A nagging problem we haven't yet solved!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2024

Again, you get two choices: We're glad we watched last night's Gutfeld! program—because it was so horrendous.

The professional wrestler who knows everything was there, as he typically is. He's on tour as a comedian now too. As usual, two of the other four participants panelists were "comedians" last night too.

In this spreading primetime format, Fox is forming a new, more insidious way to advance its preferred propaganda. On the whole, the sheer stupidity of what the channel airs goes unmentioned everywhere else. 

Regarding Greg Gutfeld himself, how does Serra High manage to churn out such people? 

We went to Aragon, roughly one mile up the Alameda de las Pulgas, right there in sun-swept San Mateo. How did Gutfeld end up like this? Here's a few of the things he said:

He said it must be tough for AOC to live with a guy whose balls are smaller than hers. He referred to Gretchen Whitmer as a "ho," then said he was only kidding.

There's a cartoon potato named Professor Potato which is semi-popular in Michigan. Gutfeld said it reminded him of Hunter Biden's penis. (Pretty much everything does.) 

He referred to Whitmer as an airhead. He also made his standard joke about President Biden "pooping in his pants."

This small, small boy has been selected to run a nightly primetime show on a national "cable news" channel. He brings four idiot friends on the air with him and gives it a go every night.

At Fox, this new method of message delivery has been evolving for a while. Regarding the general breakdown of the national discourse, we'd date the start of the total meltdown to the pursuit of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal, which got its start in 1992 on the front page of the New York Times.

Fox News didn't yet exist. As Gene Lyons described in the quickly disappeared Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, it started at the Times.

Whitewater turned into a 24-year press corps war, directed at Clinton, Gore, Clinton. First it sent George W. Bush to the White House, then it followed with Donald J. Trump. That war was driven by the mainstream press corps—by some of the same people we now love and trust on our blue tribe cable news shows.

Speaking of Fox's silly boys (and girls), we have our silly boys too. The silly boys who comment at Kevin Drum's site don't have the first freaking idea about the history of this era. They just know that they're supposed to get very very upset if someone makes an accurate statement which flies in the face of their childish tribal dreams.

There's no cure for human nature! With that in mind, we remind you of the choice between dueling bumper stickers we think you might want to ponder at this perilous time.

Here's your pair of choices:

We have become a nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem. 

The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers.

A few days back, we affirmed the first bumper sticker / general statement. Kevin countered with the second.

We mean zero disrespect to Kevin, but we think he's playing the Candide, Pangloss and Pollyanna cards a bit too lustily here. We'll sign up for the role of Cassandra at this apparently dangerous time.

In his second post on this general question, Kevin listed Whitewater as one of the problems we haven't yet solved. Does anyone know how much longer we have? The election arrives in November! 

As of 2003, the extension of the Whitewater chase had sent us into Iraq. Fourteen years later, its continuation—through, for example, Emailgate—elected Donald J. Trump. How long will it be before we get around to solving this small nagging problem? Before we're allowed to notice the way this disaster actually worked?

Just this once, we'll be honest! It's hard not to be briefly angry about some of what Kevin wrote. Murder rates, inequality, medical costs? The southern border and its spread into overwhelmed northern cities? 

The young female medical workers we overheard this Tuesday morning talking about the ways their relatives have dealt with various carjackings? When are we going to solve the nagging problem afflicting them and their family and friends?

It can be hard to avoid being briefly angry when Pollyanna arrives on the scene, saying we just haven't managed to solve that one yet. That's especially true when the whole blue world is warning us that our democracy will be taken away if Trump returns to the White House next year, as polling suggests he may do.

We're big fans of Kevin's work, though we think he's become a bit too sure of the idea that Nothing Much Is Actually Wrong and that every question can be settled through the use of statistical measures. (Needless to say, he may be right on both points!) 

We're tired of the attitudes which emerge from the overpaid plutos who pose on TV, and we do believe that disaster could ensue if Trump returns to the White House. (For the record, tens of millions of American voters disagree with our view.)

In the face of that threat, we find it hard not to get a tiny bit angry, but also in the face of the carjacking comments we heard two days ago. By the way, when was the last time our problem-solving nation was able to craft an actual budget? We haven't even solved that yet!

We'll may look at this topic next week. We think a debate between those two bumper stickers could be highly instructive.

That said, everyone has noticed the fact that we can no longer come together to solve, or even to address, our serious national problems. Within our blue tribe, it's standard issue to make such statements, but only as long as you say the whole reason for this meltdown rests with the very, very, very bad people all of whom live Over There.

On the sunnier side of the street, it's lots of fun when you're paid big bucks by the Fox News Channel to go on TV and behave like a gaggle of fools. In this morning's New York Times, Gail Collins is also joking around today. According to Collins, a good decent person, it's going to be verrrrrrry boring this year with Biden-Trump all the way through.

Question:

Do we believe that our world is at risk, or is that just something we peddle?  In fairness, no one's required to think some such thing, and at this juncture there's no perfect way to know who's actually right.

Gretchen Whitmer is a ho! In total fairness, the angriest little boy on TV was just kidding around when he said it.

So too with AOC's big huge balls. That was just primetime "news" too!

This has been tolerated forever. It got its start in the New York Times, and only Gene Lyons complained.

Harper's published and promoted his book. Our blue stars all ignored it.

GHOST DANCES? We came to you yesterday offering hope!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2024

This morning, we cite a new survey: Can President Biden do it?

As we embark on this fateful Year That Will Be, that seems like the only real question. Yesterday morning, we reported a sudden jolt of hope, thanks to one Keystone State survey:

New Pennsylvania poll shows Biden leading Trump in head-to-head

A new, too-early-to-mean-much poll of Pennsylvania voters shows incumbent President Joe Biden holding a 7.5 percentage point lead over former President Donald J. Trump.

Dear God, let the worm start to turn! We received an infusion of hope.

Then, late last evening, we stumbled upon a recent detailed survey by ABC News / Ipsos. It had been conducted two weeks back. Its results were released on January 14. 

We don't think we'd seen its results reported. Some results were deeply dismaying: 

Trump tops his opponents while Biden hits a new low in approval ahead of Iowa caucus: POLL

The 2024 primary season begins with Donald Trump well ahead of his Republican opponents on key measures of popularity, while Joe Biden's job approval rating has dropped to a low for any president in the past 15 years, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

[...]

Biden leads Trump, by 15 points, in one of three attributes tested in the survey—being honest and trustworthy. Forty-one percent say this describes Biden, vs. 26% who say it applies to Trump. That's down from a high of 38% for Trump, last reached in April 2017, three months into his presidency, and it's a point from his low on honesty and trustworthiness.

Trump comes back, though, with advantages in two other areas. Forty-seven percent say he has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president, compared with 28% who say this of Biden. And more, 57%, say Trump has the physical health necessary to serve, again compared with 28% for Biden.

Along this one survey's respondents, Trump was rated much higher than Biden on a measure of "the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively." Trump was also rated much higher on a measure of "the physical health necessary to serve." 

We can't say we were shocked to see that substantial divide. We can say we found it dismaying.

As with that Pennsylvania survey, so too here. These results came from one single survey. Such surveys can always be wrong, and November is far, far away.

Having said that, we'll add this:

We aren't surprised to see results like that from a serious survey. We ourselves regard Candidate Trump as badly disordered, presumably clinically so—but he doesn't seem that way to tens of millions of other American voters. 

Beyond that, it's as we noted a few months back. Candidate Trump is spilling with a type of energy, much as Yeats famously said:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

For ourselves, we don't refer to people who are clinically afflicted in a serious way as "the worst." In our view, they need to be stopped from harming others and themselves, at which point they should be pitied for the loss of human potential involved in their affliction.

That said, Candidate Trump is very much full of passionate intensity; he can keep up the passion for hours. Attempting to seize on a few slips of the tongue as a bulwark against these passionate onslaughts strikes us as a bit of a ghost dance.

That said, the results of that ABC / Ipsos survey may explain why the White House seems to have moved in this new direction in its recent messaging, with blue tribe pundits following along behind.

Candidate Trump is filled with intensity; he can keep up the bullroar for hours. Now for a confession:

When we see old tape of President Biden, even from the 2020 campaign, we don't feel entirely sure that that person still exists. We've seen a lot of tape from the past year which fills us with concern about what might happen this year, as Candidate Trump seeks his own second coming.

Can President Biden do it this year? Will he be able to function as a forceful and effective candidate on his own behalf? 

In our view, that remains to be seen.

Tens of millions of people are going to vote for Candidate Trump, as is their perfect right. We disagree with their view of this matter. But then, they disagree with our view, as is their perfect right.

This will be a year unlike any other.  In our view, one major question remains: 

Will Biden be able to do it?

Yesterday, we teased a bit of advice from one NeverTrumper. We tend to disagree with certain particulars in his view of this matter, but we think his overall advice is sound.

The NeverTrumper to whom we referred was New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a man of the pre-Trump center right. Early in this week's version of The Conversation, he told Gail Collins this:

COLLINS (1/23/24): New Hampshire’s tomorrow, and even if Nikki Haley wins, it isn’t very likely she’ll be going any farther. Which means Trump will, for all practical purposes, be the nominee by the middle of this week. You want to offer up any positive thoughts?

STEPHENS: I have none.

COLLINS: Aw, c’mon. I know you’re anti-Donald, but at least tell us something chipper the rational part of your side is thinking.

STEPHENS: I think you’re referring to an essay I wrote called “The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose.” Some readers accused me of normalizing Trump. But it was written in the spirit of know your enemy.

Given the stakes, the jocular tone of these conversations has always driven us crazy. That said, when Stephens writes about Candidate Trump, he says that he is writing "in the spirit of know your enemy."

In this week's conversation with Collins, he continued directly from there:

STEPHENS (continuing directly): Trump’s opponents have consistently done us all a disservice by underestimating his strength, misunderstanding his appeal and misunderestimating (to borrow a word) his presidency. And we’ve done our side an even bigger disservice by too often being smug and moralistic.

COLLINS: You know, it’s been a long time since I heard a Trump critic articulate a defense of Trump. Appreciate the chance for a needed shaking-up. Not looking forward to it, but go on.

Collins almost never quits with the tongue in cheek approach. We think it's time to retire the tone, but we agree with Stephens in a general way—we think our blue tribe has often "done our side an even bigger disservice by too often being smug and moralistic," dating back decades and years.

We think that dates back many years, all the way back to the 1960s. Regarding the specific appeal of the man who established himself as the nation's top birther, we agree with some of what Stephens says, may agree less concerning a few other points.

We'll review those points tomorrow, venturing back to the earlier column to which Stephens refers.  We'll close today with this:

The dumbest were filled with passionate bullsh*t on last evening's Gutfeld! program. Referring back to yesterday's Kevin Drum post, the destructive meltdown in the American discourse is one of those nagging "problems" our country has yet to solve.

This afternoon, we'll offer more on that general matter. But we think Kevin, whose work we have long admired, is playing a bit of a Pollyanna card in his recent ruminations. 

Trump may crash and burn today. He may sign a plea deal tomorrow.

It's also possible that he'll power ahead and win again in November, perhaps while losing the popular vote. 

Will our nation lose its democracy? We have no idea. That said, the dumbness was everywhere on Gutfeld! last night, dispensed by five stunningly empty heads and a new, slicker approach from Fox. Needless to say, Gutfeld himself referred to Gretchen Whitmer as a "ho," then said he was only kidding around.

The abused, angry fellow is like that. 

The dumbness last night was astounding. On the other hand, we also despaired over the degree of dumbness driving the comments which followed Kevin's recent post.

There's no cure for the human condition! Historically, we humans form ourselves into tribes, then proceed downhill from there.

We deny and deny and deny and deny. We love it when you critique the others. We hate it when you say there could possibly be an improvement over here, among the giants universally found within our infallible side.

Tomorrow: Three anti-Trumpers offer advice. They span the political spectrum.

The lady or the tiger, sages said!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2024

What kind of nation are we? Monday evening, in New Hampshire, the intensely disordered Donald J. Trump made a statement which struck us as uncomfortably accurate. 

Leaving aside a few points of complication, this is what he said:

We have become a nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem. The simplest of problems we can no longer solve. We can't do anything.

As a nation, have we reached the point where we can't solve even the simplest problems? In our view, it's stunning to see the way blue tribe commenters to Kevin Drum's subsequent post seem to think that this is the most ridiculous thought in the world.

Within the liberal / progressive world, it's standard thinking that we may be on the verge of losing our democracy by the end of this year. In our view, that qualifies as a dramatic example of possibly being unable to solve even the most basic and fundamental problems. 

So it would seem to us. But the troops seemed to think we were out of our mind when we said that Trump's statement, shorn of the usual phantasmagoric add-ons, was basically accurate and would seem to be basically accurate to tens of millions of voters, blue as well as red.

If someone other than Trump had said it, it might have seemed to make more sense with the liberal / progressive / Democratic Party world. We thought immediately of the years and years, leading up tyo the present day, in which we as a nation have been unable to solve the problems associated with migration and the southern border. 

On a smaller scale, we thought of the way we haven't been able to build a second train tunnel from New Jersey into New York City, even though everyone on the east coast knows what a transportation jam point that is.

(If memory serves, Governor Christie somehow took the federal money for the project and used it to cover the cost of his revenue-draining tax cuts. The transportation problem remains unsolved.)

Is our nation, which is about to lose its democracy, able to solve the most basic problems? Was it able to do so in 1860, before the start of the civil war? We would have thought that everyone agrees that we've reached a point of national divisions creating a potential national crisis.

Kevin Drum, whose work we very much admire, seems to see things differently, as is fully appropriate. The headline on his rebuttal post reads like this:

The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers

In his post, Kevin lists a lot of problems we haven't yet solved. They're juxtaposed to a list of problems we have allegedly solved. 

Our nation is rapidly splitting in two, with warnings that we'll have no future elections. But as we head off into that sunset, we can reassure ourselves that "we've passed tax cuts, bankruptcy reform, Obamacare, financial reform, and an infrastructure act."

In a famous story, we were offered a choice of a lady or a tiger. Today, you get this preliminary choice concerning the state of our nation:

We have become a nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem. 

The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers.

As major tribunes within the progressive world warn us that our democracy itself is about to pass out of existence which description makes more sense? (There is no simple answer.)

We're big admirers of Kevin's work here. We hope to encourage a wider discussion of this elementary conundrum. 

Concerning his commenters, reading their comments convinces us that there is no cure for the human race or for our human devotion to the sacred truths of the tribe. There's one point on which all human tribes agree:

The other tribe is all wrong. Our tribe is right all the way down. Please don't suggest that we could improve. In our greatness, we've never been wrong.

Concerning Kevin, we offer no snark. Concerning the commenters? More and more, it seems to us that there is no cure for human.

GHOST DANCES? Cause for hope in the Keystone State?

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2024

Plus, a route to successful dances? Yesterday was a very good day at this incomparable site.

We got some helpful medical news. We received some much-appreciated pushback from Kevin Drum concerning that possible ghost dance. (See here, then also see this.)

(More on that disagreement to come. As Kevin basically noted, disagreement is normal.)

And then, this morning, a bit of hope! This post has arrived from PennLive at the Patriot-News in the capital city of swing-state Pennsylvania:

New Pennsylvania poll shows Biden leading Trump in head-to-head

A new, too-early-to-mean-much poll of Pennsylvania voters shows incumbent President Joe Biden holding a 7.5 percentage point lead over former President Donald J. Trump.

But, hey, on this presidential primary day why should New Hampshire have all the fun?

Yes, the poll is very early, and it's a fairly substantial outlier. But on this very best of days, could a worm be starting to turn?

It's our belief that any normal Democratic president could defeat Candidate Trump this fall. In recent months, our concern has been this:

Can the current version of President Biden wage a competent, vigorous campaign on his own behalf? We don't know the answer to that question.

As we noted at the time, our deep concern formed on the day of his speech on Maui following the Lahaina wildfire disaster—and we didn't see "edited" tape on Fox News. We saw the speech live on CNN, exactly as it was delivered, and we came away deeply concerned concerning what might still come.

As Trump has taken the lead from Biden in some scary national polls, it seems to us that our blue tribe elites have perhaps begun staging some recent ghost dances. Example: 

Trump refers to Haley when he means Pelosi and we act like some major thing has changed.

That strikes us as a losing play. It reminded us of the vast historical tragedy involved in the "ghost dance" ending of our nation's Indian wars. 

As a possible measure for the long run, we thought we saw routes to more successful future dances in a set of recent columns in the New York Times.

For today, we'll focus on Bret Stephens, a long-time standard conservative, but also a long-time NeverTrumper. 

Just to establish a record, Stephens isn't going to vote for Candidate Trump this year. Just to establish a record, here's something the NeverTrumper said in yesterday's version of The Conversation with Gail Collins:

STEPHENS (1/23/24): Truth is, if Biden were running against Nikki Haley, I’d vote for her. But a vote for Trump is just an invitation to the furies, both foreign and domestic. His victory would be great for Vladimir Putin and devastating for Volodymyr Zelensky. It would weaken the center-right and center-left while energizing both the MAGA faithful as well as the social-justice warriors. It would debase our culture, debilitate our democracy, disorient our allies and drive normal people nuts.

If the price for avoiding that is Biden’s meh presidency, I’ll take it.

He'd vote for Haley over Biden—but he wouldn't vote for Trump. At this site, we'd vote for Biden over Haley. But here again, disagreement is a large part of normal.

Also to establish a record, we'll reproduce something Stephens said about the Democratic ticket he'd like to see in the field this fall against a Candidate Trump

STEPHENS: Well, the hour is late for President Biden, and my preferred option remains to see the first lady persuade her husband to step aside around the time of the Democratic convention, so that the party can choose a new ticket—ideally Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, with Adm. Jim Stavridis, the former NATO commander, as her running mate for foreign policy gravitas.

But let’s assume that isn’t happening. My first piece of advice for Biden is: abortion, abortion, abortion.

It's hard to picture some such thing happening. And of course, Stephens didn't say that he'd vote for Whitmer/Stavridis—but he has made it plain that he wouldn't vote for Trump.

To complete the rule of three, we'll offer the part of The Conversation which we'd affirm with the greatest force. Asked to guess about Trump's possible VP selection, Stephens offered this long cool drink of sane:

COLLINS: Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, gets mentioned a lot and recently Representative Elise Stefanik from upstate New York. Stefanik is the one whose questioning of the head of Harvard put the poor woman on a short slide out of office.

Trump reportedly called Stefanik “a killer,” which from him is an enormous compliment. She’s only 39, but I could imagine her getting the nod.

STEPHENS: Stefanik or Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. He’s pleasant and ingratiating, a tall drink of water. She’s aggressive and unscrupulous, a triple shot of moonshine. And unlike Pence, she’d follow Trump straight to hell. Were it up to me, I’d choose Scott, which makes me think he’ll choose Stefanik.

He's pulling no punches concerning Stefanik. It will be years before we get over the way some of our vaunted blue elites ran to say that Stefanik got it right in her performance with the three college presidents, a colloquy in which her performance was substantially more appalling even than theirs.

We've offered these three clips today to establish a basic record. Stephens isn't a blue tribe denizen, but he's full-throated NeverTrump. 

In essence, this new Conversation served as a follow-up to Stephens' most recent stand-alone column, in which, or so it seemed to us, he offered some good sound advice.

That earlier column appeared last week, beneath this puzzling headline:

The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose

In that column, it seemed to us that Stephens—an unabashed anti-Trumper—offered some good sound advice. More specifically, it seemed to us that he was offering sound advice to us over here—to us in our frequently self-impressed but routinely ineffective blue tribe. 

A glint of good news has emerged from Pennsylvania. It may turn out to be a mirage—or it could always be the start of a change in the nation's political weather.

That said, Candidate Trump could win this fall. Tens of millions of neighbors and friends are going to vote for that outcome, as is their perfect right.

It seems to us that our own blue tribe has played a role in the creation of this state of affairs. Political groupings can earn their way out, and it seems to us that our blue tribe, like every large tribe, may at times have an impulse to do that. 

Our concern about November's outcome mainly concerns the degree of vigor with which President Biden will be able to campaign. At this site, we suspect that doctored ghost dances won't be able to save the day. 

It may be too late to save the outcome of this year's presidential election, but it seems to us that Stephens' column from last week offered some good sound advice for the much longer run.

Democracy hangs in the balance at this time, our blue elites widely say. We don't know if that's the case, but we think there are much more promising ways for our own blue tribe to perform.

Tomorrow: The NeverTrumper's Tale

Paul Tsongas was cast as the one you could trust!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2024

Granite State recollections: By all accounts, Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) was a good, decent person.

He'd been a (one-term) senator from Massachusetts. He had grown up in Lowell, Mass., up near the New Hampshire line.

It was Tsongas who won the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary—the primary in which Bill Clinton became "the Comeback Kid" by fighting back from Gennifer Flowers and Howard Stern to finish a surprising second.

In that early race, Tsongas had defeated the more charismatic Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) along with Bill Clinton, who was universally understood to be the next big thing. Briefly, Tsongas seemed to be in the lead for the nomination.

One day, we had gone to see him speak at the workplace of our sister, who was then a New Hampshire resident. 

He seemed like a good and decent person. On another night that week, we went to see Clinton speak, literally in a New Hampshire town hall, and it was obvious, just as soon as he entered the room, that The Big Guy, The Real Thing, had arrived.

(Star power can be like that. An NBA team looks amazing and huge as they all walk off the bus.)

As the leading authority recalls, Tsongas had left the Senate in 1985, at the end of his one term, because he's been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Now, he went through various steps to demonstrate that he was ready to return to political office after having undergone a successful bone marrow transplant.

Quite literally, he put on his Speedo and he swam laps to show us voters how healthy he was. In a genuine loss to the world, he died on January 18, 1997—two days short of the end of the presidential term he had sought.

In the mainstream press, Tsongas was cast as the honest Democratic candidate that year. Clinton was cast as the slippery guy you couldn't trust.

Starting in March 1999, the mainstream press cast Bill Bradley as the honest player in the race for the 2000 Democratic nomination. Al Gore was relentlessly cast as the post-Clinton slightly cracked big liar. Right up to the Sunday before the November election, Maureen Dowd just wouldn't stop writing about his deeply troubling bald spot.

These themes came from within our blue tribe press. On the whole, they didn't come from the right-wing machine. 

Gore won every primary that year, but the never-ending war against his alleged dishonesty eventually sent Bush to the White House. In that sense, it also sent the U.S. army into Iraq for an extended stay. 

The people who savaged Gore most crazily are still active in the blue tribe press. We saw Chris Matthews, who behaved like a lunatic for two solid years with respect to the girly-man Gore, on Morning Joe just last week. For the record, GE's Jack Welch ran NBC at the time.

Everyone knew what Chris was doing. No one ever spoke up about it.  He was too big a deal at the time.

These people have failed you again and again. They're ready to do so again, and of the course they're very well paid for keeping us barefoot and well entertained.

Life is still good when you're rolling in dough! We've been failed by these people again and again and we always go right back for more.

One additional question: By now, does anyone doubt who told Maureen Dowd about Beau Biden's alleged dying words during the 2016 campaign? 

The column, which was never sourced, savaged Hillary Clinton. It then became the basis for an otherwise unsourced New York Times front-page "news report."

Very few people could have been accepted as a source for those (alleged) dying words—for the alleged words which helped send Donald J. Trump to the White House. For ourselves, we didn't know about Hunter Biden's deep addiction and crazy behavior at that point in time.

These people have failed you again and again. Under the long-standing rules of the game, what happens in the mainstream press corps stays there forever and ever. 

Under the rules of that same game, we keep coming back for more.

One more Manchester moment: We met the late Tim Russert, just one time, at the journalist / comedian comedy show during the (we think) 2004 New Hampshire primary. He buttered us up real good that night, and we don't mean that as a criticism.

Star power and charisma can be like that. As we saw first-hand on that one occasion, Tim had those traits in spades.

Top humorist suffers slip of the tongue!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2024

Quite often, we humans do: Yesterday morning, during the 6 o'clock hour, the Morning Joe gang was reminiscing about Granite State contests past.

At one point, John Heilemann, on the ground in New Hampshire, briefly stopped yukking it up. Instead, he tried to make an accurate point. 

When he did, the master misspoke, as we humans frequently do.

Below, you see exactly what he said—and no, we aren't making this up! The transcript we're offering hasn't been doctored. You can even check the videotape, just by clicking here:

HEILEMANN (1/22/24): I will say, as you talk to political people who really know the state here, whether they're pollsters or strategists or whatever—

You know, back in 2016, remember, Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in this state, and they were within—less than a percentage point separated them on Election Day in 2016.

It was "27 point something" percent for Hillary, "27 point something," a little less, for Donad Trump. But like less than half a percent! You know, Biden won this state by seven points in 2020, and there's polling out there that says Biden wins this state by ten points in 2024...

Heilemann went on to say that Trump has made New Hampshire "toxic" for Republicans over his term in the political spotlight. 

For ourselves, we hope Heilemann is right about that. For the record, tens of millions of voters take the opposite view, and they get to be citizens too.

Heilemann was trying to make a basic point about the political drift in New Hampshire over the past eight years. Along the way, he misspoke. We human beings often do that, even when pontificating on "cable news" or perhaps when running for president.

In what way did the master humorist / pundit misspeak? According to what Heilemann said, this is the way New Hampshire voted in the 2016 general election:

New Hampshire 2016 (Heilemann version)
Clinton (D): 27.x %
Trump (R): 27.x %

In fairness, his general recollection was accurate. But in this bit of extemporaneous speech, he simply experienced a slip of the tongue, as people frequently do.

Heilemann had suffered a slip of the tongue! The actual totals were these:

New Hampshire 2016 (actual results)
Clinton (D): 47.62%
Trump (R): 47.25 %

The gist of what Heilemann said was correct. Along the way, he misspoke.

(No one corrected what he said. On cable, it isn't done!)

Why do we mention this today? Simple! Mere minutes before he made this slip, the master humorist had been yukking it up about the way Donald J. Trump had suffered a slip of the tongue the night before. 

(Go ahead! Search on "Joe Strummer.")

Ha ha ha ha ha! the gang said. Then, with a matter of minutes, that same member misspoke.

More and more, then more and more, Morning Joe is turning into an early morning version of open mike night at a local comedy club. 

For the record, Joe Scarborough has a superb sense of humor. That said, today's show was nearly endless in its early pursuit of big yuks and cool tribal fun.

Attempts at humor can be fun, but this supposed to be "cable news." Increasingly, on Fox but also at MSNBC, it looks to us like the bosses and the money counters have decided that clowning around—playing the endless comedy card—is the best way to keep us rubes tuned in and to keep the big bucks rolling in.

In our view, Donald J. Trump is severely disordered. Because our tribe can't get Others to listen to anything we have to say, we now entertain ourselves.

When Trump misspoke, the humorist pounced. Just like that, within mere minutes, the master himself misspoke!

GHOST DANCES? Is Biden-Harris pushing a dance?

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2024

Here's what Trump actually said: We hadn't planned to start with a possible ghost dance today. That said, Kevin Drum—channeling the Biden-Harris campaign—has pretty much forced us to do it.

So too with Jonathan Lemire, at 5:05 o'clock this morning—right there on MSNBC, right there at 5:05 a.m. sharp.

Kevin has been running with the possible dance—a form of "I know you are but what am I?"—for the past several weeks now. Below, you see the start of his post from late last evening.

We're big fans of Kevin's work. (Increasingly, Lemire has become a clown.) That said, we think he's bad wrong in his latest iteration of this new, low-IQ Storyline.

Does Kevin's post advance a new ghost dance? Below, you see the way his post starts, headline included. In this (possible) dance, our blue tribe has begun to advance varieties of this general claim:

Everything is going to hell

What is Trump even saying here?

[VERY SHORT, TIGHTLY EDITED VIDEO CLIP]

On his good days, Trump is still fine. On his bad days he can barely string two sentences together.

Simple message: It's Trump who's losing his mental acuity! No way is it Joe Biden!

As you can see at Kevin's site, the very short, tightly "edited" video clip comes to us, live and direct, from the X feed of "Biden-Harris HQ." At the Biden-Harris feed, it comes with a transcript of what Trump supposedly said at a New Hampshire event last night.

The Biden-Harris HQ post was issued at 10:42 last night.  In full, its transcript quotes Trump saying this, with punctuation and signs of edits helpfully washed away:

Transcript from Biden-Harris HQ:
Trump: Which is incapable of solvin’ even the sollest problem. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on

(Closing punctuation omitted.)

"Which is incapable of solvin’ even the sollest problem?" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Except that isn't what Trump is shown saying in the actual video clip. 

Back to Kevin's post! As Kevin goes on to note, the overall meaning of what Trump was saying was perfectly loud and clear. And no, blue tribals, no:

In fact, Donald J. Trump didn't say the non-existent word "sollest." The post which came from Biden-Harris is a grossly misleading, presumptively dishonest, version of what he actually said. 

Below, you see a slightly fuller. more accurate transcript of the statement in question. To everyone who isn't dancing a dance, we'd have to say that Donald J. Trump's fuller statement is ringing out loud and quite clear:

Donald J. Trump, fuller statement:
We have become a drug-infested, crime-ridden nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest, the smallest problem. The simplest of problems we can no longer solve. We can't do anything. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. 

We will put this on. We have to bring in the death penalty if we want to stop the infestation of drugs coming into our country.

"What is Trump even saying here?" That's what Trump was saying.

Trump went on from there. He recommended instituting the death penalty for drug dealers. For the record, it's a type of penalty we've always opposed and still do. 

(To watch Trump's actual statement, click here for the C-Span videotape of the nearly endless, 81-minute speech. The one tiny excerpt Biden-Harris posted was pulled from minute 72 of the nearly endless address.)

Above, we've shown you a fuller transcript of what Trump actually said in the passage the Biden camp "edited." We've shown you what he actually said—not what you can be told that he said, if Biden-Harris omits the first part of what he said, along with the middle part of what he said (with no sign that they've made an edit) and if they simply let the end of his statement fly off into the air.

Assuming even minimal competence, the "transcript" that Kevin reposted is, plain and simple, dishonest. At this site, we used to call this sort of thing a "Maddow edit" back in the less than impressive old days.

Here are some questions about what Trump said:

Have we really become "a drug-infested, crime-ridden nation?" Based on everything we know, crime is currently trending back down, but the fentanyl crisis is quite real. 

You can take your choice regarding the accuracy of that pair of claims. That said, here's the heart of what Trump said, and who can dispute the general accuracy of this unfortunate statement?

We have become a...nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest, the smallest problem. The simplest of problems we can no longer solve. We can't do anything. 

To every person at last night's event, the Southern border would have leaped to mind when the candidate said that. As everyone knows, our tribe's cable news stars have spent the bulk of the past few years pretending that no such problem even exists.

Just with regard to that one state of affairs, who can doubt the accuracy of what Trump said? Who can doubt the accuracy of the claim that we have become a nation that can't solve the simplest problem?

Of course we've become a nation which can't solve the smallest problem! It isn't perfectly easy to dole out blame for that situation, but the accuracy of the basic statement is blindingly obvious.

Correction! The accuracy of the statement is plain until a gang of hacks at Biden-Harris come along and run a scam through the presentation of a doctored "quotation." We're ashamed of Kevin for reposting that garbage—and yes, that clownishly doctored "quotation" does have the horrible feel of a new blue tribe "ghost dance."

(For background on the tragic history of the ghost dance, see yesterday's report.)

Full disclosure! Joe and Mika were all in on this new dance today. Let us explain what is happening:

Trump has been making crazy statements for at least the past nine years. We're starting with the role at the mother of all birthers, then moving on from there. 

His claims about Campaign 2020 have also been crazy—and they've been so for the past four years. But our profoundly flawed blue elites don't know how to speak to The Others about that, and so the useless children at Biden-Harris have decided to con you with this.

The useless children at Biden-Harris may not be the brightest. Just last week, they had to apologize for their stupid post mocking the persistently NeverTrump Asa Hutchinson when he left the GOP race.

Their post was Pure Stupid all the way down, and someone made them apologize. That said, our blue elites have constantly failed us, for decades—and now, the children over at Biden-Harris have settled on this:

We don't know how to speak to voters about the craziness of Trump's substantive claims or his values. So we'll do this instead—we'll seize on occasional slips of the tongue. We'll even invent slips of the tongue when we actually have to.

In this case, someone found or invented a slip of the tongue at the 71st minute of an 82-minute speech. They then doctored the "transcript" of what was said, and they tweeted they that out, thereby suggesting or saying that, on nights like this, Trump "can barely string two sentences together."

Sad! One last point about Trump:

Back at the time of his E. Jean Carroll deposition, it seemed to us that a fact became fairly well established. According to reporting at Salon, Donald J. Trump needs glasses but is too vain to wear them in public—and so, just as Biden sometimes stutters, Trump sometimes has trouble reading text off a teleprompter.

He was plainly reading off prompter when he delivered that statement last night. We'll guess that the jumble in the middle of that fuller passage may have resulted from that.

That would be a guess. What follows isn't a guess:

Biden-Harris is now tweeting out doctored, DeepFake-adjacent "quotes." It's sad that our tribe has been reduced to the point where we feel that this is the only way we can campaign or fight. 

It's sad, but it's unmistakable.

At any rate, the transcript of that "quotation" from Trump is, at its heart, a Fake. Also, never doubt this:

We have become a small, pitiful nation "which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem." Everybody knows that's true—and in our view, a lot of that stems from our blue tribe's unintelligent behavior over the past many years, though your assessments may differ.

In our view, Donald J. Trump is almost surely (severely) mentally ill. What's our self-impressed blue tribe's excuse as we start to embroil ourselves in this latest unpromising dance?

Tomorrow: Sound advice, much too late

Is Joe Biden going to win this year?

MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2024

It's time to start sussing that out: Is Joe Biden going to win this year? It's time to start sussing that out.

We're not entirely sure that he will or that he can. We're very concerned by the possibility that he might not be able to make it through.

We'll be voting for Biden ourselves—but tens of millions of voters are going to disagree with our assessments and our decision. As we look ahead to an inevitable "Year That Was," we'll only make this first suggestion:

Blue tribe members need to be more sagacious about the possible lay of the land.

We need to stop listening to the corporate-paid thought leaders who have failed us so many times in the past. Also, we need to stop otherizing everyone who disagrees with our understandings, our assessments and our viewpoints.

We need to stop trusting Mika and Joe and their stable of sidekicks and guests. We need to stop trusting Rachel and Chris and Lawrence and even Professor Tribe, who quickly announced that Stefanik was right. We badly need to get over ourselves, though that's very unlikely to happen.

The current, very difficult state of affairs has been developing for decades. Our tribe has played a significant part in creating this mess. It may be too late to fix it.

Is Biden going to win this year? As we begin the final struggle with that question, we strongly advise you to stop putting your faith in corporate-paid tribal cheerleaders and their various "dear, dear friends."

They've served you very badly for decades. Often, they're being paid enormous sums to attract your eyeballs and your clicks. (You're not allowed to know how much.)

Even where they're well-intentioned, they simply don't merit your trust.

STARTING TOMORROW: Ghost Dances?

MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2024

Intimations of defeat? We're sorry to say it, but we thought we might be watching a type of tribal "ghost dance" on our TV screen last Thursday night.

As many readers will know, that historical term dates to the subjugation of Native American peoples in the American West. This tragic process was nearing its end in 1890 when the ghost dance movement took form and grew among the Lakota people.

We're sorry to say that we thought we might be watching something resembling a modern-day, blue tribe ghost dance on the evening to which we refer.

We'd recently rewatched the Ken Burns documentary, The American Buffalo. In a six-minute excerpt, the film recalls the deeply tragic history of the historical ghost dance. You can watch that excerpt by clicking here, then clicking on "Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee Massacre."

We'd rewatched that part of the Ken Burns film. Now we were watching Alex Wagner and Melissa Murray discussing the apparently serious legal problem apparently afflicting Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney who is pursuing criminal charges against former president Donald J. Trump and a large number of others.

Were Wagner and Murray engaged in a type of ghost dance? To provide a bit of background, the conversation proceeded as Wagner's producers played these surprisingly frank chyrons on our TV screen:

WILLIS ACCUSED OF HAVING IMPROPER RELATIONSHIP WITH PROSECUTOR

TRUMP CO-DEFENDANT SEEKS TO HAVE FULTON CO. DA REMOVED FROM ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE

If you're unfamiliar with this matter, that may be because we blue tribe members have largely been sheltered from this storm by our blue tribe outlets. For an AP News overview, just click this (no paywall). Yesterday morning, this matter reached the front page of the New York Times' print editions, as you can see by clicking here.

Up to a point, we admired the frankness of Wagner and Murray this past Thursday night. You can watch the whole interview. To get started, just click here.

Question! Has Fani Willis done something wrong in her pursuit of this sprawling case? Early in the interview, Professor Murray (NYU Law) had made it sound like Willis might be facing a very serious legal situation. 

Here's part of what was said:

WAGNER (1/18/24): I do wonder, given the fact that she may be romantically involved with the prosecutor in her case that the state is paying, is that—I mean, if you are a judge, Scott McAfee here, is this, is this open and shut in her favor? Or is there a potential avenue for a problem?

MURRAY: So, I mean, the optics are terrible if, in fact, there is a romantic relationship and he is doing some exorbitant amount of hours and profiting in some way from this. Like, this should be disclosed if they are in fact in a romantic relationship. And I think most people would say, to err on the side of caution, it would be better not to work with someone with whom whom you're in a romantic relationship on a matter as high profile as this one. 

But again, it doesn't undermine the charges that were brought against Donald Trump and his codefendants. It's just messy. Maybe it's an ethical problem with regard to how the prosecutor's office is working, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there are ethical problems with regard to the charges that they have brought...

The optics are bad. It's going to be really tough sledding for Fani Willis going forward because of this, but not because of the strength of the charges she brought against him. 

To be clear, this wasn't a Fox News program. This was a leading legal analyst speaking with Wagner on Wagner's nightly MSNBC program. 

To our ear, that legal analyst—she's very capable—was making some remarkable statements about the state of this case.

To be clear, Professor Murray kept drawing a basic distinction. Nothing involved in this new dispute bears on the quality of the charges Fani Willis has brought against Donald Trump and the other defendants. 

More specifically, the existence of this new dispute doesn't "necessarily" mean that there's a problem with those charges. It doesn't necessarily mean that—and having said that, good God!

Murray also said that there may well be "an ethical problem" with the way Willis has conducted herself in this matter. She said it's going to be "really tough sledding" for Willis because of this matter's emergence.

Wagner and Murray both asserted that they don't know the truth of the claims being made about Willis and Nathan Wade, one of her three externally hired, outside assistant prosecutors. But Wagner also noted that Willis has not denied these charges, and the general tenor of the conversation seemed to suggest an assumption that the basic factual charges here are accurate.

Beyond that, dear God! As the conversation continued, Wagner even speculated about the possibility that Willis will be "ordered to step down from this case." 

Murray acknowledged that possibility. She even said it might be hard to get some other D.A. to proceed with the prosecutions against these defendants—that the Fulton County case against Trump and the others might simply cease to exist.

We were surprised, but also impressed, by Professor Murray's frankness. We hadn't heard a ghost dance yet—but then, we heard Murray say this about the "tactic" being employed against Willis by the defense attorney who first raised these points of concern:

MURRAY: It's a really sort of "go big or go home" tactic. You know, smear this woman, blow up her life, but also blow up this prosecution and maybe blow it up to the point where it doesn't come back.

We'd call that a very strange statement—and the possible start of a ghost dance.

Readers, please! As far as we know, defense attorneys will always try to "blow up" a prosecution to the point "where it doesn't come back." As far as we know, that's a defense attorney's job.

For that reason, we were amazed, and disappointed, to see Murray move on in this way from her earlier statement. 

In that earlier statement. Murray had said that Willis might be engaged in a highly consequential "ethical problem." Now, she was describing the revelation of this matter as a mere "tactic"—much more remarkably, as a "smear!"—as a tactic and a smear designed to "blow up her life."

From there, Wagner went on to report suggestions made by Willis that this whole thing is being done because some people don't respect black women. From that point, the conversation had the sound of a very familiar old card—and it almost sounded like we were listening to a ghost dance. 

At this point, there seems to be little real doubt that that Willis and Wade have been involved in a romantic relationship. (For the record, we think it's good when people find romance with one another.)

We bring no legal expertise to assessments of this matter, but Professor Murray does—and she had clearly said that there may well be an ethical problem with what Willis has done, with possible serious consequences for the state of this high-profile case.

We don't know what's going to happen. With respect to Thursday evening's conversation, our general view runs like this:

In recent weeks, the shortcomings of our blue tribe's elites have been crashing down around us in ways which have sometimes been hard to ignore, even for tribals like us. In our view, this sort of thing has actually been a problem for decades, dating back to the start of this site in 1998, when our "liberal" mainstream press corps was already engaged in a long-running war against Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

In recent weeks and months, the shortcomings of those blue elites have become more and more visible. As last Thursday's conversation proceeded, it seemed to us that Wagner and Murray had begun to placate us blue tribe viewers by playing a familiar old card.

This coming year will almost surely turn out to be a major "Year That Was." We'll explain that bit of language in the reports ahead.

That said, we thought we might be hearing the sound of a ghost dance as Murray and Wagner switched gears midway through their discussion. As they did, a report they seemed to think was accurate was now being framed as a "smear."

Was that the start of a ghost dance—a form of tribal denial? Correctly or otherwise, we think we see an array of such dances being performed across the sweep our blue tribe's dial as it becomes more and more clear that Candidate Donald J. Trump could actually win this year.

We think we see such dances being performed all across our embattled blue tribe. As with the deeply tragic story of the Lakota people in the 1890s, it sounds to us that our own thought leaders are emitting the last dying gasps of a people which has come to see that it has been subjugated, at least for the present time.

We think we might hear a ghost dance forming when we pretend—based on a handful of flimsy examples—that it's really Candidate Trump who is losing his cognitive focus. We think we might hear a ghost dance forming when we keep pretending that we have a blue tribe candidate who will be able to go out and make his own forceful case this year.

We don't know what's going to happen this year. That said, this year will almost surely go down as a major "Year That Was." 

Meanwhile, at this site, we'll be bringing in the gloom this week. With apologies, we're going to say the things we say because we think they're accurate.

The Lakota "ghost dance" was, and is, a tragic part of our national history. Did we hear the hint of a ghost dance last week? Are such dances being performed here within our blue tribe?

Tomorrow: Sound advice, too late?

Funniest dual headline today!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2024

From the top of the online Washington Post: As we type at 2:15 p.m., the article sits at the very top of the front page of the Washington Post's online edition.

It  runs beneath the funniest dual headline in political journalism today. The headlines in question say this:

Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized
Social scientists say polarization is increasingly based on a visceral dislike for the opposition, rather than extremely divergent policy preferences.

Finally! According to the headlines, "science [and] social scientists" are finally "revealing" those facts! 

Full disclosure! When blue elites can be so daft, that helps explain why Candidate Trump could (quite possibly) win in the fall.

Is Trump melting down before our eyes?

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2024

Sometimes a questionable notion: Our car doors opened a few hours later. In a word, there came the sun!

That said:

On the New York Times opinion page (print edition), we found these four headlines today:

In the Shelter of a Weeping Beech (Jesse Wegman)

When the World Feels Dark, Seek Out Delight (Catherine Price)

What Trump Voters Understand About the Economy (Roger Loewenstein)

Trump Just Keeps Doing Appalling Things, and the Ranks of the Disengaged Are Growing (Michelle Goldberg)

The writers agreed—these are terrible times. Even as Roger Loewenstein said that the economic situation is not as good as our blue tribe keeps insisting, he offered this personal assessment of the upcoming election:

"In a phrase, Mr. Trump is unfit for office."

That's Loewenstein's personal view of the current political scene. Even so, he was saying that Trump voters aren't being as irrational in their preference as our thought leaders typically claim. 

In the past few weeks, other anti-Trump writers have made similar claims. In short, these are deeply disturbing times.

What else did we see on that opinion page? Within the uplifting half of the page, Catherine Price was suggesting the institution of what she calls a "delight practice." Here's the way she starts:

PRICE (1/20/24): Here’s an idea for the new year: Let’s make 2024 the year of delight.

Does that sound ridiculous, given the state of the world right now? Hear me out.

The basic premise of a delight practice (which I learned about in the essay collection “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay) is simple: You make a point to notice things in your everyday life that delight you. This could be anything—a pretty flower, a smile you share with a stranger...Nothing is too small or absurd. Then whenever you notice something that delights you, you lift your arm, raise your index finger in the air and say, out loud and with enthusiasm, “Delight!” (Yes, even if you’re alone.) Ideally, you share your delights with another person.

The concept of prioritizing delight may sound silly or almost irresponsible, given the heaviness of current events, feelings of burnout and the upcoming U.S. presidential election, in which it seems democracy itself could be at stake. But this is exactly why it is so important. Far from being a frivolous practice, making a point to notice and share things we find delightful can improve our moods, outlooks, relationships and even physical health.

We're not saying that any of that is "wrong." But on the gloomier half of this morning's page, Michelle Goldberg reports that many blue tribers are beginning to "disengage" in the face of Trump's enduring political success.

Early on, this passage offers a taste of what she's worried about:

GOLDBERG (12/20/24): In 2019, Viv Groskop wrote in The New York Review of Books about how some in Vladimir Putin’s Russia had resurrected the Soviet idea of internal exile or internal emigration, a disillusioned retreat from politics into private life and aesthetic satisfactions. If Trump is re-elected, I’d expect to see a lot of Americans adopting a similar stance as an emotional survival strategy. 

Ah yes, the "internal exile." A few months back, we wrote about the impulse toward "internal exile"  which forms the heart of Peter Weir's Oscar-nominated 1985 film, Witness.

In that film, the Harrison Ford character seeks an exile in Pennsylvania's Amish country—an exile from his life as a police sergeant in a violent and corrupted Philadelphia. 

By the end of the film, he realizes that he has to return and continue his efforts within his own world. But the longing for a form of escape had been strong.

Our blue tribe is beginning to realize that Donald J. Trump could win again this year. We strongly advise against a theme which is currently being pushed around the blue tribe dial.

In that theme, we convince ourselves that Candidate Trump is melting down before our eyes—that he's been displaying the type of senility which is constantly being attributed to President Biden.

Kevin Drum has been advancing this idea, as you can see in this new post. Joe Scarborough has been pushing this notion for weeks.

Yesterday, we got an email from a journalist friend who is apparently going there too. The idea strikes us as a form of wishful thinking in the face of impending defeat, a modern-day blue tribe ghost dance.

We hope to discuss this matter next week. We don't think that Candidate / Defendant Trump is melting down in that way, and we don't think we should start telling ourselves that he is. 

On the other hand, our concerns about President / Candidate Biden are quite strong at this site. Our concerns could be wrong, of course.

For members of our own blue tribe, this is a very dangerous time. How can we prevent the worst?

As readers may already know, we're inclined to think it's already too late. There is much, much more to say about this—and we do recommend delight. 

Update concerning delight: Two hours later, our car doors opened! "There came the sun," we exclaimed.

Here Comes the Sun, George Harrison wrote, in a brilliantly simple ode to delight.

We play this video when we want to recall how much pleasure there can (sometimes) be in the world, depending perhaps on where you live. Also, though in second place, pretty much any version of the wonderfully simple Colours.

BREAKING: Temporary suspension canceled!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2024

Services should resume: After a long afternoon off-campus, we returned to this nesting spot during a very dark 6 o'clock hour last night.

There may be a slight delay today. But services will resume.

Needless to say, our car doors are frozen shut this morning. (Yesterday, it served us well.) We've had the car for twenty years and this has never happened. 

And no, it isn't an electric car. Power locks to the people! 

Update—why we mentioned the frozen car doors: We had to walk a few miles to fill a prescription this morning. As we told the worried analysts: 

If it was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, it's good enough for us!

Temporary suspension of service!

 FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2024

Medical treatment calls: Just like that, out of nowhere, medical treatment calls!

For that reason, we expect to be suspending our services over the weekend. We expect to resume next week.

Is there any such thing as "woke?"

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024

Two examples—one tiny, one large: In this morning's report, we mentioned David Frum's new essay for The Atlantic. 

For whatever reason or reasons, Republican office holders and officials have largely fallen in line behind Donald J. Trump. At one point, Frum cited three people who haven't:

FRUM (1/16/24): None of this is hard to explain. Republicans who get crosswise with Trump lose their career. There aren’t many volunteers to follow Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or Mitt Romney.

Frum named two major Republicans—Senators Risch and Rubio—who have meekly fallen in line with Trump. He then named three others who haven't.

Two were boys and one was a girl. By way of contrast, consider the manifest silliness which broke out during yesterday's Morning Joe.

Early in the 7 o'clock hour, the gang was discussing a similar topic. At 7:09, inexplicably, the exchange shown below occurred.

The exchange was triggered by an odd remark by Jennifer Palmieri. An array of off-camera male panelists rushed to agree with what Palmieri had said:

PALMIERI (1/17/24): I will just note who, following up on what Donny [Deutsch] said— Who in the Republican Party has stood up to Donald Trump? Liz Cheney—

OFF-CAMERA MALE VOICE: The women—

PALMIERI: Yeah.

OFF-CAMERA MALE VOICE: There you go.

PALMIERI: Cassidy Hutchinson. Sarah Matthews, the [inaudible] press secretary that, you know—

OFF-CAMERA MALE VOICE: I love that.

PALMIERI: Relatively low-level women in the Trump White House, the ones who are standing up and saying that this is—you know?

OFF-CAMERA MALE VOICE: Absolutely.

PALMIERI: Those are the ones.

OFF-CAMERA MALE VOICE: Says it all.

To watch the tape of this exchange, you can start by clicking here. 

In fact, Palmieri's peculiar statement doesn't "say it all." By our reckoning, her peculiar side-trip to Storyline seems to say about half of it.

An array of Republicans, men and women both, have stood up to Trump. The number hasn't been especially large, but it hasn't just been "the relatively low-level women," with Liz Cheney also thrown in.

Initially, Senators Corker and Flake went down the tubes due to their opposition to Trump. Senator Romney followed suit, then announced his retirement from the Senate.

Rep. Cheney (G) played a major role on the January 6 committee, but she was joined, within the House, by Rep. Kinzinger (B). They both lost their legislative careers, much as Frum describes.

(Ten Republicans in the House voted in favor of the second impeachment. Nine of the ten were men. Their subsequent careers have gone rather poorly.)

It's utterly silly—and yes, colloquially it's "woke"—to claim that it's only been a handful of low-level women who "stood up to Donald Trump" (with Liz Cheney thrown in). 

It's hard to know why someone would say that, or why so many others would want to chime in. But it's a very bad and a very dumb look, and such performative punditry isn't good for Democrats or for progressive interests.

We're sorry, but members of our flailing our blue tribe behave quite frequently in ways which are colloquially "woke." Also, everyone knows what that term now means. 

It doesn't help to lecture the world about what that word may have meant at some earlier time. As everyone knows, it now refers to claims or behaviors which emerge from "identity politics" in a way which is hard to reconcile with basic facts or with common sense.

For the record, this sort of thing happens all the time. The incident on Morning Joe was utterly trivial. but it was also utterly daft.

The segment in question ended with an oration by Donny Deutsch. The oration went like this:

DEUTSCH: Where I grew up in the school yard in Queens, we had a word for people like this, and it's not very appropriate to say—

SCARBOROUGH: No, it's not.

DEUTSCH: Where are the men? and I think Jen Palmieri really hit it. What's fascinating is, it's the women who have bene standing up to Trump, as opposed to the sniveling, weak men. I don't know how they look themselves in the mirror as men.

Exhibiting his old-world, macho-man gender politics, Deutsch went out of his way to get in line with what Palmieri had said. 

It's the women who have been standing up to Trump, he said—thereby eliminating Corker, Flake, Romney and Kinzinger, and even candidates Christie and Hutchinson, from the very short list of Republican opposition figures.

According to Deutsch, only the women have stood up to Trump. The men are a bunch of P-words!

So the gender politics goes on our blue tribe's morning "cable news" program. The conversation involved a silly insertion of "identity" issues into a fact field where it simply didn't belong.

Our world is full of such incidents—and some of them are important. If you still haven't noticed this obvious fact, you are part of the ongoing problem. 

We have met the tribal enemy and it often turns out to be us! Make no mistake—the person who insists on this sort of identity-based posturing is working against blue interests.

A much larger example of this sort of thing emerged from Baltimore within the past week. The Fox News Channel adores this stuff, and yes, it's currently known as "woke" within the American language.

BLUE BAYOUS: He caucused with Democrats, voted for Trump!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024

One caucus goer speaks: For the record, we agree with almost everything David Frum said.

Frum is the former Bush speech writer who apparently coined the phrase, "axis of evil," as our nation was on its way into Iraq. 

He's also a long-time Never Trumper and a staff writer at The Atlantic. The essay with which we (almost wholly) agree appears beneath this headline:

The Ruin That a Trump Presidency Would Mean

What kind of ruin does Frum foresee? As a starter, he's observing this:

FRUM (1/16/24): In 2016, Republicans could profess some uncertainty about the kind of president Donald Trump would be. Maybe the office would change the man? Maybe the party elite could bend Trump to its will?

But in 2024, there’s no uncertainty. Trump’s party is signing up for the ride, knowing exactly what the ride is. Pro-Ukraine senators are working to elect a president who will cut off Ukraine, knowing that he will cut off Ukraine. Pro-NATO senators are working to elect a president who will wreck NATO, knowing that he will wreck NATO.

In Frum's view, the world will change in disastrous ways if Trump reaches the White House again. In our view, that's surely a strong possibility. 

We're mainly surprised by the air of surprise Frum brings to his gloomy forecasts. Also, by the fuzzy thinking with which he concludes his piece. Here's how his essay ends:

FRUM: What kind of people are Americans, anyway? Trump has made clear, without illusions, that his ballot issue in 2024 is to rehabilitate and ratify his attempt to overturn the election of 2020. He is running to protect himself from the legal consequences of that attempt. But even more fundamentally, he is running to justify himself for attempting it. In 2016, Trump opponents warned that he might refuse to leave office if defeated. In 2024, Trump himself is arguing that he was right to refuse to leave office when defeated, and he is asking Americans to approve his refusal.

If he should return to the presidency in 2025, we have no reason to expect him to leave in 2029. So maybe the issue on the ballot in 2024 is not a choice at all, but a much more open-ended question. We know who Biden is. We know who Trump is. Who are we?

Do we "know who Biden is?" We're not quite sure what that means.

Do we "know who Trump is?" Not necessarily, no. For example, our press corps is dedicated to the proposition that we must never ever discuss a rather obvious possibility—the possibility that the raging Donald J. Trump is (severely) mentally ill.

Meanwhile, who are "we?" What kind of people are we Americans?

In a nation of 330 million souls, that strikes us as a slightly peculiar question. Adapting Whitman, but also inevitably, we are multitudes! We aren't one single person with one single set of understandings and one single worldview.

For an example of what we mean, consider an Iowa caucus goer who was interviewed on CNN this past Monday night. The interview was conducted by CNN's Kate Bolduan during the 7 p.m. Eastern hour. 

In Iowa, it was the 6 p.m. hour. Here's how the exchange began:

BOLDUAN (1/15/24): We're in Ames, Iowa. This is Sawyer Elementary School where there are three of the 24 precincts in Ames are all caucusing in this site right now. 

Where I am is where everyone is entering. This is the check-in desk, and right here is where first, this is where folks can register.

[...]

Joining me now is John [LAST NAME WITHHELD].

JOHN: Yeah, hi.

BOLDUAN: And you were—you were just filling out this form. Tell me what you were—are you a first-time caucus goer or what?

JOHN: Tonight, I was just switching parties to Republican. So I've caucused several times before.

BOLDUAN: Several times, but for Democrats?

JOHN: Last election, I caucused with Democrats. And so this election, I wanted to come back and caucus with Republicans.

BOLDUAN: Tell me why.

JOHN: I've kept really close watch on the election and listened to all the candidates and tried to make educated decisions. So I felt it was important to come and support the candidate that I chose.

To watch the entire exchange, you can start by clicking here.

Ames is an urban area; it's the home of Iowa State. That said, this caucus goer had braved the vicious winter weather to participate in the opening night of our nation's extremely complex election process. 

Below, we'll offer John King's summary of this Iowa voter's recent electoral history. First, though, here is this voter's account of where he stood as of Monday night:

BOLDUAN: You don't have to tell me, but have you decided who you're going to be caucusing for tonight?

JOHN: I have, yes.

BOLDUAN: Would you tell me?

JOHN: Sure. I've decided to caucus for Nikki Haley.

BOLDUAN: What is—what determined that? What's driving your decision tonight?

JOHN: I think she's going to be very strong in foreign policy. I was debating between her and Vivek. And I think her foreign policy is just going to be a lot stronger than what he was proposing, and I think with the current times globally, that's going to be very important for a president.

[...]

BOLDUAN: Have you been undecided, uncommitted for a time? When did you decide?

JOHN: I started out being in Nikki Haley's camp, and then I was considering Vivek very strongly, and probably in the last day or so then I decided to go with Nikki Haley.

BOLDUAN: John, can you tell me, if you would, who you voted for in 2020?

JOHN: I voted for Donald Trump.

BOLDUAN: And why not caucus for Donald Trump this time? What is it?

JOHN: I think his policies were good, but I think that there's too much distractions with him as president...

Bolduan didn't ask one major question of this caucus goer. If he caucused with Democrats in 2020, how did he end up voting for Trump?

That said, this one Iowa voter seemed to contain multitudes. Moments later, John King, serving as anchor, summed it up as shown:

KING: This is opening day of 2024, and that interview was just a fabulous snapshot of what I'm finding when you're out on the road as well—disaffected Americans who don't know where their political home is.

A man who caucused for the Democrats, voted for Donald Trump, considered Vivek Ramaswamy, and then lands on Nikki Haley.

That's a ping pong of politics. And I say that with full respect, no disrespect at all. That's how people feel. Where is my home? Who do I trust? Who represents me? And that's what makes this so unpredictable. 

Was that Iowa caucus goer a "disaffected American?" That wouldn't have been our own reaction, but that was King's account of that Iowa voter's recent history. 

In response to Frum's closing question, we'll only offer this:

That's who one (1) of us Americans is. Restricting ourselves to people who voted in 2020, that would be one down, with roughly 157 million more of us Americans to go!

In 2020, that Iowa caucus goer voted for Candidate Trump. We ourselves voted for Candidate Biden.

As of today, what does that caucus goer think about Donald J. Trump as a person? What does he think about the events of January 6? 

What does he think about the sorts of forecasts found in Frum's gloomy essay? This time around, could he imaginably end up voting for Biden instead of Trump? What does he think will happen if Trump wins a second term?

Also, where does he get his news and information? What newspapers does he read? Does he watch any particular "cable news" channel?

The questions could have gone on and on, then on and on and on and on, deep into a very cold Iowa night. If we chose to restrict ourselves to people who voted for Trump last time around, we'd have something like 74 million sets of questions to go.

"I contain multitudes," Whitman alleged. So does a very large nation.

Tomorrow: Good advice, coming way too late

Still coming: But what the heck's a blue bayou?

The Washington Post's most-read reports!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2024

Subscribers, heal ourselves? We haven't played this card for a while. Today, we felt it might again be time.

In its online edition, the Washington Post lists its five "Most Read" reports. As of this very minute, the headlines on the five most-read reports are these:

"Most Read" reports in the Washington Post:
At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging.

He hit three monster bets—and then the sportsbook wouldn’t pay.

Do you eat foods that leave you hungry or full? Take our quiz.

Advice / Carolyn Hax: If helping professionals won’t help 24/7, do they need new careers?

Princess of Wales hospitalized after abdominal surgery

This may mean nothing at all, of course. On the other hand:

Subscribers! Have we possibly met the problem, and could it perhaps be us?

BLUE BAYOUS: Red tribe viewers spoonfed Teslas!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2024

Our blue tribe instructed in "woke:" We've been surprised by one persistent talking-point as we've come to watch more and more of the nation's red tribe "cable news:"

We've been surprised by the persistence with which red tribe stars pound away at electric vehicles. 

It's a persistent theme on Fox, with all the employees reciting. This morning, they got to recite about an actual news event, reported here (without a paywall) by NPR's Bill Chappell:

It's so cold, Teslas are struggling to charge in Chicago

The Arctic air gripping much of the U.S. put Tesla drivers in Chicago into a pickle on Monday. Many of the cars sat in long lines at Supercharger stations, their owners saying the cold sapped the electric vehicles' normal ability to charge—and keep a charge.

In some cases, tow trucks were called to move the cars, in scenes that were relayed by local TV news. The Tesla owners' plight became an emblem of the misery extreme cold is inflicting on wide sections of the U.S. (more on that below).

"I've been here for over five hours at this point and I still have not gotten to charge my car," Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS News Chicago, as car horns blared nearby. "A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours."

[...]

On Monday, the local National Weather Service office recorded a rise to 1 degree Fahrenheit at Chicago-O'Hare Airport at 1 p.m. local time, adding, "This means that Chicago's climate site spent about 35-36 hours below 0°F."

How cold was it? In Chicago, it was extremely cold as judged by American norms. In his lengthy report, Chappell paints an embarrassing picture of the current state of electric vehicles in the face of such frigid conditions.

Chappell was perhaps a bit naive concerning one basic point. To Chappell, this gruesome situation "became an emblem of the misery extreme cold is inflicting on wide sections of the U.S." 

As Hector once said, "Strange man!" On Fox, the situation became an emblem of the appalling way our blue tribe elites are supposedly trying to force our nation's real Americans to surrender their internal combustion cars.

This theme is remarkably common on Fox. But so the discourse tends to go in a journalistic universe built on "segregation by viewpoint." 

Over on today's Morning Joe, viewers from our own blue tribe were being consigned to one of our tribe's "Blue Bayous" as two guests seemed to say that it's only been Republican women who have dared to challenge Donald J. Trump.

Everyone agreed with this formulation. Nothing will turn on what was said, but it was classic "woke." 

Let's be clear! By now, everyone within our landlocked blue tribe knows what we should say when that troubling term is employed:

We're supposed to say that the term has no actual meaning—that partisans of the hapless red tribe don't even know how to define the term "woke."

Sad! No one can define such terms as "liberal" or "conservative" in the precise way these thought leaders mean, but those terms are used all the time—and people have a working idea of what is being referenced.

At any rate, the year was finally underway as of this past Monday night. A small percentage of Iowa's Republican voters were willing to turn out, after nightfall, in very dangerous weather conditions, to play their role in the nomination of the next Republican candidate.

This part of our system makes almost no sense, but those voters should be praised for their desire to participate. That said, the election year will now unfold in a nation where two warring groups of voters are propagandized around the clock by a pair of thoroughly segregated journalistic elites.

We're prepared to admit it—we're flashing on President Lincoln again! In his second inaugural address, he described the state of play four years earlier as a brutal war drew near. 

It was Lincoln's second inauguration. Early in his short and astounding address, he thought back to the first:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. 

While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. 

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

And the war came, the president famously said. Six weeks later, at Ford's Theater, it claimed its most famous victim.

President Lincoln described a nation which had divided into two wholly separate camps. As his short, astounding address continued, he described that division:

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. 

All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. 

Each region prayed to the same God, the president said that day. The confederate viewpoint may seem strange, he explicitly said. But, for whatever reason, he instantly added this:

Let us judge not that we be not judged. 

Once again, Strange man! As we noted on Monday, Lincoln's address became more astounding as he continued from there.

Candidate Trump recently suggested that the war could have been avoided by skilled negotiation. We thought of the sheer stupidity which had arisen when the gentleman asked, way back when, if some sort of ingestion of liquid bleach might cure a case of Covid.

On this, the second morning of our new election year, the two warring "cable news" tribes stood in rank separation. Each corporate ownership group had assembled teams of analysts who would completely agree with each other while denouncing or disappearing the claims of the rival tribe. 

No overstatement, no matter how silly, would ever be questioned on the air. Viewers would hear their own tribe's perspective again and again, and they'd hear nothing else.

So it was on this second morning of this new election year. On Monday evening, a CNN reporter had spoken with one Iowa voter at one of the state's many caucuses.

The voter had braved life and limb to arrive at the scene, then had come in from the old. We were struck by some of the things he said.

We'll plan to start there tomorrow. Meanwhile, what does the term "Blue Bayou" mean? 

That strikes us as an important question, though the die has almost surely been cast for this year's war of the worlds.

Tomorrow: A CNN anchor was somewhat surprised by what that voter said

Yes, we'd call it woke: No, it doesn't really matter—but what was said on Morning Joe? 

At some point, we'll be able to show you. We'd call the statement unhelpful and silly, and we'd also call it woke. 

BLUE BAYOUS: Caucus goers favor Trump!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024

But why did the goers do that? In what way is the NFL like our electoral process?

Consider what happened last weekend: 

The NFL presents a brilliant product all through its regular season. Then its playoff season begins, with teams suddenly forced to play in objectively dangerous weather conditions which may make normal play hard to achieve and defy all logic and reason.

Our election system, such as it is, is a little bit like that! Last night, Iowa's Republican voters said they favor Donald J. Trump to be the GOP nominee for the White House.

Rather, the former president was favored by the small percentage of Republican voters who were willing to risk life itself by venturing out into the cold to attend their party's Iowa caucuses.

Except as a possible way to reduce citizen turnout, the Iowa caucus system has never really made much sense. This year, the caucuses ran headfirst into winter weather which was exceptionally dangerous, even by Hawkeye standards.

Last night's caucus results were created by the roughly 14 percent of Iowa Republicans who were willing to head out into the cold. "Be sure to bring blankets," they were frequently told, "in case your car suffers a breakdown."

Fourteen percent turned out! Some stayed home to watch the NFL. Others stayed home because they were afraid to head out into the cold.

With that, this year's bizarre presidential election got its official start. This is the way we run our most important political systems here in our struggling nation.

This, of course, takes nothing away from the caucus goers who did turn out last night. Beyond that, it's clear that Republican voters, by and large, do in fact favor Donald J. Trump for their party's nomination.

Why do those voters favor Trump? It seems like an obvious question.

Last week, one well-known conservative Never Trumper said that we blue tribe voters need to think about that question a bit more. All of a sudden, several other Never Trumper / anti-Trump types have written similar columns. 

We think that first Never Trumper was basically right. We think attention should be paid to some of the things he wrote.

We'd prefer to write about our tribe's array of (what we'd call) blue bayous. But as this dangerous year begins, the opinion voiced by that Never Trumper is where we'll start tomorrow.

Regarding that Iowa weather: Regarding last evening's frigid caucuses, let's recall what the poet once wrote:

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below.

We don't know what the poet meant. But that's what the poet once wrote.

We won't be posting till later today!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024

Snowstorm blankets Baltimore: Actually, the snowstorm isn't part of today's situation. But we won't be posting until later today.

Regular service resumes tomorrow. 

Snowstorm? Maybe five inches.

"Everybody can be great," he said!

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2024

Our blue tribe sometimes isn't: For our money, the inexplicable moral giant of this nation's history is its sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.

We track that judgment to his second inaugural address. We regard it as the least explicable moral statement in the history of the nation.

We recall reading that address for the very first time, on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, back in the 1970s. We were there, on a day-long field trip, with a bunch of Baltimore fifth graders. 

They were a bunch of extremely good kids. We recall how astounded we were when we first read, on the wall of that memorial building, among other things, this part of that astounding address, delivered even as the war continued:

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

For the full text, click here.

As a bunch of fifth graders clattered around us, we recall being astounded that day. 

We also committed this woeful offense, Lincoln had told his victorious side. 

We also committed this woeful offense. If we are forced to shed our blood to the same extent the bondsmen did, no one can say that the judgments of the Lord aren't righteous and true altogether.

We were stunned to think that a human being had ever said such a thing in public. We were something like 27 years old, and we'd never read that address.

Lincoln must have come from Mars, we recall thinking that day. We don't think that Dr. King's astounding ministry is as difficult to explain as are the words that president spoke that day.

Abraham Lincoln came from Mars; Dr. King came from the United States, such as it was at the time. As a child, then as a teen, he had seen the ugly workings of Jim Crow right up close and personal. 

According to his later writings, he was already looking for a way to address what he'd seen when he was still a teenager in college. (He entered college at age 15.) 

At a certain point, he was directed to the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. History proceeds from there.

Shortly before he too lost his life, Dr. King offered the words shown below. We first read the homily on post cards which were being offered for sale at the King Center in Atlanta:

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. 

You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. 

You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve...

Before that homily was done, Dr. King drew a further conclusion about the nature of moral greatness. We're going to leave that out today because of the difficult state of our own blue tribe.

You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve, Dr. King had correctly said. 

He knew that he was leading a movement of people who were, in fact, morally great. Beyond that, he knew that they were morally great even though, in most cases, they hadn't been allowed to become "highly educated."

That hadn't been allowed, but the people to whom Dr. King referred were indeed morally great. They were the actual "greatest generation," or they were one of such groups.

Today, the elites of our own blue tribe are often "highly educated." They're also often deeply flawed, and our tribe may be in the process of paying a very high political price for that obvious fact.

The flaws of our tribe are obvious—to everyone but us. There are several reports in today's New York Times which makes those flaws embarrassingly obvious, though they'll be invisible to us.

Our own blue tribe is deeply flawed. Imaginably, the red tribe could be even worse, though we don't recommend such comparisons. 

Had God willed that our own blue tribe must be punished all over again? We don't see the world that way, but if Lincoln were here today, he might be asking that question.

Everybody can be great, Dr. King said. Due to his family's status, he could have lived a long, relatively easy life. He decided to do something more fundamentally astounding, involving what he often described as "the love ethic of Jesus."

He chose to take a more difficult path. On the whole, is it possible that we are perhaps a bit less insightful today?

Inexplicable fact: By most accounts, President Lincoln had roughly one year of formal schooling.