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16 Responses to “Metaphors and catchy phrases, cont’d”

1. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 3rd, 2018 at 3:41 pm

   Will Al Qaeda Spoil A Peace Deal In Afghanistan?

   Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Qaeda has played the long game, and it has thrown its weight behind its relationship with the Taliban.

   The Third Thing, BY DONALD HALL

   What we did: we got up early in the morning. I brought Jane coffee in bed. She walked the dog as I started writing, then climbed the stairs to work at her own desk on her own poems. We had lunch. We lay down together. We rose and worked at secondary things. I read aloud to Jane; we played scoreless ping-pong; we read the mail; we worked again.

   Donald Hall, The Art of Poetry No. 43

   We played softball. This was in 1945, and Frost was born in 1874, so he was seventy-one years old. He played a vigorous game of softball but he was also something of a spoiled brat. His team had to win and it was well known that the pitcher should serve Frost a fat pitch. I remember him hitting a double. He fought hard for his team to win and he was willing to change the rules. He had to win at everything. Including poetry.

2. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 4th, 2018 at 3:14 pm

   Well, today of all days the sports metaphor of the day must be the “umpire” metaphor, which Judge John Roberts used in his opening statement at his own confirmation hearing.
   .
   Here are the two gobbits containing the sorting references:

   Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them.

   The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules.

   But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.

   and

   I have no agenda, but I do have a commitment. If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench. And I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.

   .
   i had that on my bingo card ..
   .. who knows what a semi-colon is for ..
   the american dream has become the american game .. and that game is fixed ..
   .
   Judge Kavanaugh’s opening statement:

   A good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy. As Justice Kennedy explained in Texas versus Johnson, one of his greatest opinions, judges do not make decisions to reach a preferred result. Judges make decisions because “the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result.”

   and:

   The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution. The Justices on the Supreme Court do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle. They do not caucus in separate rooms. If confirmed to the Court, I would be part of a Team of Nine, committed to deciding cases according to the Constitution and laws of the United States. I would always strive to be a team player on the Team of Nine.

3. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 5th, 2018 at 7:46 pm

   Google mail NYT:

   A Supreme scrum:
   .
   It’s slam-bam in first round of Kavanaugh hearings
   .
   The first day of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court featured name-calling, protesters escorted out of the room by the Capitol Police and a world-class display of bickering across party lines.

   Now Twitter Edits The New Yorker:

   Even conservatives who do the right thing can be criticized for insufficient courage. After Jeff Flake denounced Trump from the floor of the Senate and announced his retirement, The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson Sorkin faulted him for having “raised a call to arms — and then sounded the retreat.”

4. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 6th, 2018 at 3:37 am

   Ari’s the Beat:
   Michael Steele “bobbing and weaving” ..
   As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?
   Roe vs. Wade: What Kavanaugh may have meant by ‘precedent on precedent’
   Hardball:
   re who wrote Op Ed:
   that’s the game of the moment .. that’s the question of the moment ..
   PJ O’Rourke: the democrats are throwing the game [re kavanaugh]
   All IN,
   Sen Chris Murphy: this is the latest act in what is a continuing 3-ring circus
   Trump:
   I think we could be so rich if we weren’t so stupid. We’re being played [as] suckers, especially NATO.
   11th hr brian williams:
   a washington parlor game (ashley parker on guessing who wrote the op ed)
   .

   I understand the need for levity sometimes, but does anyone else feel uncomfortable at the way some ppl are treating this like a game?

   As if this is a political “Where’s Waldo?” instead of an extension of instability that harms the lives of real ppl, often the most marginalized.

   — Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) September 5, 2018

   
   senators spar over release of confidential documents .. chyron, msnbc
   A wounded lion is a very dangerous liom. And trump is wounded ..

5. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 7th, 2018 at 7:57 pm

   politicall football ..
   the game inside the game.. matrioshka .. Draft Kings fantasy football ad ..
   every anecdote only confirms another anecdote ..
   when we’re looking at the same playing field ..
   MTP 9/7/2018, I’m obsessed..

   i’m obsessed with the similarities between sports and politics .. no, not the udual, they’re both about competation and numbers and who wins and who loses, no, this is about two leaders, their teams both wear red, white and blue, they’ve done a lot of winning recently, and these guys manage to communicate a lot by saying very little..

   .
   
   .
   Hardball:
   President Trump tonght shadow boxing againt an invisible enemny (opponent?) ..
   All In, Jerome Corsi:

   I’m fed up with this. I want to say to Mueller, ‘Let’s go out in the backyard of the Justice Department. You’ve got to have some—let’s duke it out. I mean, you want to behave like a thug? You want to behave like that? Well, this is what you deserve. Let’s duke it out. You’re finished. You’re a hack. The whole investigation is a criminal set-up,

   hunter? ..
   i am not saying theformer president has a glass jaw ..
   here’s yyour chance to punch back at trump ..
   go to the ramparts ..
   .
   the trump administration is a snake-pit; trump is a snake, he has hired snakes, and now the snakes are biting each other .. some kind of diffuse ouroboros?

6. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 10th, 2018 at 12:23 am

   Ben Sasse:

   it’s pretty clear that this White House is a reality-show, soap-opera presidency

   this is one of those dream or theater is reality / reality is dream or theater ones, first stage to an endless recursion in a hall of mirrors.. remembering which, someone said of the current white house, it’s a:

   hall of mirrors ..

   and i thought to myself, Angleton’s phrase was:

   wilderness of wirrors ..

   eh? NB, XXCommittee’s distinction between puzzles and mysteries at that link is priceless ..
   .
   *
   .
   

   Vanity Fair:

   For Giuliani, the flip-flop was typical. Since he joined Trump’s legal team earlier this year, the longtime ally of the president has repeatedly moved the goalposts for an interview before hurriedly recalibrating. As is often the case with Giuliani, it was unclear whether his reversal was part of a grand strategy or another example of the septuagenarian putting his foot in his mouth.

   — maybe the best example of moving the goalposts we have, unless one that mentions Overton windows in parallel can be found — which I doubt — two very different modes of discourse ..

   the notion that Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s legal team will ever allow the president to go toe-to-toe with Mueller ..
   .
   Mueller’s position could also be political theater ..
   .
   Mueller’s investigation enters its final stretch ..

   president trump is coming out swinging …
   .
   9/10/2018
   the president wants to forge forward with this mano-a-mano diplomacy ..
   MTO:
   who.s going to win that battle — the man who exposed watergate and ultimately brought down a president, or the president who the Washington Post says has more than four thousand lies .. ?’Hardball:
   Donald Trump now faces someone his own size, Bob Woodward, who has taken down one president, now confronts this one
   he believes he can create hos own weather .. with the truth, a weapon he, Donald Trump, cannot even grasp ..
   Hardball
   you have to think about the ground game ..
   they are the romanovs .. a family held together by blood ..
   a sort of viceroy of the middle east ..
   the first dughter ..

7. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 12th, 2018 at 4:09 pm

   Zuckerberg on games, fwiw, from Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?

   He and his wife prefer board games to television, and, within reach of the couch, I noticed a game called Ricochet Robots. “It gets extremely competitive,” Zuckerberg said. “We play with these friends, and one of them is a genius at this. Playing with him is just infuriating.” Dave Morin, a former Facebook employee who is the founder and C.E.O. of Sunrise Bio, a startup seeking cures for depression, used to play Risk with Zuckerberg at the office. “He’s not playing you in a game of Risk. He’s playing you in a game of games,” Morin told me. “The first game, he might amass all his armies on one property, and the next game he might spread them all over the place. He’s trying to figure out the psychological way to beat you in all the games.”

   MTP re FEMA: we have to deal with the hand we’ve been dealt (make sure I got that right) ..
   the senate has been in play a long time ..
   i think wisconsin is the closest to the playing fiend ..
   The Beat:
   Donald Trump’s witchhunt is Mueller’ss treausre trove ..
   kavanaugh — casey is precedent on precedent ..
   another way to duck and cover ..
   Hardball:
   McConnell — like a knife fight in an alley, just a brawl ..
   the republicans have signed up to be e dallas cowboy cheerleaders of the trump administration ..
   it’s like a comic opera ..

8. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 14th, 2018 at 1:23 pm

   A boxing analogy, tho not to politics..
   .
   As the Winds Come, Towns in Hurricane Florence’s Path Fear the Floods

   At the same time, residents and emergency personnel throughout inland North and South Carolina were working under the grim assumption that the Category 1 storm’s pounding of the coastline would be only the first powerful punch in a fight that could go many rounds and last for many days. It will play out not only among stilted beach cottages and seaside resorts, but also in workaday towns and cities much farther west.
   .
   “This may be the first time we’ve experienced such a two-punch from these kind of conditions,” said South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, at a news conference on Thursday, speaking about evacuations along the coast as well as the possibility of rain-triggered landslides in the mountains.

   Dept of Unintended Consequences? — same article, a glimpse

   Mr. Letchworth, the city spokesman, said the possibility of immediate flash flooding seemed to be getting worse in recent years, the result of a building boom spurred in part by the expansion of the 29,000-student East Carolina University. That has meant more pavement and other impermeable surfaces, he said, and more places that flood that have not flooded before.

   Pure sports, no metaphor, gorgeous writing and paragraph after paragraph of it, what I look to the New Yorker for — Wm Finnegan, Off Diamond Head:

   Leslie Wong caught and pulled into the wave of the day, his back slightly arched, his arms relaxed, making the extremely difficult—no, come on, the ecstatic—look easy. If I ever grew up, I wanted to be Leslie Wong.

   Donald Trump has more convicted felons around him than many Mafia dons — Toobin ..
   Basically Manafort raised the white flag today, he basically gave up everything — Nick Ackerman
   .
   De Niro / Pacino, Righteous Kill:

   You know what I think about before I pull the trigger? I think about the infield fly rule. I love that fucking rule. It assumes the worst of everybody. It says sorry batter you’re a smuck for poppin’ up with runners on and you stupid ass infielder you don’t get to cheat and drop the ball just because you caught a break. My favorite part, the batter’s out but the runners advance at their own risk. That’s the way life should be, you can be a motherfucker at your own risk… or not.

   This is just me learning sports language.
   .
   this is a grudge match ..
   .
   ‘Robert Mueller’s real quest here is for the truth’: How Paul Manafort’s plea brings the special counsel probe closer to its endgame
   .
   Finally, to logic a paradox, to psychology a simple truth:
   .
   John Kerry’s memoir shows his weakness. That’s what makes it so strong:

   Whatever you may think about Kerry, he emerges in these pages as a man who’s strong enough not to worry that in telling the truth about himself, he might look weak.
   .
   “[I had] been knocked on my a–,” Kerry writes of his defeat in the 2004 presidential campaign. “I felt a galloping sense of frustration, disappointment, anger and sadness, often all at once.” After this intense letdown, the careful, ambitious-to-a-fault Kerry began to take more risks. The worst thing that could happen to him had happened. He began to breathe.

   There’s a Leonard Cohen level of self-awareness right there.

9. Charles Cameron Says:
   September 18th, 2018 at 3:09 am

   Ari Melber 9/17,2018

   to put it bluntly, i don’t think that a man accused of sexual assault should be nominating another man accused of sexual assault to the Supreme Court of the United States of Americs ..

   Anita Hill’s claims echo in allegation against Kavanaugh. Three decades later, will anything be different?
   we’re getting into the procedural baseball ..
   ari: the playbook of denial back in play — but will it work ..
   Hardball:
   it really takes courage to have courage ..
   b boxer:

   this is eerily, eerily just like what happened to ANita Hill.. even you have chuck grassley, who was on the committee, really being terrible to anita hill, and, orrin hatch and others, and they’re still there ..

   hatch is talking the same way he was back then ..

   chris matthews: does this force the story to the end game — where trump to protect himself is going to have to pardon his kids?
   joyce vance: it looks like we’re rapidly heading towards an end game, chris — manafort is sort of like the pot of old at the end of the rainbow for prosecutors..

   All In:

   he believes there’s a conspiracy that is out to smear Brett Kavanaugh ..
   and this is a playbook that he and his team played with Roy Moore, and it’s a playbook he played with himself during the campaign, it’s a playbook you can see cropping up any time someone that team trump endorses, and wants nominated or supported comes under fire ..

   he knows where all the ostriches are buried ..
   nick ackerman m 31/3: the white flag opens up..
   manafort was really the endgame ..
   Rachel:
   just because it’s history doesn’t mean it can’t rhyme ..

10. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 19th, 2018 at 4:46 am

    More sports metaphor:

    China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling.
    .
    BEIJING — President Trump imposed tariffs in July on $34 billion in Chinese goods. China matched them dollar for dollar with its own.
    .
    “They don’t know what to do,” he added. “They worry that the tit-for-tat model is playing into Trump’s hands.”
    .
    China’s leaders “don’t really want to engage in a dollar-for-dollar retaliation,” said Yu Yongding, a prominent economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Their purpose is to stop this trade war.”
    .
    But more drastic moves, like closing factories or encouraging consumer boycotts of American goods, could eliminate Chinese jobs.
    .
    The battle began when the United States imposed tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. It has led to a global tit-for-tat targeting billions of dollars of goods.

    Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s Battering Ram
    .
    they are playing the hardest of hardball, in an attempt to pack the court ..
    he’s playing checkers and Putin is playing three-dimensional chess ..
    .
    **
    .
    One way I’m thinking of expanding my “metaphor collecting” is to note mathematical and perhaps scientific metaphors.
    .
    Thus:

    Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Nomination Is in Big Trouble.

    By John Cassidy, September 17, 2018
    .
    It was clear from the comments made by Christie and other Republicans that Ford’s decision to go public had irrevocably altered the political calculus. Charles Grassley, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had scheduled a vote on the nomination for Thursday, which now seems likely to be delayed or abandoned. Grassley hasn’t confirmed this yet. On Monday afternoon, he was “working on a way to hear [Ford] out in an appropriate, precedented & respectful manner.” He didn’t mention any public hearings, though, and he seemed to be referring to the possibility of phone calls between the committee and Ford. Grassley is no longer fully in control of events, however.

    It may be that “calculus” is a pretty widely used metaphor for all sorts of cost/benefit analysis, and that there are few other math metaphors, although I’ve seen one “geometry” metaphor recently, I think. But here’s a “physics” example:

    Jian Ghomeshi, John Hockenberry, and the Laws of Patriarchal Physics
    .
    he sexual-assault allegations against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein were first reported in October, 2017, which means that we have now spent eleven months listening to the victims of such violence, most of them women. This is a deeply unusual situation in the context of human history, and, lately, a set of compensatory forces has appeared to be working to bring the universe back into balance. Women have had their “moment,” their unprecedented time in the spotlight of cultural favor. The gravitational pull of male power is exerting itself, turning our attention back to the place where it has been trained to linger: the hero’s journey of men.

    .
    That gives us compensatory forces, balance and gravitational pull as subsets of physics.
    .
    It may be worth noting that the writer of this piece is conscious of, and refers to, metaphor:

    When C.K. showed up at the Comedy Cellar a few weeks ago, he reportedly received a standing ovation before he began speaking. (He then made a joke about rape whistles.) Many who read about the performance were appalled; others suggested that C.K. had “served his time.” (In this metaphor, the phenomenon of people finding out and responding to the truth about your behavior is akin to carceral punishment.)

    Did I say geometry might be a broad-use metaphor like its big brother calculus?

    Money can’t buy happiness – or can it?
    By Paul Benson
    18 September 2018
    .
    In his thought provoking book The Geometry of Wealth, author Brian Portnoy observes: “Does money buy happiness? The answer to that question can be summarised as Yes, Not really, It depends.”

    There we go..

11. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 19th, 2018 at 6:42 pm

    Physics, did I say? Here’s another instance, from a from a WaPo piece, Freddie Oversteegen, Dutch resistance fighter who killed Nazis through seduction, dies at 92:

    In interviews, Ms. Oversteegen often spoke of the physics of killing — not the feel of the trigger or kick of the gun, but the inevitable collapse that followed, her victims’ fall to the ground.

    “Yes,” she told one interviewer, according to the Dutch newspaper IJmuider Courant , “I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall. And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.”

    And there are a few that are so obvous. they’ve passed right by me a hundred times. Nicolle Wallace just used one at ~10m mark on her, will check back later if I can.
    .
    MTP The Lid: m 49/51
    Katy Tur: one of my favorite phrae=ses =- “does not take place in a vacuum”
    cliches Katy T wld like to get rid of: “proven fighter” “double down”
    .
    Katy: does this change the calculus for anybody, knowing this guy has been in office, and he’s who the voters elected?
    Katy: if that’s the way society feels, and that’s a political dagger for the Republicans, why are the Republicans not pushing back on Kavanaugh, and saying, Hey, we need an FBI investigation?
    .
    Daily News:The profound asymmetry of the Kavanaugh-Ford clash: He’s got the presidency behind him, and she’s basically in hiding
    By MARGARET CARLSON
    .

    But what nerve of her to ask that one of the most asymmetric conflicts in political memory be tempered by a brief FBI inquiry of, at least, Kavanaugh classmate and purported witness, Mark Judge.

    Hardball:
    The Devil’s Triangle [ sexual 3-some]
    chris m: this is going to happen,, it’s a terrible game, it’s a stalemate.
    ashley parker: this is a president who says out loud the stage directions.

    NYT: For Red-State Democrats, Accusation Against Kavanaugh Scrambles Midterm Calculus:

    Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, a progressive who has been an outspoken supporter of Dr. Blasey, said there was any number of reasons her red-state colleagues could oppose Mr. Kavanaugh. And she sought to assure them that, because of the allegation, they could safely adjust their calculus on Mr. Kavanaugh.
    .
    “We’re in a different kind of environment now,” said Ms. Hirono, pointing to the fury of many women in the #MeToo and Trump era.

    he’s supposed to say, We’re still going to make the Superbowl ..
    prediction: they’d be on each other’s dance cards well before the election ..
    All In, Chris Hayes:
    Zoe, you’ve done some reporting about the timeline here, which has become something of a rhetorical cudgel wielded by republicans and the president himself..
    senator graham gave (game) up the game this morning..

12. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 20th, 2018 at 8:23 pm

    And I suppose optics is a physics metaphor — lots of examples, but here’s one:

    When 11 men interrogate: GOP tries to head off Kavanaugh debacle
    .
    To head off the potentially bad optics of older white men questioning a woman about alleged sexual assault, Republicans are considering having an independent outside lawyer question Ford alongside senators. They’re also carefully controlling the hearing, allowing testimony from no witnesses other than Kavanaugh and Ford, and declining Democratic calls for the FBI to investigate Ford’s claim further.

    She’s just wanting to be heard for the first time, and taking an enormous gamble to do so.

    Fiction — Victoria, season 2:

    I don’t want her to be a pawn in some dynastic game. I want my daughter to be free to marry, as I did, for love.

    Fiction, Worricker 1:

    It was a good move. It means the game’s in play ..
    Well then, your daughter is in with a chance ..
    Helena Bonham-Carter:

    He’s tough, he has to be — he’s private equity. e buys a failing business and makes it work. The chariot goes at a certain speed. Peasants fall under the wheels. That happens
    [.. ]
    Johnny thought you might be able to give him the inside track ..

    Another calculus instance, this one from the Wikipedia entry on William T Vollmann:

    Rising Up and Rising Down represents more than 20 years of work in which he tries to establish a moral calculus to consider the causes, effects, and ethics of violence.

    Vollmann is rara avis.
    .
    Ben Wittes on Kavanaugh’s predicament:

    It means accepting that it is better to continue serving as a D.C. Circuit judge than to play the sort of undignified games that Republicans are playing on his behalf.

    But read the whole thing.
    .
    would trip a red line .. [MTP 9/21/2018]
    that was part of the kerosene that’s on this conflagration .. geo will
    republicans keep switching the rules to suit them .. and that is the perception of the democrats, and basically to figure out, what are those rules, and to stop moving those goalposts. maria kumar
    The Lid:
    this is a metabolic urge of the man.. fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, he’s gotta do that stuff.. and there’s no use judging it. it’s like lecturing a volcano ..
    they are trying to avoid the optics, because .. anita hill optics is what they [] to avoid ..
    we are leveling this across the board ..
    let’s just say that pitcher’s mound would have been lowered ..
    The Beat:
    kneecap the mueller probe ..
    this is ammo to purge rosenstein ..
    d’you think that if what you just said applies, then the times got played?
    it’s possible. i mean, reporters can get played [bill kristol]
    i’m good at this thunderdome moment ..
    i’ve always looked at it as a bar of swita [?]
    Hardball:
    how about the games from the other side? i mean, there’s a great deal of gamesmanship back and forth here ..
    there’s a lot of gamesmanship ..
    cut throat ..
    you’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics, but here’s what i want to tell you [mcconnell]
    he’s a win-baby ..
    trump’s gonna go on a jiahd ..
    All In:
    loose lips sink ships, and it’s USS trump that’s sinking ..
    this is not the time to change the home team, unless you are trying to

13. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 22nd, 2018 at 11:27 pm

    Boxing with God — and more religious stuff, closing with a great Chesterton quote, from ‘100 Kegs or Bust’: Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, has spent years writing about high school debauchery

    Judge’s father, schooled at Blessed Sacrament, Gonzaga and Catholic University, could read Latin fluently and readily used classical references. Judge, in contrast, wrote that he “learned about the female body, heard from New Age writers that I could create my own theological system, and learned about life in English class by reading ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’?”
    .
    “I was a Catholic illiterate kept that way in a Catholic school,” he wrote in “God and Man.”
    .
    Judge spent years struggling with his faith. He relished boxing with God, questioning and testing his beliefs. He read his father’s copies of books by G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Merton, works that embraced the mystery of faith, an idea that appealed to Judge’s belief that the most complete people are those who, as Chesterton wrote, have “permitted the twilight .?.?. with one foot in earth and the other in fairyland.”

    Do the Democrats Have a Post-Kavanaugh, Post-Midterm Game Plan?

    In a few years’—if not a few weeks’—time, there will be another set of confirmation hearings. There always is, and each is shaped by the previous one, as the parties refight the latest war on a new plain of legal writings and personal backgrounds.

    Note that “fighting the last war” is almost a cliche by now in military and strategic reform circles — with negative connotations. Thus Quora: What does it mean by generals always fight the last war?
    .
    Twelve years ago, Amber Wyatt reported her rape. Few believed her. Her hometown turned against her. The authorities failed her. What do we owe her now?

    And then it was quiet, life was mundane, things resumed: Like an ancient society settling back to rights after a gladiatorial game or ritual sacrifice.

    A relatively obscure sports metaphor (gladiatorial), and a ritual sacrifice ref — not bad for so short a paragraph from an impressive long read.
    .
    Metaphoricaal giveaway, from Ford runs circles around hapless Republicans, who now have a second scandal:

    Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) repeatedly vowed he would confirm Kavanaugh. They’d “plow through” he declared, a remarkable confession that they’ll bulldoze Ford and vote to confirm no matter what. The public can conclude Republicans have no problem sitting Kavanaugh even if Ford’s claim is true.

    From the same — a death penalty metaphor, now frayed from overuse?

    Even if they had tried, Republicans could have not done a better job demonstrating their bias, ineptitude, unseriousness, meanness, unfairness and general lack of empathy. They have become a walking advertisement for Democratic Senate candidates (“Can you believe these clowns?” would be an apt bumper sticker) and an embarrassment to their own operatives who see the Kavanaugh confirmation hanging by a thread.

    Okay, here’s a wild one. Regarding Trump’s “unmentionables” from

    Russian state TV goes into overdrive defending Trump’s genitalia: ‘Stormy’s expectations are unreasonably high’

    During one news program, Davis said that the Russian host defended the size of the U.S. president’s penis after adult film actress Stormy Daniels, in her new book, compared it to “the mushroom character in Mario Kart.“
    .
    “Russia’s state TV is defending Trump with gusto, down to the size of his unmentionables,” Davis explained. “The Kremlin’s top propagandist, Dmitry Kiselyov, claims Trump is being ‘bullied’ and Stormy’s expectations are unreasonably high, in light of her occupation. Sorry, trying to keep it PG-13.”

    The “mushroom character in Mario Kart” would be a game ref, used as a metaphor by Stormy Daniels for a political ahem entity, hence a game metaphor for politics, though an unusual one to say the least!
    .
    I see this collection of mine has a sense of humor!

14. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 25th, 2018 at 2:27 am

    Echo, games: ‘It’s hard to say what is real and what isn’t’: Women wrestle with accusation against Kavanaugh

    Ciardelli has distant memories of when another woman, law professor Anita Hill, in 1991 accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. It wasn’t until she watched a documentary years later that she realized everything Hill endured.
    .
    “We didn’t really understand what she was going through … and all the games that were going on behind the scenes. And I feel like that’s going on again, and I don’t know how much will really change,” she said. “It feels like we haven’t come very far, and it’s just shocking to think that we’re right back where we were.”

    Religio-political angle: The Kavanaugh confirmation is a festival of misdirection and ugliness

    The moment during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign when he issued a list of potential Supreme Court nominees prescreened by conservative ideologues guaranteed the extreme politicization we are witnessing. Especially important: White evangelical Christians in large numbers were able to use Trump’s promise to name judges friendly to their viewpoint as a rationale for playing down all the ways in which the now-president (to be charitable) fell short of their moral standards. Give us the judges, they said, and all else will be forgiven.

    Games: Is the future of esports in your pocket? Mobile gaming is already huge and getting bigger.

    Once solely the home of relatively simple, if captivating, games like Fruit Ninja and Paper Toss, mobile games have experienced a revolution in recent years. Growing from a past that began with Snake and Brick Breaker, phones and other mobile devices now feature games with the kind of strategic gameplay once only available on PCs and gaming consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. And it’s driving eye-popping revenue figures. This year, mobile game spending is projected to rise more than 25 percent and represent the majority of all games spending, totaling about $70 billion in a $138 billion market, according to research firm Newzoo.

    Arts and space:Which Artists Should the Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa Invite to the Moon?

    Yusaku Maezawa has said that he would like his passengers on SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket to be drawn from a range of fields, including painting.
    .
    Until this week, Yusaku Maezawa was best known as the man who splurged on a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. At a press conference on Monday, he revealed his latest purchase: every passenger seat on a trip to the moon aboard SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket. The cost of the adventure wasn’t disclosed, but Elon Musk, SpaceX’s C.E.O., described it as “a very significant deposit.” (The total estimated cost for the week-long voyage, which could happen as early as 2023, is five billion dollars; it makes the Basquiat’s record-smashing price tag of a hundred and ten million dollars look like chump change.) Once again, the Japanese billionaire’s apparent passion for art is as newsworthy as his deep pockets: he plans to invite eight or so artists to join him. The announcement arrived with a hashtag, #DearMoon, and a melodramatic video that feels like an also-ran Super Bowl ad. When he made the announcement, Maezawa wondered out loud, “What if Picasso had gone to the moon? Or Andy Warhol or Michael Jackson or John Lennon?”

    Hardball 9/24/2018
    People are coming from their different corners, wearing their different shirts ..
    this play has been played before m ~44-45
    washington feels it’s on thin ice ..
    All In:
    this looks to me like a slow-moving saturday night massacre ..
    .
    Kavanaugh says ‘no one is above the law’ but ducks questions about Trump

    “The question of self pardons is something I have never analyzed, it is a question I have not written about, it’s a question therefore that is a hypothetical question that I cannot begin to answer in this context as a sitting judge and as a nominee to Supreme Court,” Kavanaugh said.
    .
    He’s been participating in “murder boards” — practice sessions — with clerks and Justice Department lawyers taking on the roles of senators, according to a participant.

    Fire Drill for Coming Const’l Crisis on Rosenstein; New Charges Against Kavanaugh:’BradCast’ 9/24/18

    Monday provided a bit of a fire drill for the upcoming Constitutional Crisis, when it looked like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into Team Trump’s alleged conspiracy with Russia in 2016, appeared to be about to be either fired or forced to resign. That moment, for now, will likely not happen now until Thursday, when he is set to meet with Donald Trump at the White House after the President’s appearance this week at the U.N. General Assembly.

    he was going to leave with his sword intact ..
    this is donald trump’s reality show world ..
    there’ve been people who have their long knives out for rosenstein ..
    a time out on the mueller probe ..
    domino effect ..
    the sort of kangaroo court that senator grassley is trying to construct ..
    11th hour:
    that’s a character trait, and he’s got it — he’s got it in spades ..
    no rest for our friend andrea mitchell, during what really is burning man week here in new york, the u.n. general assembly ..
    .
    speaking of which —
    .
    US and Iranian leaders set for showdown at United Nations

    President Trump and his Iranian counterpart will offer duelling addresses to the United Nations today after threats of new US sanctions and a claim from the Supreme Leader that American allies funded an attack on a Revolutionary Guard parade on Saturday.

    duelling addresses
    .
    How The Great Gatsby Explains Trump

    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel is a surprisingly apt primer on the president of the United States.
    .
    There’s an eerie symmetry between Donald Trump and The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan, as if the villain of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel had been brought to life in a louder, gaudier guise for the 21st century. It’s not just their infamous carelessness, the smashing-up of things and creatures that propels Tom’s denouement and has seemed to many a Twitter user to be the animating force behind Trump’s policy and personnel decisions. The two men, real and fictional, mirror each other in superficial but telling ways. Tom moves like Trump, aggressive and restless, and talks like him, with ponderous pride. He picks personal fights in public, “as though … it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of [his] emotions.” Tom surprises his dinner guests with disjointed political speeches, warning insistently that “civilization’s going to pieces.” His patrician mannerisms are shot through with flashes of anxiety, “as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.”

15. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 25th, 2018 at 11:25 pm

    kavanaugh needs a better game than he rolled out during his fox interview — 11th hour sat, check wording ..
    Dems playing a ‘con’ game on Kavanaugh — msnbc chyron
    Trump calls allegations against Kavanaugh a ‘con game’
    .
    Fascinating long read: Mr. Rogers vs. the Superheroes

    The poor children in the study, published in 1995, had little more than a quarter of the vocabulary of the middle-class kids by the time they got to public school, and they arrived at kindergarten far behind and far less ready to learn.
    .
    Most significantly, many of these kids never caught up: It was game over by kindergarten, just because they hadn’t evolved rich and modulated language skills.

    Commentary: Echoes of Anita Hill in Kavanaugh hearings

    Ford’s serious charges present a very close analogy with the allegations made by Anita Hill against her former employer Clarence Thomas during the latter’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991.

    How The Great Gatsby Explains Trump

    There’s an eerie symmetry between Donald Trump and The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan, as if the villain of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel had been brought to life in a louder, gaudier guise for the 21st century. It’s not just their infamous carelessness, the smashing-up of things and creatures that propels Tom’s denouement and has seemed to many a Twitter user to be the animating force behind Trump’s policy and personnel decisions. The two men, real and fictional, mirror each other in superficial but telling ways.

    symmetry for physics, art too, and mirroring — which with echo above constitutes the narcissus myth
    .
    Note for hipbone games &c: About time: why western philosophy can only teach us so much

    Hirini Kaa, a lecturer at the University of Auckland, says that “the key underpinning of Maori thought is kinship, the connectedness between humanity, between one another, between the natural environment”. He sees this as a form of spirituality. “The ocean wasn’t just water, it wasn’t something for us to be afraid of or to utilise as a commodity, but became an ancestor deity, Tangaroa. Every living thing has a life force.”
    .
    David Mowaljarlai, who was a senior lawman of the Ngarinyin people of Western Australia, once called this principle of connectivity “pattern thinking”. Pattern thinking suffuses the natural and the social worlds, which are, after all, in this way of thinking, part of one thing. As Muecke puts it: “The concept of connectedness is, of course, the basis of all kinship systems […] Getting married, in this case, is not just pairing off, it is, in a way, sharing each other.”

    Yale Law School’s Reckoning Over Brett Kavanaugh

    “I’ve never seen any untoward behavior by Kavanaugh, and I played a lot of basketball with Kavanaugh,” Priest said. “So I know him pretty well.”

    Kavanaugh accuser opens negotiations. TRANSCRIPT: 09/20/2018. The 11th Hour with Brian Williams

    ROBINSON: Yes. So, it`s teed up for Democrats, but they have to perform on Election Day. They`ve got to get their voters out to the polls and Democrats historically do not vote in large numbers on midterm elections. Young people, minorities don`t vote, and they have to this year if Democrats are going to have a blue wave.

    rachel maddow, atty for ramirez, 9/25/2018:

    that’s not the kind of partisan game playing our client deserves, that’s not fair to her ..
    .
    whatever they’re panning, it’s either going to be by ambush, or its going to be used as a footnote to the confirmation process ..
    .
    esseentially have a pitch hitter who will come in, that they will outsource their questioning ..

    Blog-friend Tanner Greer witha long post in Foreign Policy today, Taiwan Can Win a War With China

    This sketch makes sense of the anxiety the PLA officer manuals express. They know war would be a terrific gamble, even if they only admit it to each other. Yet it this also makes sense of the party’s violent reactions to even the smallest of arms sales to Taiwan. Their passion betrays their angst.

    Chyron: Trump draws laughs while addressing UN:

    This was a Steve Bannon speech without Steve Bannon, written by Steve Bannon — Ignatius?

    Ali Velshi 9/25/2018

    Let’s listen to people .. rather than run into our corner right away ..

    Re Bill Cosby, circled back to is effectively an ourob:

    “It is time for justice,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill said as he announced the term. “Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The day has come. The time has come.”

16. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 26th, 2018 at 8:18 pm

    Bill Cosby, Once a Model of Fatherhood, Is Sentenced to Prison

    “It is time for justice,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill said as he announced the term. “Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The day has come. The time has come.”

    HOW BAD MAPS ARE RUINING AMERICAN BROADBAND Lao Tzu / Korzybski instance:

    In Cleveland, the FCC’s map insists that city residents have at least six ISPs to choose from. But if you look closer, you’ll find that Cleveland residents really only have one option (Charter’s Spectrum) if they want a good connection. The other options the FCC cites include substandard satellite broadband, which is plagued by high latency and usage limits, and AT&T DSL, which is listed twice by the FCC but is patchy in its availability.

    The newest public-speaking world champion beat 30,000 other competitors by using a body-language trick she learned from a past winner” — language, unspoken

    If my hands are open to the audience, and my fists are not closed, and my arms are not too tight toward my body, it just makes the audience feel more connected, like I’m really open,” Smith told Business Insider. “I’m vulnerable, and I want to give you all of me. And it makes me look relaxed and comfortable.”

    the beat 9/26/2018:
    i can’t be the tie-breaker on the class war [contest?] between you two — trump
    hardball 9/26/2018:
    i won’t get intonthat game ..
    it’s a potential game changer ..
    trying to gap them [gag] m 35
    .
    All IN:mimi rocah:

    i made this analogy earlier, and i’m not a huge sports person, so forgive me, it’s not perfect, but isn’t this like the baseball teams, they train for this, they prepare for this, the big game coming up, they get paid for this, this is their job — and then come game time, well, we’re going to bring in some outside players because we can’t handle this..?

    ford’s statement:

    I heard Brett and Mark leave the bedroom laughing and loudly walk down the narrow stairs, pin-balling off the walls on the way down. I waited and when I did not hear them come back up the stairs, I left the bathroom, ran down the stairs, through the living room, and left the house.

    and i am no’one’s pawn ..
    .

    Elise Jordan:This is aa battlefield unlike any we’ve seen in the Trump era. ,,
    It is no longer a job interview, it is a full blown battlefield. ..

    the most high stakes job interview imaginable ..