of the Best Movies of 2023, and for some reason Cruise’s acting is given many encomiums. It’s baffling: there is no substantial thought to the movie, just continuation of a franchise, and absorbing plot and good cinematography. Frank Bruni goes after it in the NYT: “Tom Cruise and the Insanity of the Oscars“, and he’s right:
Did Tom Cruise give an honest-to-goodness performance — one that involved disappearing into a character versus reveling in his own ageless and sinewy glory — in “Top Gun: Maverick”? I missed it. Maybe I was blinded by his toothy gleam.
I write that as someone who enjoyed the movie, appreciates a cocky fighter pilot as much as the next guy and believes fully in Cruise’s talent, which is among the reasons I’ve seen “Jerry Maguire” a half-dozen times. In that movie, he shows range. In “Maverick,” he shows off.
And yet there’s apparently an outside chance that he’ll land a best actor nod when Academy Award nominations are announced on Tuesday. Whether that happens is one of the more intriguing bits of Oscar suspense. Another is whether an unusual and impassioned grass-roots campaign to get Andrea Riseborough a best actress mention for the independent movie “To Leslie,” which you’ve probably never heard of, will pay off.
I haven’t seen “To Leslie,” so I won’t comment. More on “Top Gun”:
“Maverick” grossed more than $700 million in theaters in the United States on its way to a worldwide total of nearly $1.5 billion. Its proponents cite or allude to that box office bonanza as an argument for accolades. Isn’t commercial success a legitimate metric of achievement? Evidence that a project has resonated — and for reasons that surely include craftsmanship?
No! No! No! A movie is more than planes bombing targets and toothy grins.
. . . “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick” — call them the colon movies — are strong contenders for best picture nods next week, but then so are “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Tár,” which have no colons, limited commercial appeal and deliberately challenging narratives and tones. Putting all four movies in the same contest is like contriving some athletic competition that pits football players against a water polo team. They ply different elements.
. . . I bet that neither Cruise nor Riseborough receives the recognition that they’re hoping for. They lie at opposite ends of the blockbuster-to-boutique spectrum. Oscar is comfiest in the mushy middle.
Of the movies I’ve seen this year, I would vote for Tár as “Best Picture” and Blanchett as Best Actress. Popularity with the public should not be a criterion for an Oscar. I’m watching the new movie “Predator” now.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a funny:
A: Chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans.Hili: I know, you cannot choose your relatives.
Ja: Szympans jest najbliższym krewnym człowieka.Hili: Ja wiem, krewnych się nie wybiera.
********************
A Gary Larson Far Side cartoon via Stash Krod:
From The Two Crazy Cat Ladies on FB via Merilee. All cat staffers know about the post-poop dash out of the litter box. But I’ve never seen any discussion about this behavior. Why do they do it?
A temporal comparison from David:
I’m not sure who God is addressing here:
From Malcolm: feeding time for beach cats. Sound up!
Look at their happy tails and listen to the beach cats when our kind volunteer arrives to feed them.
You can help the #cats on this tiny Greek island by making a small donation to fund vital medicines, neutering & food all year round. Purr!#CatsOfTwitter https://t.co/eBupPyhtpP pic.twitter.com/YoJsZyTWYa— Cats of Iraklia (@CatsofIraklia) January 10, 2023
From Nellie Bowles on her TGIF. And yes, the Intifada (and “right of return”) is a call to murder Jews.
At the University of Michigan, a call to murder Jews. pic.twitter.com/UoA0LUft1h
— Blake Flayton (@blakeflayton) January 13, 2023
From Simon, whose response was “good grief!”:
Pink Floyd updated their profile picture to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dark Side of the Moon, and the replies are… something. pic.twitter.com/e4zNZ2KGOS
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) January 20, 2023
From Barry, who says “there’s no doubt that it’s the human who’s carrying the band”:
What would you call this duo? 💙 pic.twitter.com/20Sf0GCaPF
— Jessi 💫 (@its_jessi_grace) January 14, 2023
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a woman who died in her twenties:
21 January 1919 | A Polish Jewish woman, Jadwiga Lichtensztajn, was born in Sosnowiec.
She was deported to #Auschwitz. She did not survive. pic.twitter.com/0mRYGI7f7S
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 21, 2023
Tweets from Matthew. The interview below is a must-read, and includes these lines:
Excluding himself, who does [Crosby] think is the best songwriter in CSNY? “Stills, no contest. He’s the best guitar player, the best singer and the best writer. I really admire Stephen tremendously.”
If anybody fancies a read of my interview with a fabulously opinionated David Crosby in 2021, here it ishttps://t.co/7W5IyCigYh
— Simon Hattenstone (@shattenstone) January 19, 2023
Insect rope! (They must be on a twig):
This is NOT a rope
(membracid treehoppers) https://t.co/jQtrdmJkwf— Gil Wizen (@wizentrop) January 15, 2023
Look at that leap over the fence!
Damn they lucky the windows was closed pic.twitter.com/EtZ3In7x8B
— Weird and Terrifying (@weirdterrifying) January 13, 2023
On this day:
1789 – The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth by William Hill Brown, is printed in Boston.
1793 – After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.
1908 – New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.
1925 – Albania declares itself a republic. [King Zog I served as the head of state for a seven-year term.]
1942 – The Jewish resistance organization, Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, based in the Vilna Ghetto was established.
1950 – American lawyer and government official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.
1976 – Commercial service of Concorde begins with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.
1997 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 395–28 to reprimand Newt Gingrich for ethics violations, making him the first Speaker of the House to be so disciplined. [That kind of consensus is unimaginable now.]
2017 – Over 400 cities across America and 160+ countries worldwide participate in a large-scale women’s march, on Donald Trump’s first full day as President of the United States.
Births:
1824 – Stonewall Jackson, American general (d. 1863).
1840 – Sophia Jex-Blake, English physician and feminist (d. 1912). [Led the campaign to secure women access to a university education, was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were training women.]
1869 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic (d. 1916).
1905 – Karl Wallenda, German-American acrobat and tightrope walker, founded The Flying Wallendas (d. 1978).
1922 – Telly Savalas, American actor (d. 1994).
1924 – Benny Hill, English actor, singer, and screenwriter (d. 1992). [ “Yakety Sax” will now be my earworm of the day…]
1941 – Richie Havens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2013). [Best known for being the opening act at Woodstock.]
1942 – Edwin Starr, American singer-songwriter (d. 2003). [Altogether now, “War! HUH! What is it good for?” – second earworm of the day and it’s only 10.30 a.m.]
1972 – Cat Power, American singer, musician and actress. [Included for her wonderful name!]
Kicked the oxygen habit:
1924 – Vladimir Lenin, Russian lawyer and politician (b. 1870).
1932 – Lytton Strachey, English writer and critic (b. 1880). [Founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.]
1950 – George Orwell, British novelist, essayist, and critic (b. 1903).
1959 – Cecil B. DeMille, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1881).
1984 – Jackie Wilson, American singer (b. 1934).
2002 – Peggy Lee, American singer (b. 1920).
2020 – Terry Jones, Welsh actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1942).
Ah, the late, great Terry Jones, brilliant straight man in the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” sketch, mother to “a very naughty boy” who was NOT the messiah, mad, nude organist, the educated Sir Bedivere (who knows the world to be banana-shaped) and who delivered one of my favorite lines ever: “This morning, shortly after 11:00, comedy struck this little house on Dibley Road. Sudden…violent…comedy.”
I’m not sure who God is addressing here
I took him to be addressing Man(kind)?
What would you call this duo?
I don’t know, but Budgie is taken: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Were_Brittania_I%27d_Waive_the_Rules (Great Welsh rock band, but they couldn’t spell Britannia!)
For a response to the NYT position on the Biden papers:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/nyt-whitewatering-very-strongly
This is, unfortunately, paywalled, as is the NYT, but for anyone who has a TPM membership, I think this is closer to reality, if you want to read it.
L
There’s an archived copy of the NYT article here: https://archive.ph/U0Zsl
For a conservative’s opinion on the Biden documents, see this article at the WSJ:
The Justice Department’s Double Standards on Classified Documents — Biden and Trump both have special counsels. But the president’s lawyers got to conduct his search, while his predecessor’s weren’t even allowed to be present.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-justice-departments-double-standards-on-classified-documents-biden-fbi-trump-raid-private-penn-11674166392
Here are a few excerpts:
“It’s convenient that the White House was able to keep quiet for nearly 70 days the revelation that Mr. Biden inappropriately retained classified information
It’s convenient that the Biden news didn’t break prior to the midterm elections.
It’s convenient that the FBI immediately declined to engage in the Biden probe.
Instead, the process was left entirely to Mr. Biden’s private lawyers, who didn’t have security clearances—allowing them access to national secrets and the potential to glean the nature of the material found (which might be useful in a later Biden defense). It also allowed them to craft the circumstances of the discovery—where they were, their condition, whether they were easily observable.
“It’s gonna get worse in Peru, I suspect, though I don’t mind being in the middle of political turmoil, just out of general interest.”
Your mention of the riots in Peru brought the book Palace Walk to mind, because it has a heartrending scene of death in a political protest in Egypt. Palace Walk is the first volume of a trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (who won a Nobel in literature). If you haven’t already read it, and if you’re looking for something to read on your upcoming cruise, you couldn’t do better than The Cairo Trilogy.
Oh dear, after scrolling down and reading your earlier articles, I realized your cruise has been cancelled. That’s a rotten shame, especially coming so soon after the cancellation of your trip to Poland.
“Manhattan Clam Chowder” is APPALLING (all caps, in lieu of italics, for emphasis).
Somebody has to like Manhattan style. Actually, I can fess up here by saying I like both. In different ways.
Being somewhat intolerant of lactose, I truly love Manhattan Clam Chowder. Unfortunately, it isn’t served in any restaurants out here in WA State that I’ve found.
Some basic HTML codes are allowed by the WordPress editor (this site’s WP editor ; there are probably others. And the details have changed recently, I think.
Mimicking the HTML codes by using < and > character encodings, OTOH, does seem to have been borked recently. Now it gets me an “Invalid security cert” message.
I hope he was suitable grateful to be invited to go to the movies with PCC(E).
I would not say that trust and honesty have been the hallmarks of the Biden administration or of Joe “Neil Kinnock” Biden himself, whose comments this week about his participation in the Civil Rights movement and protesting Apartheid in South Africa lead one to conclude that he’s a fabulist. The documents scandal, unlike Afghanistan, the Covid response, inflation, the southern border, and his admin’s support for the Woke agenda, may hurt him with his own party.
God is talking to Jesus. Getting nailed to a cross is not how you save the Jews.
I think that Obama genuinely likes Biden, that they are close friends, and that, during his administration, Obama valued Biden’s counsel on a variety of issues, especially as regards foreign policy. But as Obama reportedly told his closest White House aides in private: “Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to fuck a thing up.”
The hypocrisy of the sanctuary city advocates…
“There is no more room in New York” mayor Eric Adams announced. His town is just totally full and cannot accommodate any new immigrants.
NYC has over 8M residents. Last September, Mayor Eric Adams said NYC was “nearing its breaking point” after receiving about 10,000 migrants since May.
Meanwhile, Yuma AZ has about 100k residents. More than 250k migrants poured into that city by September last year.
I wonder how keen the Palestinian protesters would be to actually live in such a country.
It would already be bad for women and a blink of an eye away from being like Iran or Afghanistan with fundy Islam oppressing every bit of enlightenment out of the place.
I watched Top Gun: Maverick a while ago. I didn’t think much of it. I like flying and there were great flying shots but the story was an over the top unrealistic jingoistic pile of nonsense. Tom Cruise was, Tom Cruise.
I don’t think I even watched it to the end.
How good for women is a call country where they can’t even show them on Wonder Woman posters or where weirdos stop planes from taking off if they have to sit next to a woman?
A “free” Palestine might be an eyeblink from theocracy but a “free” Israel is at most a decade. We’d be better off rid of both of them.