Althouse

"The Trump administration has tried to paint the anti-ICE activists as hard-left agitators, 'blue-haired' domestic terrorists bent on stirring up mayhem. But I found they looked a lot more like a woman I met named Hillary Oppmann, a blonde, 50-something solar energy consultant who lives in South Minneapolis. I stumbled upon Oppmann on a frigid morning last week, when I rolled up on a corner near a high school in South Minneapolis.... A few minutes before I had come upon her, Oppmann had heard the sound of whistles like the one that she wears around her neck, and hustled to the spot.... Oppmann had gotten involved as a volunteer in this group through a parents’ group at the local high school.... She told me she wasn’t surprised at how quickly her neighbors had sprung into action. The community groups that formed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd quickly reactivated, she told me, making it much easier to organize a response. The killing of Renee Good was a horrific shock, but it has not deterred the volunteer observers — if anything, Oppmann said, their ranks have swelled. 'Minnesotans are really good at chipping away at ice,' she dryly noted...."

Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War" (NYT).

A question I asked Grok because I was listening to Mel Torme singing "Windmills of Your Mind."And here's Mel:

The NYT reports on Colombia President Gustavo Petro:

What happens when the minimum wage goes up? Well, California is getting an experiment in that right now. Just ask @gavinnewsom. Reason's @BessByers shares what happened after AB 1228 implemented a government-mandated pay raise for all fast-food workers. 🍔 pic.twitter.com/FFL7hkMOKk

— reason (@reason) December 31, 2025

Excellent video, but let me focus on Gavin Newsom's use of the old analogy between lawmaking and sausage making. The idea is you like the results but you'd be disgusted to see the process. So I guess Newsom's best argument for the bizarre exceptions in California's minimum wage law is that we'd be grossed out by the details if we saw them, but the final product is something we love. But with sausage, the final product has all the strange ingredients blended into one coherent-looking whole. The law Newsom is defending has unexplained exceptions right there in the text. It's more like sausage that has visible chunks of weird things that don't seem to belong and you want to know what the hell is that... and that... and that? You don't eat that sausage. And that's another thing. With sausage, if something about it makes you suspicious, you don't eat it. You're not forced to eat it just because the sausage-factory made it. Don't buy it. If it's served to you, don't eat it. Laws, we're forced to eat. 

"... Musk could prove a powerful asset to the MAGA movement once Trump leaves the stage. Vance in particular stands to benefit. Though the falling out between Trump and Musk dominated the headlines, Vance’s role in the reunion highlights his own relationship with the billionaire. He talks regularly with Musk, who sees Vance as a viable 2028 candidate.... Musk and Vance, a former Silicon Valley investor, share not just a tech-infused worldview but a fondness for online performance — especially on Musk’s social media platform, X, where Vance has embraced a sharp, 'own-the-libs' style that can mirror Musk’s own taste for provocation. Their alliance could further entrench the influence of tech titans in the White House, extending the authority of private entrepreneurs."

From "How Vance brokered a truce between Trump and Musk/JD Vance played a key role brokering a reconciliation between the president and his wealthiest supporter. But as Trump’s first year in office comes to a close, both he and his allies have learned hard lessons about Musk’s unusual influence" (WaPo)(gift link).I can do without the disease metaphor — "epidemic," "spreading" — because I don't think the problem of flattery — whatever it is — is going to need anything analogous to masks, vaccinations, and staying at home. And what is "toxic" about flattery?

Writes Simon Mills, in "I know how Madonna and Guy Ritchie must have felt in that room/Reunited after 17 years for their son Rocco’s exhibition, the former It couple made a good show of civility. So why can’t everyone else do the same?" (London Times).

Say I, aloud, reading a headline at The Hill.

This just crawled onto the front page of the NYT:

Dan Wang, author of "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future," quoted in "China set to open world’s tallest bridge, expanding infrastructure push The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge can fit almost two Eiffel Towers under it and will be touted as evidence of China’s engineering prowess when it opens this month" (WaPo).

A model for a perfect husband, revealed in "My cool cancer story/A year after losing my hair and self image to cancer, I put on my $5,000 prescription wig and look at myself and say, 'THERE she is.'" (WaPo video, free access).

I blogged when Brewer died — last December — so I will blog the death of Shipley: 

"Tom Shipley, Whose Ode to Weed Reached the Top 10, Dies at 84/With their 'One Toke Over the Line,' he and Michael Brewer saw a musical in-joke turn into a timeless cultural phenomenon" (NYT).

Said Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Minneapolis last week, quoted in "Democrats let it all out at their party meeting" (Semafor)[SEE UPDATE BELOW].

The three-day meeting of the Democratic National Committee, held to welcome new members and start building the 2028 primary calendar, was the first under new chair Ken Martin.... The party, Martin vowed, was now bringing “a bazooka to a knife fight,” and would no longer “play by the rules” if Republicans broke them.

I'm guessing Martin deployed his "a bazooka to a knife fight" metaphor — in Minneapolis — before the the shooting of children that took place nearby. 

***

Bazooka (Wikipedia):
UPDATE: In the comments below, Olson Johnson is right! observes that Semafor has taken Walz's words out of context:

"I think that's some kind words that we can say to each other. We're separated by the strait of Bering, though, there are two islands only between the Russian Island and the U.S. Island. They're only four kilometers apart. We are close neighbors, and it's a fact."

Said Vladimir Putin, quoted in "Here's the transcript of what Putin and Trump said in Alaska." 

"'Ah well, I don’t, you see. My body is like a Hillman Imp and my soul is driving it. When I die, I park the car and walk the rest of the way. And I’m thinking that heaven is probably pedestrianised, so I can leave it outside.'"

From "Frank Skinner on faith and finally getting married (she said no four times)/The comedian opens up about his alcoholism, the consolation he finds in poetry — and whether he could succeed Melvyn Bragg as In Our Time presenter" (London Times).

I see Matt Taibbi has a piece titled "Barack Obama Now Squarely in Russiagate Crosshairs/New disclosures from a Tulsi Gabbard-led working group point directly to the top, as the legacy of 'Hope and Change' begins a plunge to the ocean floor."

Said an unnamed person who, the NYT Post assures us, knows what he's talking about, quoted in "CBS canned ‘The Late Show’ over tens of millions in financial losses annually — not Stephen Colbert’s politics: sources."

Millions = between $40 million and $50 million a year.

Are these losses because people just don't watch what's "on TV" anymore? We've lost the habit of winding down at the end of the evening with the talk shows the network runs in that time slot? Or is there a problem of Colbert's show leaning to one side politically and spurning the opportunity to appeal to half the people in the country? 

RedBird’s Jeff Shell, the former head of NBCUniversal who will run the network once the [Skydance-Paramount] deal is done, has been crunching the numbers and finding that CBS is a “melting ice cube” with its losses and cost overruns, a source said. The plan is to enhance CBS Sports and invest in “truth-based” news at a network that conservatives have long ripped for its alleged liberal bias.

Are those the scare quotes around "truth-based"? Much as the quotes made me laugh and want to poke fun, I think they are more likely to signify that the Post is quoting Jeff Shell. Same thing with "melting ice cube." I don't think the Post was trying to help us idiots understand that that CBS is not literally a melting ice cube. They were just giving Jeff Shell credit for the turn of phrase. Now, the interesting question becomes what does Shell, who's about to be running the network, think "truth-based" means?

The Post has learned that Ellison is now telling people that with the [Trump's] lawsuit settled the Skydance-Paramount deal will get FCC approval by mid-August.

Ellison = Skydance CEO David Ellison, "the son of Donald Trump pal and tech billionaire Larry Ellison. 

While Ellison is predicting imminent regulatory approval, it will come at a cost: FCC chairman Brendan Carr is likely to demand conditions to remedy what he believes is left-wing news bias in programming that violates agency “public interest” rules that govern local broadcasting as opposed to cable.

More quotation marks. I'm just going to guess that the highly abstract term "public interest" is something in the vicinity of "truth-based." Or... maybe it's something more like the word that got us started on Stephen Colbert — "truthiness."

"Truthiness" was The Word of the Year 2006. Colbert launched it thusly, back when he began his excellent show "The Colbert Report":

And on this show, on this show your voice will be heard... in the form of my voice. 'Cause you're looking at a straight-shooter, America. I tell it like it is. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. I will speak to you in plain simple English.

And that brings us to tonight's word: truthiness.

Now I'm sure some of the Word Police, the wordanistas over at Webster's, are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.

ADDED: Here's Colbert, in July 2016, relocated to "The Late Show," talking about his old word "truthiness" and presented the new word "Trumpiness":

From the New York Times article...

Comments on the NYT article "Unpacking the Past (and the Groceries) With Your Therapist/Mental health professionals are meeting clients in the kitchen to harness the therapeutic powers of cooking."