Welcome to a Hump Day (“Journée de la bosse” in French): September 3, 2025, and National Rarebit Day (it’s cheese on toast). This comestible was the subject of “Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” a wonderful comic strip in the early 1900s drawn by the inimitable Winsor McCay; the story was always that a boy ate too much Welsh rarebit before bed and had bad nightmares. One example is below; click to enlarge. (McCay’s masterpiece, though, was his series of Little Nemo strips; get a book of them if you can.)
Here is a Welsh rarebit photo from Wikipedia. One wouldn’t think this would induce bad dreams:
It’s also National Baby Back Ribs Day, which I can’t imagine would cause nightmares.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the the September 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Today Congress is back in session, and a government shutdown is looming.
Congress may struggle to pass even a stopgap fix, though.
Republican leaders will need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. But Democrats — angry from months of party-line maneuvers from the White House and congressional Republicans — haven’t settled on a strategy.
Also, Republicans are divided on whether to support a short-term extension, as many deficit-minded lawmakers insist they will only support regular appropriations bills that cover the entire next fiscal year or a full-year funding extension for the whole government. That idea is not popular with Democrats, who argue it effectively cuts spending because of inflation.
Further complicating matters, President Donald Trump moved last week to rescind nearly $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional approval, infuriating Democrats who warned it would make it harder to strike a deal.
“It’s going to be tough” to avoid a funding extension that would buy lawmakers more time to craft full spending bills, said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) before lawmakers left for a month-long August break. “Would I like to be somewhere else? Yeah. But we haven’t had the schedule to do it.”
Neither party, of course, wants to be blamed for a government shutdown, but since there are people in both parties who don’t know what to do, what we’re likely to see, I think, is a short-term extension with a ton of finger-pointing.
*Another loss in court for Trump, and one that may affect the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago, which Trump is surely about to enact. A judge has overruled the legality of Trump having sent the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles.
The Trump administration illegally used thousands of military troops in Southern California, a federal judge said on Tuesday, in a ruling that accused the president of effectively turning nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard soldiers into a “national police force.”
The ruling, by Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, came more than two months into a contentious deployment that was set off by immigration protests in June and has since dwindled to about 300 National Guard soldiers. It was also relatively narrow, applying solely to California. The administration is expected to appeal, and the judge placed his injunction on hold for 10 days.
Judge Breyer’s assessment was blunt, however. President Trump, he wrote, had exceeded the limits of federal laws that generally prohibit the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, and had talked about doing it again in other U.S. cities, including in California, necessitating immediate action.
The administration, he found, “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.” Those actions, he added, violated laws that had been in place since the late 1800s.
And, he said, the administration’s rationale for the deployment fell far short of the threshold for military action.
President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense “deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” he wrote. “There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence. Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”
Judge Breyer’s ruling was the latest in a series of judicial battles over claims of expansive unilateral powers by the administration. Mr. Trump and administration officials have deported people without due process, imposed widespread and unpopular tariffs and rolled back energy regulations, citing wartime and emergency powers that have been disputed in federal court.
Judge Breyer’s decision seems to be sensible, given that there was no imminent emergency to justify the deployment of the military, and there were federal laws that generally prohibit it. This one, too, is headed to the Supreme Court, and I cannot predict what their decision will be, even though they have a conservative majority.
*On the other hand, Chicago is still a city rife with violence, even if it did fall last year. The Labor Day weekend had the usual gun violence, with 54 people shot, 7 of whom died, over just three days. And the mayor, the governor, and most of the liberal citizens I heard on the news want to keep the National Guard out. From the National Review:
Gun violence surged in Chicago over Labor Day weekend as local Democrats continue to resist President Trump’s proposal to deploy the National Guard to the Windy City.
At least 54 people were shot over the weekend, seven fatally, police said, marking a significant uptick from Labor Day weekend last year and doubling the number of shootings that occurred in the city the previous weekend.
At the end of August, Trump said that Chicago is next on his list of cities that he wants to send the National Guard to, but the Democratic Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, insists he will not work with the guard.
Johnson signed an executive order Saturday, declaring that local police officers will not work with or collaborate with any federal officers or National Guard troops if Trump deploys them to Chicago.
. . .“This executive order makes it emphatically clear that this president is not going to come in and deputize our police department,” Johnson said at a press conference.
Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also adamantly disagrees with the president’s desire to send the National Guard.
Pritzker told CBS News the alleged plan is an “invasion” and that “It’s clear that, in secret, they’re planning this — well, it’s an invasion with U.S. troops, if they, in fact, do that.”
With gun violence on the rise, Johnson opted to discontinue the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection technology that helps police respond quickly to shootings in neighborhoods where gunshots often go unreported. During the first eight months of 2024, Chicago police arrested hundreds of people and recovered hundreds of guns and nearly 30,000 shell casings in part because of alerts from their ShotSpotter gun-shot detection system, NR previously reported.
This Labor Day weekend saw an uptick in crime from the same weekend last year, when 42 people were shot, according to local news.
The ShotSpotter dumping did not make the Mayor any more popular, since much of the shooting occurred in black neighborhoods and, in fact, the people on the local news last night who were in favor of the National Guard coming in were black. It feels unseemly to have white people speaking on behalf of those who suffer, per capita, most of the violent crime that occurs in Chicago.
*The Free Press argues, in a piece by Agnes Callard (an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago), that Taylor Swift is the “Plato of our time.” I’ll bite! How is that?
In a picture book, when you get to the picture of the wedding, you know that that is the last you’ll ever see of the protagonist you’ve come to love. If marriage is where the story of your life ends, then marriage is like death. That’s the moral my friend took away from fairy tales, anyway. It’s also the moral you might take away from Taylor Swift’s love songs.
Talking about the Swift song “Red,” Callard adds this:
People advise you, “Forget him!” as though that were a thing you could will yourself to do. Swift replies: That’s about as helpful as telling me to will myself to know a complete stranger. The first time I heard the song, I interpreted that reply as purely dismissive, but as I listened to it over and over again I came to realize that it contained a tantalizing Platonic suggestion. Plato thought that learning was recollecting, which is to say that when you seem to be acquiring new knowledge, what you are really doing is uncovering knowledge that was buried deep within you. If the same logic applied to love, then it might, in fact, be appropriate to think of the rush of falling in love as willing yourself to suddenly fully know a stranger. Buried in Swift’s songs is a theory of love. To bring it into view, take a step back.
Imagine that you are an alien from a distant planet, and Taylor Swift’s albums are your only access to a strange phenomenon that doesn’t exist on your world—this thing the Earthlings call love. As you listened to her songs and over again, you would draw three conclusions. First, that love is something important. Second, that lovers form a two-in-one, entwined pair. Third, that love is a story. If we put them together, we get: Love is an important story about a couple. This theory of love might sound banal and obvious, but I believe it hides a controversial thesis about marriage. Let’s take a closer look at each of its three elements: important, couple, and stor
There follows a rather academic-y analysis of Swift’s songs and then this:
We can now ask whether love, understood in this way—as an important pair story—could persist and stabilize into a shared life. Put simply, is there love after marriage? The answer, at least in Taylor’s world, is no.
And this is why Swift is so popular, avers Callard: she expresses what everybody knows deep within themselves:
If you have ever fallen in love, you know that it is a dreamlike state. At some point during marriage, you wake up, and you realize that what you had, earlier, was only an idea. You had the idea of a secret language that only you knew, but you were expressing this idea in the same words as every other couple. You had the idea of a clean slate, while carrying all your past baggage with you. You had the idea of knowing one another perfectly, but neither of you was so rude as to demand proof. An idea is something general, so it is easy for many people to share the same one. Reality is particular, and the story of your marriage will lie in the particular ways you wake up from the dream of love.
And Plato returns, as he must:
The phrase Platonic recollection might call to mind a sudden, beatific, epiphanic revelation, but judging from his dialogues, Plato doesn’t think that’s how it works. If you want to dig up your hidden knowledge, you’re going to have to let someone refute you over and over again. The story of marriage cannot be a continuation of the story of love, because the story of love isn’t worth continuing. It is full of mistakes. Marriage stories must correct love stories, instead of completing them. This is a tough mandate for a singer, because there is a fine line between correction and obliteration. Let go of the idea, and you’ve let go of love. Hold on to it too tightly, and you’ve let go of reality. Can this be a pop song? I am excited to find out.
Full of mistakes? Well, if she says so, but somebody connecting Plato to Swift in this way should either stop confecting such arguments or, better yet, stop listening to Taylor Swift. (You can hear “Red” here; like all Swift tunes, it’s about lost love, the words are okay, and the tune is totally lame.)
*McDonald’s is “cutting prices,” so they say, but that headline’s overblown. But the AP prognosticates that this will lead to a “fast food war” of declining prices. Let me first say that I have nothing against McDonald’s or fast food, though I can’t remember the last time I had any (give me Harold’s Chicken in Hyde Park). The article describes the cuts in stuff I wouldn’t buy anyway:
McDonald’s is cutting prices on some combo meals to woo back customers who’ve been turned off by the rising costs of grabbing a fast food meal.
The price drop may induce its rivals, who have run into some of the same pricing issues, to follow.
Starting Sept. 8, McDonald’s will offer Extra Value Meals, which combine select entrées like a Big Mac, an Egg McMuffin or a McCrispy sandwich with medium fries or hash browns and a drink. Prices will vary by location, but McDonald’s said Extra Value Meals will cost 15% less than ordering each of those items separately.
To kick off the promotion, McDonald’s will offer an $8 Big Mac meal or a $5 Sausage McMuffin meal for a limited time in most of the country. Customers in California, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam will have to pay $1 more for those meals.
McDonald’s for years has seen a steady decline in visits from customers in the U.S. who have household incomes of less than $45,000 per year. CEO Chris Kempczinski said those consumers, and others, no longer see McDonald’s as a good value.
Yep, $10 for a fast-food meal is a psychological price barrier, but a 15% cut is hardly a huge saving.
Higher prices have been been a drag on sales. McDonald’s same-store sales – or sales at stores open at least a year – grew 2.5% in the April-June period, but that was mostly because of higher prices. Fast food visits by lower-income consumers dropped by double-digit percentages industrywide in the second quarter, McDonald’s said.
“Today, too often, if you’re that consumer, you’re driving up to the restaurant and you’re seeing combo meals priced over $10,” Kempczinski said during a conference call with investors in August. “That absolutely is shaping value perceptions in a negative way. So we’ve got to get that fixed.”
McDonald’s job has been made harder by prices that can vary widely around the country. In May 2024, after a post on X about a Big Mac meal in Connecticut that cost $18 went viral, McDonald’s called it an “exception” and noted that franchisees set prices for nearly all U.S. restaurants.
ADThe company also blames higher costs. The average price of its menu items rose 40% between 2019 and 2024, McDonald’s said, to account for a 40% increase in the cost of labor, packaging and food.
Now if Harold’s would only cut the price of it’s “half regular, mild sauce” meal to less than $10 (it used to be $5 when I moved to Chicago in the Pleistocene), then I’d pay attention!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej shows some rare optimism:
Hili: Black clouds on the eastern horizon.
Andrzej: It’s possible it’s raining there, and we’ll still stay dry.
In Polish:
Hili: Czarne chmury na wschodzie. J
a: Możliwe, że tam pada deszcz, a u nas będzie dalej sucho.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From Stacy:
From Meow:
Masih is STILL not tweeting, except for an occasional excerpt from her podcast. But I’ll again put in the benchwarmer:
What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable. https://t.co/CRl2n9rorh
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 2, 2025
From Luana. It appears to be all men, so can’t they take off their niqabs?
It’s like something out of South Park pic.twitter.com/zaD0p1bMN0
— StarmerOut (@ForeverScept) September 2, 2025
From Malcolm, a lovely detail from a Renoir:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – “Julie Manet with Cat (detail)” (1877) pic.twitter.com/tPJaXvJqQS
— Academia Aesthetics (@AcademiaAesthe1) August 22, 2025
Two from my feed. First, a VERY FAST train!
Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan’s new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph pic.twitter.com/qSvSAl6nXm
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) September 2, 2025
Another good one from Science Girl. However, if those tomatoes aren’t bruised, they aren’t very ripe!
Electronic sensor sorts tomatoes and removes debris
pic.twitter.com/zTmZhRt6lK— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) September 1, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl (note the star) was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was eleven. Had she lived, she would be 92 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-03T10:56:46.540Z
Two posts from Professor Cobb. First, note that Philomena didn’t actually say these words: they came from students!
@gralefrit.bsky.social You have to see these! A friend of mine has been collating a series of images entitled "Things my students have written turned into Philomena Cunk quotes" and they're just glorious.
— Danny Kodicek (@dannykodicek.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T11:12:17.404Z
More! These are hilarious.
Another batch
— Danny Kodicek (@dannykodicek.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T11:15:45.121Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return. -Sarah Orne Jewett, poet and novelist (3 Sep 1849-1909)
One hopeful sign for the UK is that the arrest of Graham Linehan for some innocuous Tweets is causing quite a big backlash, such that even Keir Starmer has disassociated himself from it.
Meanwhile the polls say that the current Labour government is about the least popular government ever. (Recent poll: net approval of minus 56%)
Mr. Linehan’s full story is worth a read (in case it all doesn’t come through on X):
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/i-just-got-arrested-again
The chief of the Met Police has also complained about it today. He wants the law clarified. It doesn’t need to be clarified. He just needs to teach his coppers about the law. Most police forces have been infiltrated by transactivists who do courses for police about what they want the law to be, not what the law actually IS.
Graham did nothing wrong. This piece by a barrister explains. https://youtu.be/N992Cd4rao4?feature=shared
The link also shows Starmer telling Trump, in the oval office, that we don’t have a problem with free speech in the uk. Whoops!!
Graham wasn’t even in the UK when he wrote those tweets, he was in Arizona. I have seen a lot of people from the USA complaining that they are too scared to visit the UK in case they get arrested for tweets they have done.
The man who complained to police about these three tweets is a mentally ill ex policeman who was sacked because of his tweets. He has sued two other prominent gender critical people. I’m only surprised he hasn’t sued JKR yet.
Even though it’s a ridiculous situation, I find it hilarious that the police think that calling someone ‘smelly’ should be included in an arrest warrant. Kindergarten children had better be careful as they will be arrested next 🤦♀️
The judge in the National Guard case accepted as fact that the Guard were engaged in direct law enforcement activities. The DOJ denies this. Given the history of cases against the Administration, I expect this one to be overturned, too.
The judge noted that the National Guard and Marines, whose identities were often obscured by protective armor, set up perimeters, blockaded traffic, and participated in crowd control. Those are law enforcement activites specifically prohibited by Posse Commitatus. Among other things they are specifically prohibited from doing are interrogations, arrests, searches or seisures. Evidence showed troops accompanied federal immigration officers on dozens of missions, including ones that did all of those prohibited things.
The Supremes are in his pocket so it may go the Orange Toddler’s way, but it doesn’t seem to me that it will. But then again, I’m a legal eagle who is totally ignorant of the law. So YMMV.
Another way of looking at it is “free policing”. (I’m not explicitly endorsing that)
They’re there to assist cops as I understand it, something we could do with here in NYC. We send enough tax bucks to Washington, maybe this is a bit of a return. I note we have had a LOT of immigrants in the past few years, not all of whom know our ways.
No criticism of the NYPD here – over the decades in my experience with them as a NYer and as a defense attorney I’ve been continually impressed.
I see the jurisdictional and Constitutional problems with it however and I’m reticent in giving this particular prez the benefit of the doubt.
D.A.
NYC
The Times of London is reporting Graham Linehan is taking legal action against the Police. I wish him every success.
There is also a petition to support him. There have been another 3000 signatories since I signed a couple of hours ago.
Ironically, this action against Graham maybe a turning point in getting us back to sanity. My dad told me that if a man comes at you, then you should kick him where it hurts and run I’m sure a lot of parents teach their daughters that. Are we going arrest parents now? Like Graham, they are not advocating violence to innocent men, just to men who predate on women and girls.
https://citizengo.org/en-gb/fr/16370-stand-with-linehan–no-one-should-be-arrested-for-lawful-speech
In case not everyone sees all of Mr. Linehan’s account, he had advised women who encounter men in their intimate spaces to make a scene and punch them in the balls, a variation on your dad’s good advice. This, he explained to the police officers at Heathrow, was meant to be a wry comment on the height difference between women and trans-identified men. (One must always punch up, right?). One of the policewomen replied (with a straight face?), “We’re not that small.”
Her remark reminds me of a commenter here who pointed out a few days ago that the population of human beings with the two sexes pooled may not in fact be strictly bimodal for height.
I subscribe to his substack to help financially, but most (all?) of his stuff is open to everyone so the link you kindly shared above should be accessible to everyone.
Your punching up or down comment is true in that sense, but an average man’s punch is 162% harder than that of a woman. It means that a man who literally punches up at me could kill me, whereas me punching down on him is unlikely to do much damage – unless I follow Graham’s advice in the area I target.😉
As Margaret Atwood says “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
The Philomena student quotes remind me of one of my students who, back in the day, got fed up with the class debate over “giving back” the Panama Canal. After 5 minutes of back-and-forth, she opined: “This is ridiculous–if we had built it across Florida like it should have been, we wouldn’t be having this debate!”
The thing about eating rarebit and dreams reminds me of the claim that eating cheese before going to bed can result in weird dreams.
My mother was a firm believer in this. No cheese for me after 6:00 pm.
Then, also in the arrests-for-speech department, there is this item:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester,_Minnesota_racial_slur_video
The “survivor” and the complainant/video-disseminator are both of Somali descent. I am waiting for the ACLU to spring to the defence of the arrested woman. Unfortunately for her she doesn’t appear to be trans, just a plain old mom.
From the post above on Swift & Plato:
“This theory of love might sound banal and obvious,”
It just might be. Oh blah dee, Oh blah da — or something.
Trump’s Retribution Tour fueled by lies knows no limits. He is moving the Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, not because it is a reasoned logical decision but rather because Colorado is a blue state that uses mail-in ballots. [Ironically, Colorado Springs is quite red but will bear the brunt of the financial hit of this move]. He outrageously claims contrary to all evidence, that our mail ballots are somehow rigged against him, supported only by Putin’s opinion and the other ass-kissers in his administration. He is a vindictive mental midget who claims that he can do anything that enters his small brain. Thanks SCOTUS. He is a pernicious autocrat who aspires to be a dictator. I would like to remind him that very often, things don’t end very well for dictators.
The philosophical analysis of Taylor Swift songs reminds me of the way intelligent people manage to pull stacks and stacks of great meaning out of the Bible. What I say is that, generally speaking, you get out what you put in.
IIRC—and I think I do—McDonalds hamburgers were 18 cents apiece when the Golden Arches first came to my hometown in the early 1960’s. My family would drive there and eat in the car—a dark green 1963 Chevy BelAir. I’d have two hamburgers, a small French fries, and a small Coke. I always wanted a shake (not sure if it was a milkshake), but scoring one was a rare treat, as a shake was more expensive than a Coke.
The Trump National Guard saga is all over the news 24/7. What if the Democratic mayors and governors would simply welcome the help from the feds, rather than reject it? Wouldn’t that help quell the rancor and reduce crime? But no. To the Dems it’s an invasion, making it look like the Democratic leaders would rather have crime than solve it. Democrats seem to have fallen into a trap.
My memories from the mid 60s: McDonalds hamburger, 10cents, cheeseburger, 18 cents, Filet O Fish, 25 cents
Democratic mayors and governors don’t want their cities federalized by the National Guard, simple as that. I would hope Republican mayors and governors would also shun such Federal overreach (isn’t that what the MAGA-light Tea Party was all about?). More than that, it’s an illegal move by Trump unless he does it under the Insurrection Act, and he hasn’t invoked that. Crime is a local issue, not an insurrection and doesn’t warrant a federal intervention. (We’ll see what SCOTUS thinks soon enough.) This is a blatant power grab and an attempt to intimidate citizens in blue cities. Trump is also trying to “normalize” the idea that federal troops with firearms roam American streets. Yeah, nothing ominous about that, knowing what a benign, stable-genius Trump is.
And let’s talk about the National Guard. Along with the boredom, aimless orders and football games, Trump has them on a 29 day rotation which makes them ineligible for extra pay/housing payment and other benefits that kick in with a 30 day rotation. Very apropos for Trump to screw whoever’s working for him.
Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to Norman above.
Regarding potential deployment of the National Guard to Chicago and other cities: I am deeply amused watching lifelong Democrats implicitly-if-not-always-directly invoke the 10th amendment and states’ rights. Of course, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. It was Democrats who did so in the 1960s Deep South, too. Maybe we can get both parties to be more consistent rather than transactional when they stake claims to constitutional principle. Then again, when protection of power and advancement of preferred policy are their ultimate concerns, any useful claim will do.
Cheese & nightmares: The correlation is thought to be due to tyramine (decarboxylated tyrosine), which occurs in aged cheese and is indirectly hypertensive.