WTF-Beta

OK, when I was born (Bernard too), there were still Civil War veterans around ...

Yes, Rogers could lose in MI and Peltola could carry Alaska ...

Hard to imagine big national changes that would undermine Democratic candidates. A lot easier to imagine national changes that reinforce this polling. The war in the middle east is all loss for the GOP. If it ends with obvious US concessions, they're toast. "Trump lost a war of choice and weakened our troops!" If it continues, they're toast. The stuff about the Navy has got to be worrying them, especially if Democratic candidates (the ones with a brain) broadcast ad after ad with Trump saying he thinks the yearlong deployment of our carriers is "not long enough." Elaine Luria in my area will kick Jen Kiggans' GOP incumbent ass in November over this, I'm sure. And that's a battle of two ex-military people. Even without our Virginia redistricting three GOP House seats are at risk.

Is Lander really DSA?

titillating....

I'm sure I've told this story, but I'll tell it again ... just in case.

As an undergraduate at Kenyon, I was pulled into working on the college newspaper (The Collegian) by this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Winkler_(journalist)

He taught me how to write concisely, and instructed me more clearly and personally than any professor did in a formal class. That was my sophomore year, which would have been 1975-76.

At that time, this guy was our paper's political cartoonist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Borgman

Borgman lived next door to me that year, but we weren't friends. He was a senior. Borgman went on to the Cincinnati Enquirer where he won a Pulitzer in 1991.

We on the paper's staff knew that Borgman was graduating so we pondered whether we were going to have political cartooning as part of our offerings for the 1975-76 academic year. Well, at the beginning of the following term (fall of 76) a young kid (he was a sophomore and I was now a junior!) walks in and says that he would give it a go.

Of course, that was Watterson. His stuff was good so we said "sure!" And the rest is history.

I wish I had been even more involved in the paper than I was. I sort of treated it as a minor pastime.

Here's another person I worked with on that school paper. She edited the paper after Matt Winkler left. She was just let go by CBS as they shut down their storied London bureau. Here's a great NY Times article about her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/fashion/weddings/a-proposal-and-a-broadcaster-left-speechless.html

We had quite a group ...

And Trump has also found a way to save Hezbollah for Iran.

I think you focussed on the wrong "protagonist."

This is the main character ...

https://people.com/thmb/F6H7kEQqyBz3oAEfHcl4uRWhMmk=/750x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/alan-ruck-ec7ec079f16b4665819b695a35da7fae.jpg

My new little friend in the garden: Western Fence lizard.

https://www.facebook.com/100000076418541/videos/pcb.27781190928133415/977751011544866

I guess we're the same age. I come of age (70) next month.

And about Fleisher, he was a judge at one of Piano*Son's competitions in Norfolk.

I edited it and added more when you weren't looking ...

When I was young, Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich were living composers. Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Ravel were "recent." In high school I was playing piano works by Barber, who was still around.

I saw Arthur Rubinstein give a concert in Miami. He debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1900.

Just saw Gordon Wood's obit in the NYT, which reminded me of another seminar with John Agresto on the American Revolution. Wood's early work was a central pillar of that course. One of the big issues was whether the colonial separation was a radical "Revolution" in thinking or a conservative rebellion to restore and preserve existing liberties. Woods was on the radical side, and his framework was used by Ken Burns in his most recent work on the Revolution.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/books/gordon-s-wood-dead.html

And now, back to 60 Minutes!

I entered that class (first year seminar on political thinking) without strong political convictions and left it well read on everything from Plato to Marx, and lot's in between. Perhaps the best class I have ever taken.

I just found out that I went to college with Bari Weiss's father. Imagine my surprise!

Louis Weiss (Louie to us) was sort of a class clown. He was a fellow political science major and we had the same mentor (John Agresto). The difference is that I passed the comprehensive exam in political science and graduated. Louie took two tries at it and failed both times. He had to come back the following year and fill out a secondary major (drama) and pass the comps in that discipline in order to get his degree.

I'm so sorry to hear this. How are things going today?

And it's not even close. There's no real comparison.

Waldman goes beyond just the cabinet to include stars like Miller and Vought.

He leaves out heavyweight bootlickers like Hassett (may he rot in professional hell forevermore) and Bessent.

It will take several generations to recover from this, even with the best of people in charge over the next quarter century. And the first step in undoing the damage, alas, will require wholesale use of the powers that the executive branch now owns ... like mass firings of thousands of Trump-hired minions throughout the bureaucracy.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cabinet-worst-ever

A few missiles and drones have gotten through, out of well over a thousand fired/launched. That doth not a failure make.

Likewise, warm day produces insects. This fella was on the wall at PetSmart! A conehead katydid.

From Facebook ...

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/185C7DNQin/

Trump just likes the sound of his own voice.

As Jon said, no boots means no one to surrender to.