Grace and good judgment


Source: Wikimedia Commons

Well then, here we are. The politics of the American election changed completely in one afternoon. There are two things on my agenda for the day after Biden’s announcement. The first is to heap scorn on the political media for its savage treatment of Biden while merrily changing Trump’s diapers. And the second is to laugh my ankles off at Republican rage over suddenly finding themselves in a Boeing 737 Max over Новосибирск with both engines on fire.

As usual, a historian, not the media, gives the best account. As Heather Cox Richardson wrote this morning:

“In a time of dictators, Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and install himself in power against the wishes of the people. President Joe Biden voluntarily turned away from reelection in order to give the people a better shot at preserving our democracy. He demonstrated what it means to put the country first.”

I did not watch the Biden-Trump debate. Biden had done just fine at the State of the Union address on March 7. The uproar in the next day’s papers took me by surprise. In the coming days, though, it was clear that Biden was in fact fading pretty fast. It was possible that the White House had been covering up for him. It inevitably took some time for Democrats in Washington to work out a plan, but the timing was good, with Biden’s withdrawal coming a few days after Republicans had finished making fools of themselves in Milwaukee and right in the middle of their vulgar con-man-plus-hillbilly triumphalism.

Even with a propaganda network that would have made Goebbels proud, it takes time for Republicans to demonize the opposition. They spent years demonizing the Clintons, so effectively that even some Democrats fell for it. Republicans didn’t have much on Biden other than his age, so they went after his son. Then in one afternoon, Republicans’ entire investment in demonization became worthless. No wonder Stephen Miller had a screaming fit on Fox News and Trump complained that now they have to start over.

All of a sudden, after making Biden’s age (81) their biggest issue, Republicans are left with a 78-year-old who falls asleep in front of cameras.

Heather Cox Richardson again:

“The Republicans’ anger reflects that fact that if Biden is off the ticket, they are in yet another pickle. Just last week, the Republicans nominated Donald Trump, who is 78, for president. Having made age their central complaint about Biden, they are now faced with having nominated the oldest candidate in U.S. history, who repeatedly fell asleep at his own nominating convention as well as his criminal trial, who often fumbles words, and who cannot seem to keep a coherent train of thought. Democrats immediately pounced on Trump with all the comments Republicans had been making about Biden. Republicans have already suggested that Trump will not debate Harris, a former prosecutor. ”

As for the media, they were right about Biden. But that doesn’t get them off the hook if they keep normalizing the fascism of Donald Trump. Is the New York Times capable of a little shame in the form of straightforward truthtelling about Trump? We’ll soon find out.

As for Kamala Harris, I think we should wait and see what happens between now and the Democratic convention, which starts August 19. It’s not over until the convention makes the nomination official. It seems that some of the Democrats whose position matters most want to hold off on endorsing anyone and waiting for the convention — Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffreis, and Barack Obama. That seems wise.

The media, always eager to attack Democrats, will now go on and on about “disarray” and “chaos.” That’s nonsense. The party process is working exactly as it should. In fact it’s working better than it was before, because the Biden campaign and the DNC never really allowed any other options during primary season.

It’s Nancy Pelosi whom I will be watching most closely. She knows every congressional district in the country. She has her own polling information and respects the media about as much as I do. She has no agenda other than winning. If Democrats can win both the House and Senate in November, it’s a sure bet that they’ll win the White House as well.

Update: Jonathan Rauch, in the Atlantic, reminds us that one of the responsibilities of political parties is to select strong, qualified candidates and to stand in the way of weak, corrupt ones. The Democratic Party did this, whereas the Republican Party has been hijacked by Trump. Just think: When Trump is gone, what will the Republican Party have left? Pretty much nothing but shame, irrelevance, and a rage that will accomplish nothing. The Atlantic piece is “The Party Is Not Over: Nominations belong to parties, not to candidates.”

Fiona Hill returns to the U.K.


Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Guardian reports today that Fiona Hill is returning to the U.K. to work for the new Labour government. She will be one of three advisers who will oversee a strategic defense review. In the U.S., Hill first came to our attention when she testified during Trump’s impeachment trial, having worked in the Trump White House, where she was called “the Russia bitch.”

The Guardian writes:

“Notably Hill and the other members of the review team will report not just to John Healey, the defence secretary, but also to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.”

A few years ago, I reviewed Hill’s book, There Is Nothing for You Here.

Oh, how I envy the U.K. right now. Not only is their election now behind them, they have a Labour government after fourteen years of Tory abuse. And they have Fiona Hill to help figure out how to deal with the Russians.

I have a particular respect for Fiona Hill partly because we have a mutual friend at the Brookings Institution, where Hill worked after the Trump White House. My friend sent her a link to my review of her book, which she read. She sent a reply to my friend: “This is wonderful. Please thank him. I am so glad that the book resonated this way with him. I was unaware of the Paul Krugman quote, but I guess it makes sense. My Dad and his friends would sit around on weekends talking for hours about practical things like this as I listened in as a kid. At the end of every discussion someone would say—well that’s everything settled then, we just need a bit of progress ….”

The Paul Krugman quote that she is referring to is Krugman’s frequent statement that reality has a distinctly liberal bias.

No. 1 pencils, now and always


Click for high-resolution version.

One of the finest writing instruments ever made is the No. 1 pencil. Whenever I have bought No. 2’s, because No. 1’s are often hard to find, I have regretted it. Pencils with harder lead don’t produce good contrast. And one has to bear down harder.

The first twelve or so years of my career were as a newspaper copy editor. (In the mid-1980s, when newspapers started using publishing systems built on computers, I became a systems guy, because I was good with computers, and it paid better.) In those pre-computer days, the type was set in the composing room with hot-lead Linotype machines. The newsroom was full of typewriters, always heavy office machines, usually Royals made between 1945 and 1958. The copy paper actually was cut from the same huge rolls of newsprint that went onto the presses. A big hydraulic knife in the pressroom was used to cut the copy paper 8.5 inches wide by about 20 inches long. When you loaded a typewriter with paper, you always used two sheets of copy paper, with carbon paper in the middle. The top sheet, of course, went into the production process. The carbon copies from the entire newsroom were collected each evening (by a copy boy) and filed away, in case there were ever any questions about whether errors originated with reporters or whether the errors were made during the editing and production process.

Copy editors made their marks with, and only with, No. 1 pencils. This was not so much because the marks ever needed to be erased. It was because No. 1 pencils make clear and readable marks, and the need for less pressure meant much less fatique for the copy editors’ hands. To have edited with hard-lead pencils would have been miserable work.

So, when a copy editor’s evening started (usually around 4 p.m. for morning papers), he or she would sharpen a handful of pencils. During the evening, there would be multiple returns to the pencil trimmer. We wore out a lot of pencils.

In those days, everyone recognized everyone else’s handwriting. By the time a piece of copy was ready to go to the composing room through the pneumatic tube, there would be many pencil marks on it. Every editor would know quite well who had done all the edits, all the way back to the reporter.

Years before I entered the newspaper business, one of the jobs of copy boys would have been to carry copy from the newsroom to the composing room. By the 1930s, pneumatic tubes were the rule, larger versions of the pneumatic systems that large department stores used to use for making change from a single room somewhere where all the cash was kept.

While I’m on the subject, one of the nicest things that ever happened to me was getting a weekend job as a newspaper copy boy when I was in high school. There was no job in the world that I would have been better suited for. One of my favorite parts was looking after a room full of Teletype machines — loading paper, changing their ribbons, tearing off copy, sorting it, and distributing the copy to the right editors in the newsroom. I also typed stories going out to the Associated Press onto a Teletype system that had a keyboard and a tape punch. Punching paper tape before sending the stories allowed typing errors to be corrected, and sending stories out with punched tape meant that the Teletype machine could operate at full speed (about 60 words a minute), reducing the time used on the Teletype’s telephone circuit. Typing directly onto the wire was possible, but it was frowned upon.

Maybe someday I’ll write about the machines that were used to transfer photos over telephone lines, from coast to coast as well as transatlantic. One of those machines (in Nuremberg) actually appears briefly in the Netflix series on the Third Reich (now streaming on Netflix). The machine involved a rotating cylinder to which the photo is attached. Anyone who noticed it in the documentary is unlikely to have figured out what it was. A few of them must still exist in museums.

A few years ago, Ken saw the copy tube (below) in my attic and said, “What is that.” Oh how things have changed, that someone as deeply immersed in writing and publishing as Ken didn’t recognize it.


⬆︎ This copy tube used to belong to the San Francisco Examiner. The typewriter is a Royal HH from around 1952. I have about a dozen typewriters in my collection. Click here for high-resolution version.


⬆︎ This recipe for quiche was typed on a Royal KMM typewriter on newsroom copy paper. You can see some of the pencil marks over pâte brisée and the scratched-out typos. As for pâte brisée, you can be very sure that copy editors were as careful with French punctuation as with English. Whereas the uncaught typo “parpare” embarrasses me now, 45 years later. I have used this recipe for 45 years. Click here for high-resolution version.

(The Royal KMM typewriters were made from the late 1930s into the 1940s. It’s one of the models of typewriter that helped fight World War II. It has been said that World War II could not have been won without typewriters. The logistics of war are formidable. But consider also how the Nazis managed logistics and kept records, and what the evidence at the Nuremberg trial might have looked like had it not been neatly typed.)

Civil War

Need some cinematic therapy? This film should do it for you. A fascist president refuses to leave the White House and claims a third term. You already know the story, but to improve your mental health you need to see the ending. The last fifteen minutes of this film are priceless. The problem is that, as the credits start to roll, you realize that in the real world it’s not over.

This film was released in April and had been streaming for several weeks at a cost of $20 to $30. When the rental price came down to $5.99 from Apple, I finally watched it. There may be other streaming sources as well.

Some reviewers accused this film of holding back on the politics. I don’t think that’s the case at all. It’s clear enough who’s who. The rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 81/70, which no doubt means that right-wingers took offense and voted down the audience rating.

Now what?


John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 24, 1963. Less than five years later, Kennedy’s brother also will be dead. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

It’s all so predictable. As Democrats, liberals, and all responsible people hasten to condemn political violence, the worst type of Republicans rush in with yet more violent rhetoric to blame Democrats and liberals and thereby — knowingly and intentionally — to encourage more political violence, as they have been doing for years, because they understand very well who it is who benefits from chaos.

Though some Republicans did respond with the usual “thoughts and prayers” after gun violence, from others it was hell fire and damnation.

“Biden sent the orders,” said a Republican member of the U.S. House from Georgia. I cringe to imagine what other conspiracy theories are flooding right-wing social media right now.

J.D. Vance, who hopes to be Trump’s candidate for vice president and who obviously hopes to profit from what happened, said, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Frank Pavone, a right-wing activist and former Catholic priest, said, “We recall the words that President Trump always says to us: It’s not that they are coming after him,” Pavone said. “They are coming after us — all of us — he’s just standing in the way.”

We already were in a state of chaos because of the media’s feeding frenzy over Biden’s age and mental state. The powerful images from the Trump rally in Pennsylvania will amplify the MAGA lust for scapegoats and for retribution for their loss in 2020.

I have no idea where things stand now. In such a state of chaos, few things are predictable other than the likelihood that nothing good will come of it.

The delusional conservative mind


Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Ross Douthat has another head-scratcher of a column today in the New York Times, in vague and inconcise language as always. It’s “Do the Democrats Really Think Trump is an Emergency?” I had to reread it twice (ouch!) to even figure out what he’s trying to say. (William F. Buckley and George Will taught conservative writers that pompous writing sounds smart.) But I think that what Douthat is trying to say is that, if Democrats really think Trump is dangerous, then Democrats would make big concessions to Republicans to try to win them away from Trump.

Has Douthat forgotten that Democrats gave Republicans pretty much everything they wanted in bipartisan immigration legislation, but that it was Republicans who killed the legislation, because Trump wanted them to? As NBC News wrote, “But Trump’s hammering of the deal, while he uses immigration as a campaign issue, and his demands that Republicans reject it won the day.” Or what about the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed 69-30 in the Senate and 228-206 in the House? It’s not that infrastructure was a concession to Republicans, it’s that Republicans touted “Infrastructure Week” the entire time Trump occupied the White House, but it was Democrats under Biden who eventually got it done.

Just what kind of concessions from Democrats does Douthat have in mind, then? Is Douthat’s memory faulty about the concessions that Democrats have made (or offered), or is it that he thinks ours is? Does Douthat think that Democrats are ever going to make concessions to the likes of the right-wing crazies who have paralyzed the House, or, heaven help us, to Trump?

I’m very serious about using the word “delusional,” which means holding false beliefs or judgments about external reality. Douthat’s model of external reality is highly defective here, both in what he conveniently forgets and in what he foolishly imagines any politically or morally sane person ought to concede to people who are not sane, politically or morally. Douthat never suggests any particular concessions. He only repeats the false notion that Democrats keep moving to the left, apparently never having bothered to read the Democratic Party’s platform.

Every time in the past when some pissed-off conservative has attempted to lecture me for being a liberal, I have observed that they have no idea what I think or what my principles are. Rather, what they think I think is what right-wing propaganda has told them that liberals think. It’s a simple tale, designed to be self-evidently stupid, and designed to enrage conservatives. I don’t expect to ever meet a conservative — even an educated one like Douthat — who is capable of actually understanding, and representing honestly, what liberals actually think. I should hasten to add here that not all liberals think alike, and that when liberals organize politically, we organize into coalitions. Though what liberal college students think matters, the thinking of liberal college students, still in their intellectually formative years, would be much easier to target and demonize than the sources, the histories, the examples, the values, and the philosophies on which most liberals actually base their principles and their politics.

Douthat misunderstands, or misrepresents, external reality because arguing for conservative ideas leaves him no choice. I am still waiting to encounter a conservative mind that can unconvince me of my observation that conservatives lie about things (or misrepresent things, if you prefer a milder word) because defending the indefensible is impossible. They lie, even to themselves, because they have to lie. They could be honest and say that they want to return to aristocracy, or put an end to democracy, or preserve the “traditional” hierarchies of race and sex and caste, of privilege and peonage, of lords and serfs and oligarchs, of dominance and submission. A few even do. But being too honest about what conservatives actually want to do with power won’t get you into the New York Times, or win many elections, in France or even Alabama.

Update 1: We’ve normalized this kind of absurdity, though we shouldn’t. On the same day that the New York Times is running conservative nonsense like the Douthat column above, they’re also running this: “Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat: Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to try to short-circuit the election system, if he does not win.”

So we’re expected to make concessions to the people who would bring us this kind of Trumpian emergency — trying to short-circuit the election system, again? Is it too much to expect that Republicans make some concessions to the law, to the Constitution, and to the very democracy that has enriched them and that goes much too far in trying to tolerate them and satisfy them?

There are not enough editors in the world, I’m afraid, to keep conservative “voices” like Douthat’s from trying to gaslight us. Mr. Douthat can write whatever he wants, but no one is required to publish it.

Update 2: While we’re talking about concessions to Republicans, let’s not overlook this, in case you missed it.

Mark Robinson is the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. He was caught on video saying, “Some folks need killing. It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!” Robinson was introduced by a preacher, who said, “Who’s behind President Biden, and that administration? Is it Obama. Is it Clinton? Read your Bible. It is the Devil.”

The Washington Post today rounds up some of this lovely conservative thinking today in “Pro-Trump Christian extremists use scripture to justify violent goals.”

The post writes:

“At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, a right-wing conclave now dominated by pro-Trump factions, far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, onstage with Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon, welcomed the crowd ‘to the end of democracy.’

“‘We’re here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this,’ Posobiec told the audience, holding up a cross.

“‘Amen,’ Bannon said.”

Almost ice cream

You do have an ice cream machine, don’t you? They actually work, and they’re not very expensive.

I’d be lying if I claimed that I can make a frozen dessert that’s just as good as ice cream but healthier. But it’s possible to make satisfactory substitutes, and with less work, too. Making real ice cream is a big job. You have to cook a custard, then chill it for hours, then freeze it. And the ingredients are heart-stoppers — egg yolks, cream, and sugar.

Bananas work remarkably well to make no-cream ice cream smoother and less icy. The ice cream in the photo is made from a banana, some dried dates, plain soybean milk, a touch of nutmeg, and a few drops of vanilla. Whiz it in the blender, then put the mixture in the ice cream machine.

The mystery of ketoprofen

I don’t often use medications, but there is one — now hard to get — that is like a miracle for me. It’s ketoprofen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) which I assume, given the -profen suffix, is a relative of medications such as ibuprofen.

Back in the 1990s, ketoprofen was available without a prescription. It was sold over the counter as Orudis KT. In my working days, I often had tension headaches. Aspirin, acetominophen, and ibuprofen would barely touch my headaches. One day I saw a TV commercial for Orudis KT, advertising it as a miracle headache remedy. I went out and bought some.

One Orudis KT tablet was a tiny 12.5 milligrams. For comparison, one aspirin is 325mg, one acetominophen tablet is 500mg, and one ibuprofen tablet, such as Aleve, is 220mg. I could take one Orudis KT tablet for a worst-case headache, and 30 minutes later I’d forget I ever had a headache. There were never any side effects. I called them my “little green pills,” and people I worked with would often come to me to beg for one if they had a headache. How could a tiny 12.5 milligrams of something be so effective?

Then in 2005 Orudis KT was taken off the over-the-counter market and was available only by prescription. Clearly I was not the only person who found it remarkably effective. Some of the last remaining bottles of it sold for very high prices on eBay — $30, $40, $50 and more. After that I couldn’t get Orudis KT anymore.

A few years ago a friend in California gave me some ketoprofen that his doctor had prescribed after surgery. Each capsule was a ridiculous 200mg, more ketoprofen than I would ever dare — or need — to take. A few capsules lasted me several years. I’d open the capsule and take out just enough of the powder to come to 12.5 milligrams. Then that ran out.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my doctor if he’d prescribe some ketoprofen, just so I’d have it for minor aches and pains. I told him how effective it was in small doses and said, “Surely I’d be better off with 12.5 milligrams of ketroprofen rather than 220 milligrams of ibuprofen?” He agreed. He also said that he didn’t know why the drug company took it off the over-the-counter market, but his guess was that it was a way of making more money from it. “Most people don’t know about ketoprofen,” my doctor said. I believe ketoprofen is much better known in Europe and Canada than in the U.S.

When I took the prescription to the drug store, they didn’t have ketoprofen. The pharmacist said they had not stocked it for years and that it was available only in bulk in far larger quantities than the pharmacy would ever be able to sell. The pharmacist referred me to a “compounding pharmacy,” a specialized sort of pharmacy that mixes drugs and doses to order, particularly drugs that are not common. I got my ketoprofen!

From Googling I’ve learned that ketoprofen is very much used as a veterinary drug, particularly in cattle. It is very effective for fever and respiratory diseases in cattle, as well as for mastitis. This has been a problem in a few countries in Asia, including India and Bangladesh. There are about ten NSAID drugs which, when given to cattle, and if one of the cattle dies out in the open from whatever it’s being treated for, and if a vulture then eats it, the vulture’s kidneys may be fatally damaged. Apparently it’s only Asian vultures that are susceptible. Ketoprofen is actually used as a veterinary drug with chickens, ducks, and quail, as well as pet birds such as parakeets. As far as I know, no species of animal in the U.S. or Europe is harmed by ketoprofen.