It’s getting close to the time when people come blundering through my woods with their eyes fixed on the ground. Mushroom season. But please note that just a couple of years ago, three kids in my neighborhood picked some nice white ‘shrooms that turned out to have the lovely name of Destroying Angel. One of them lived. After a liver transplant. Think it’s edible? Check again.
Okay then.
I’d like to say this morning was free of a different kind of toxin. Trumpless. De-Donald’d. Combed free of comb-overs. But I’d be lying.
Once again I’d like to remind you that the pundits do not work for me. Neither do I wrangle them. I merely follow them around on Sunday morning and pick up their fresh, recently deposited…. leavings. So if some of these people still find fascination in a screaming orange zonker, well, we’re probably going to go there.
But at least there are people looking into other colors. Like deep, deep blue.
James Nestor goes deep to have a conversation.
I held my breath and swam deeper. 10, 20, 30 feet. I heard a thunderous crack, then another, so loud they vibrated my chest. Below my kicking feet, two sperm whales emerged from the shadows, each as long as a school bus.
The cracking was coming from the whales; it’s a form of sonar called echolocation that species of dolphins, whales and other cetaceans use to “see” underwater. ...
As we kicked down deeper, within just a few feet of the mother whale’s gaping mouth, the click patterns changed, becoming slower, softer. They sounded to me like “coda clicks,” the sounds sperm whales use to identify themselves to others in the pod. The whales were probably introducing themselves. They were saying hello.
It’s a fun and interesting read this morning. I can guarantee you that Nestor’s chat with the whales is more intelligent—on both sides— than anything you’ll find on the Sunday morning talk show lineup.
Come on inside. I’m out of whales, but some of these pundits sure do have a blowhole.
Leonard Pitts responds to a reader who claims that conservatives freed the slaves and passed the Civil Rights Act.
The truth, as any first year history student could tell you, is that Republicans were the more socially liberal party and Democrats the more socially conservative for at least seven decades after Lincoln. But in the years since then, they have essentially swapped ideologies.
The reason John engages in this linguistic shell game, the reason he defends the party that wasn’t attacked instead of the ideology that was, is simple: The ideology is indefensible, at least where civil rights is concerned. You must be a liar, a fool or an ignoramus of Brobdingnagian proportions to suggest social conservatives have ever supported African-American interests.
They didn’t do it a century ago when “conservative” meant Democrats. They don’t do it now.
Another one of those Pitts’ columns you need to bookmark for the next time some idiot tries to pull this in your email list.
Also, Brobdingnagian is one of my favorite words. Damn Lilliputians get turned into a fairly common adjective, and my boys the Brobdingnagians are mostly left out in the cold. The very big cold.
The New York Times bemoans our highly effective system of keeping people from voting.
The state of the nation’s underfunded, patchwork election system and obsolete balloting machinery may not arouse voters the way candidates can with charges of rigged elections. But voters in Arizona who lined up for the state’s presidential primaries last month learned just how difficult and unfair voting can be even without criminal malfeasance.
Well, it may not be technically criminal, but what Arizona’s Republican legislature did to the election system there was definitely malfeasance.
Critics blame the Supreme Court for weakening the Voting Rights Act, which used to subject regions with a history of discrimination, Maricopa County among them, to prescreening by the Justice Department before they could make major changes in voting procedures. Had that provision remained operational, the Maricopa fiasco might have been averted.
But since we’re now a completely post-racial society in which… sorry. Couldn’t stick with it even for the length of the gag.
Frank Bruni, along with 99.95% of the human race, is deeply disturbed by the way Trump talks about his daughter.
Donald Trump gazed upon his infant daughter, Tiffany, and wondered about the kind of future she’d inherit, the sort of person she’d grow up to be.
Would her world be a safe one? Would she find happiness?
At least I’m assuming that he asked himself those questions. I know that he asked this one: Would she have large breasts? …
Dads will be dads. And Trump will be Trump, his oversexed outlook and quickness to objectify women manifest even in the way he talks about his daughter. Excuse me: daughters. Over the years he has marveled repeatedly — and publicly — over what a babe he finds Tiffany’s older half sister, Ivanka, to be, suggesting on two of those occasions that if she weren’t the fruit of his loins, she might be the candy on his arm.
Between Trump’s speculation on his daughter’s future curves while she was not even crawling and his discussion of her sister’s… let’s just say, date-ability, I think the whole nation, both left and right, can be joined in a big communal ewwww. See? Trump is a uniter after all.
Chelsae Henderson is a conservative conservationist… and no fan of Trump.
Let’s tame at least one legend in Donald Trump’s mind — his self-proclaimed status as an environmental hero.
“I’ve won many environmental awards,” the Republican presidential front-runner said on CNN’s “New Day” on Sept. 24. He made the claim while criticizing Pope Francis’s call for action on climate change in an address to a joint meeting of Congress. ...
In my 18 years working on environmental policy on and off Capitol Hill, I never heard Trump’s green record lauded. So I decided to try to identify the “many, many environmental awards” he says he has won.
Well, this ought to be fun. Tell us, Chelsea, what did you find?
...the candidate, who has called for eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency, has promised “we are going to work very, very hard on clean air and clean water.” Just what has he done? What would a Trump administration propose to advance the goals of clean air and clean water, aside from gutting the agency that oversees the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act? His campaign website does not note any accomplishments or policy proposals on the matter.
As it turns out, Trump’s record isn’t green. His buildings aren’t green. He’s fought against green energy, and Trump’s campaign couldn’t provide a single example of his many, many awards. Maybe what Trump means is that he’s beaten the environment many times. Beaten it like a rug.
Ruth Marcus worries that 2016 might have more in common with 1980 than 2008.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama, much like Sanders now, questioned Clinton’s judgment in backing the war in Iraq and accused her of selling out workers. (“While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Walmart,” he said in one particularly acid debate moment.) As with Sanders, Clinton insinuated that Obama was unprepared for the 3 a.m. phone call and naive about the difficulty of achieving the change he was peddling.
Still, Clinton voters who were predicted to — who vowed to — sit it out eight years ago ended up coming around for Obama. In May 2008, exit polls showed half of Clinton supporters in Indiana and North Carolina insisting they would not vote for Obama over John McCain. In the end, turnout was high — and 9 in 10 Democratic voters overall backed Obama.
As opposed to 1980, when the gulf between Carter and Kennedy failed to heal. Truthfully, neither analogy is very good. Right now my entire planning on this subject involves keeping digits crossed.
Dana Milbank says that Trump is scarier than Cruz.
As Donald Trump stumbles in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, one group has been sorely disappointed by his belated display of weakness: Democratic operatives, who had been hoping fondly to run against him in November.
Democrats’ delight at the prospect of a Trump candidacy is well-founded. Last week’s Post-ABC News poll finds that an impressive 67 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump and only 31 percent have a positive view — far worse than Ted Cruz (36 percent positive, 53 percent negative), or Hillary Clinton.
Milbank goes on to give an anti-Cruz primer before returning to the dangers of Donald.
... Trump isn’t dangerous because he’s conservative. He’s dangerous because he seems willing to govern outside our constitutional system, with his talk of torturing prisoners and targeting innocent civilians, with his winking at violence at his events and his plans to block entry to the United States on the basis of religion.
Werewolf v Frankenstein. Freddy v Jason. Trump v Cruz. It’s all a matter of taste.
Truthfully, on the Republican side the choice is Mein Kampf II or the opening innings of The Handmaid’s Tale. There was a moment there when Linsday Graham was actually right about something. And if we’re picking dystopias, I’d rather live in Brave New World. At least they have an island for the malcontents.
Ross Douthat is back from probation this week… and also fixated on Trump.
OF all the attacks that Donald Trump has faced, Ted Cruz’s line that Trump embodies “New York values” has probably stirred the most sustained controversy.
It’s inspired liberal New Yorkers to rise to their city’s defense: How dare you associate Trump’s bigotry with our glorious multiethnic metropolis?
The idea that someone in Mississippi or Oklahoma or pretty damn near anywhere would curl their lips at “New York Values” or “San Francisco Values” is a triumph of Republican messaging. No, people. You surely don’t want to live like people in a place where there’s a huge amount of opportunity, diversity, and a decent onion bagel. Sit down. Eat okra.
Why do Americans believe in the idea of Trump as the World’s Greatest Businessman, the playboy with the Midas touch? Because that’s the story that a New York-based media — not talk radio but Time and Vanity Fair, not alt-right bloggers but prime-time TV — spent years and decades selling them.
Douthat’s whole grindstone this morning is that Trump really does represent New York values, because New York values are awful. Like Trump. Okay, sure. Maybe I brought you back too soon.
And yes, I hate okra. That stuff is slimy. Unless it’s breaded and deep-fried. Then it’s okay. So is (fill in the blank with anything).
Michael Lind won’t give up on the idea that it’s Trump and Clinton from now till doomsday. Where doomsday may come any day.
No matter who wins the New York primaries on Tuesday or which candidates end up as the presidential nominees of the two major parties, one thing is already clear: Trumpism represents the future of the Republicans and Clintonism the future of the Democrats.
Those who see the nationalist populism of Mr. Trump as an aberration in a party that will soon return to free-market, limited government orthodoxy are mistaken. So are those who believe that the appeal of Senator Bernie Sanders to the young represents a repudiation of the center-left synthesis shared by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In one form or another, Trumpism and Clintonism will define conservatism and progressivism in America.
And… no. Nope. He’s wrong. First he’s wrong in defining the appeal of either candidate. Second he’s wrong about that trends in both parties. That’s pretty wrong.
Hillary Rosner asks if it’s fair to tinker with a species to save it… and is that saving it at all?
Biotechnologists have engineered the mosquito that spreads the Zika virus to pass a lethal gene to its offspring. Another team of researchers has devised a way to spread sterility through the mosquito population, using a technique called gene drive to wipe out the offending insects.
If regulators approve this genetic tinkering, these insects could become a powerful weapon against the spread of mosquito-borne diseases to humans. But bugs like these, and the techniques used to create them, might have another role to play: helping to protect the earth’s biodiversity. …
On Hawaiian islands, for instance, avian malaria transmitted by mosquitoes is decimating native bird populations. Warmer temperatures have exacerbated the threat, allowing mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite to invade higher-elevation areas that are the last holdouts for some birds. These losses ripple down through food chains, disrupting ecosystems.
There has been a serious argument put forward lately that we should eliminate the mosquito. That’s an enormous decision. We have deliberately tried to drive species to extinction in the past. No one mourns smallpox and if the Guinea Worm goes the way of the dodo, don’t expect a museum. But mosquitoes have not only been around for about 100 million years, they represent a decent amount of biomass and play a role in shaping ecosystems. But… 247 million malarial infections every year. It’s a tough one.
And if we can design sterile mosquitoes, what about sterile rats?
On islands around the globe, invasive rodents are obliterating native plants and animals — many of which exist nowhere else. By some estimates, 90 percent of these archipelagos are plagued by nonnative rodents. Eradicating them could restore ecosystems and let evolutionary processes resume unfettered. The current method, poison, is a costly, labor-intensive one that also risks harm to native animals.
Our tool set is getting rapidly larger, with CRISPR and similar technologies offering quick, effective ways to tinker with the programming behind organisms. How we answer these questions today is going to have ramifications that go way down the path.
The Miami Herald… speaking of those mosquitoes.
With summertime mosquito season approaching, the Zika virus is beginning to get mighty scary.
In recent years, we’ve had to deal with other insidious threats, including another mosquito-borne disease, the West Nile virus. But Zika is truly sinister. It’s most vulnerable targets are pregnant women and the fetuses they carry, which the virus attacks.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Brazilian doctors’ initial suspicions — that had become widely accepted — that the Zika virus causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly, usually accompanied by brain defects.
Please take precautions. Light clothing. DEET. Drain standing water. This is serious as… well, serious as a lifetime of suffering.
Parag Khanna engages in that pastime of cartophiles everywhere—redrawing the United States.
These days, in the thick of the American presidential primaries, it’s easy to see how the 50 states continue to drive the political system. But increasingly, that’s all they drive — socially and economically, America is reorganizing itself around regional infrastructure lines and metropolitan clusters that ignore state and even national borders. The problem is, the political system hasn’t caught up.
This is far from the first attempt to dice America into neat regions. It’s not even the first attempt this year. But these things are always fun. Go take a look.