Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Oh this is something I have felt for many months now. Frank Bruni posits here that a great majority of Americans, far in excess of 50%, have just plain had enough of Trump; that he takes up too much of their time, too much of their attention, ultimately he takes such a toll on their individual “psyches,” that they have moved beyond Trump fatigue and Trump exhaustion, into Trump Enough! They’ve had it, even some of his supporters. “ ‘Even Trump’s Supporters Are Getting Tired of His Daily Drama’ was the headline on Jim Geraghty’s Monday column in National Review.”
I have felt guilty at succumbing to my own Trump fatigue turned exhaustion and have turned away for spells (not tonight, though), but I wouldn’t vote for Trump if Hitler and Stalin were the alternatives. Bruni had his epiphany Saturday. I think he’s right that aside from Trump Haters like me and Never Trumpers like Kristol there are others, independents, a few supporters, lukewarmers, who have quietly decided enough is enough and that combined these groups are a vast majority who will inflict on Trump a landslide defeat in fourteen months.
He Just Lies
“Perhaps nobody was more surprised to hear that China had called President Donald Trump’s administration to restart trade talks than the government in Beijing itself.
“After a weekend of confusing signals, Trump’s credibility has become a key obstacle for China to reach a lasting deal with the U.S., according to Chinese officials familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified. Only a few negotiators in Beijing see a deal as actually possible ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, they said, in part because it’s dangerous for any official to advise President Xi Jinping to sign a deal that Trump may eventually break.
“In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters at the Group of Seven summit in France on Monday, Trump claimed that Chinese officials called “our top trade people” and said “let’s get back to the table.” In subsequent appearances he portrayed the outreach as evidence China was desperate to make a deal...
“It all made for splashy headlines and momentarily boosted stocks, but nobody in Beijing officialdom appeared to know what he was talking about. Even worse, his efforts to depict China as caving in negotiations actually confirmed some of their worst fears about Trump: that he can’t be trusted to cut a deal.
...
“China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday again said it was unaware of the phone calls mentioned by Trump, reiterating a statement immediately after his remarks.”
“After a weekend of confusing signals, Trump’s credibility has become a key obstacle for China to reach a lasting deal with the U.S., according to Chinese officials familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified. Only a few negotiators in Beijing see a deal as actually possible ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, they said, in part because it’s dangerous for any official to advise President Xi Jinping to sign a deal that Trump may eventually break.
“In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters at the Group of Seven summit in France on Monday, Trump claimed that Chinese officials called “our top trade people” and said “let’s get back to the table.” In subsequent appearances he portrayed the outreach as evidence China was desperate to make a deal...
“It all made for splashy headlines and momentarily boosted stocks, but nobody in Beijing officialdom appeared to know what he was talking about. Even worse, his efforts to depict China as caving in negotiations actually confirmed some of their worst fears about Trump: that he can’t be trusted to cut a deal.
...
“China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday again said it was unaware of the phone calls mentioned by Trump, reiterating a statement immediately after his remarks.”
Monday, August 26, 2019
In April and May I never felt lonely, for the birds were cheerful companions. But when the summer quiet fell on them I used to have fits of panic in the silence and solitude. The worst places for this were the glens where there was no heather...Greenness, utter, absolute greenness, has all my life seemed to me uncanny...Take the Devil's Beef Tub, the green pit in the hills...Rudyard Kipling once told me that...this uncanny hollow seemed more than any other spot to be consecrated to the old gods...It was in such green 'hopes,' as we called them, that sometimes I came to the edge of fear. If...there were no sheep about, and a shoulder of hill shut out the world, I became conscious that I was alone in an enclosed place without the company of bird or beast. Then the terror of solitude laid hold of me, and I fled incontinent until I reached a herd's cottage. (emphasis in original)
-Lord Tweedsmuir, Pilgrim's Way
I have always hated the color green. Never feared it, though, sheesh. Tweedsmuir related another flight in terror that happened to him, and a guide, in the Bavarian Alps. I looked up the particular Alpine peak in question some years ago and didn't see any images that would evoke terror. I don't remember if I looked up Devil's Beef Tub previously. Many times as I've read this book I have not been able to get from Tweedsmuir's description what it is that triggers this panic. The key elements are 1) summer, 2) silent, 3) enclosed, 4) alone, 5) green. Enclosed and green especially. I tried to picture in my mind a landscape of "greenness, utter, absolute greenness," that didn't seem too hard to do, and I didn't get why those factors, would induce terror. So tonight I looked up Devil's Beef Tub and searched using combinations of "hopes" "Scotland," "glens" "green" "utter," "solitude," "terror." And I saw. And I felt. And I don't know why I felt.
The Wikipedia image for Devil's Beef Tub was odd...weird...something, but it didn't induce terror. I looked at other images of Devil's Beef Tub and the more I looked the more it looked like an anus, an asshole, to me, gross, odd, but no panic. This one did.
After I had seen these it occurred to me that I had never been in such a landscape before. It seemed easy to conjure but I wasn't picturing the same thing. Sure, in Barnesboro, hills, trees, acid mine
drainage, yada-yada. But there were other colors, there were flowers, there were sounds: birds, squirrels, deer—Rusty chasing deer (fucking idiot dog); I had never been alone, in a treeless, silent, utterly green, asshole before.
-Lord Tweedsmuir, Pilgrim's Way
I have always hated the color green. Never feared it, though, sheesh. Tweedsmuir related another flight in terror that happened to him, and a guide, in the Bavarian Alps. I looked up the particular Alpine peak in question some years ago and didn't see any images that would evoke terror. I don't remember if I looked up Devil's Beef Tub previously. Many times as I've read this book I have not been able to get from Tweedsmuir's description what it is that triggers this panic. The key elements are 1) summer, 2) silent, 3) enclosed, 4) alone, 5) green. Enclosed and green especially. I tried to picture in my mind a landscape of "greenness, utter, absolute greenness," that didn't seem too hard to do, and I didn't get why those factors, would induce terror. So tonight I looked up Devil's Beef Tub and searched using combinations of "hopes" "Scotland," "glens" "green" "utter," "solitude," "terror." And I saw. And I felt. And I don't know why I felt.
That one really unnerved me. Dude, there is not another sentient creature in that whole fucking landscape!!!!!! You can hear the silence. That one gave me butterflies in the stomach and the more often I came back to it the closer to running away I got.
This one struck me also but I wouldn't have felt as "enclosed" as in the one immediately above.
If I was alone, unlike these cowards, I would have been incontinent:
I cannot explain...I cannot explain any of this, but specifically I don't know why this one didn't give me the green shits. Maybe the fern in the foreground. Maybe the distant water.
drainage, yada-yada. But there were other colors, there were flowers, there were sounds: birds, squirrels, deer—Rusty chasing deer (fucking idiot dog); I had never been alone, in a treeless, silent, utterly green, asshole before.
Is it that it is alien-like? It does not look like anything I have ever seen, or been in, previously. But Tweedsmuir had. Familiarity did not innoculate against terror. How common was Tweedsmuir's feeling, Kipling's feeling, my vicarious feeling at glen #1? I don't know the answer to that...Basically I don't know anything...but about halfway through my searching I ran across this:
When I was seven or eight, we started going there on summer holidays. We parked our caravan somewhere – usually somewhere beset by midges – and set off for the hills. To say that those walks were exhilarating would be an understatement; the power implicit in the landscape affected me in a profound way. I was quickly frightened. I still remember the utter terror that overwhelmed me as we scrambled through dark fog up the vertiginous, scree-laden side of one mountain, unable to see the precipice ahead.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/sep/09/walking-cairngorms-scottish-highlands-scotland-worlds-most-beautiful-country
I will be a son of a bitch. That makes at least four of us. We are not alone.
When I was seven or eight, we started going there on summer holidays. We parked our caravan somewhere – usually somewhere beset by midges – and set off for the hills. To say that those walks were exhilarating would be an understatement; the power implicit in the landscape affected me in a profound way. I was quickly frightened. I still remember the utter terror that overwhelmed me as we scrambled through dark fog up the vertiginous, scree-laden side of one mountain, unable to see the precipice ahead.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/sep/09/walking-cairngorms-scottish-highlands-scotland-worlds-most-beautiful-country
I will be a son of a bitch. That makes at least four of us. We are not alone.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Newcastle will be relegated at season’s end and yet...they go into London and beat Champions League runner-up Spurs. Who just last week played brilliantly but were lucky to have drawn at Etihad. Spurs are the luckiest goddamned team on the planet and yet...they were VAR-unlucky today and lost at home to a dreadful side. It should never have come down to VAR luck or bad luck. They had 72% possession, are very talented and well-managed and yet...
Trump International Clown
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise visit to the city hosting the Group of Seven summit Sunday, a move that caught President Trump off-guard...
Zarif's arrival in Biarritz appeared to be a covert initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron...
World leaders have made short work of their Trump Study. He is dumb and is played easily. Nobody has aced the course like Emmanuel Macron.
He has charmed Trumpie out of Manhattan for $24 and Greenland for some walrus tusk. And Trump has no idea. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did and congratulated Macron on making a fool of Trump. “Well done. Bien joué. You're doing well. You did very well last night, my God. That was a difficult one. You did brilliantly.” Even Trump's aides saw what was happening but as they panicked and fumed a clueless Trump gushed about Emmanuel.
@realDonaldTrump
Zarif's arrival in Biarritz appeared to be a covert initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron...
World leaders have made short work of their Trump Study. He is dumb and is played easily. Nobody has aced the course like Emmanuel Macron.
He has charmed Trumpie out of Manhattan for $24 and Greenland for some walrus tusk. And Trump has no idea. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did and congratulated Macron on making a fool of Trump. “Well done. Bien joué. You're doing well. You did very well last night, my God. That was a difficult one. You did brilliantly.” Even Trump's aides saw what was happening but as they panicked and fumed a clueless Trump gushed about Emmanuel.
@realDonaldTrump
France and President @EmmanuelMacron have done a really great job thus far with a very important G-7. Lunch with Emmanuel was the best meeting we have yet had. Likewise, evening meeting with World Leaders went very well. Progress being made!
6:52 PM · Aug 24, 2019Twitter for iP
Bournemouth 1 City 3, 64'
Kun with his second. Weirdly, Google still has it 3-0 although they have Wilson's goal for Bournemouth posted.
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