Was Lindsay Lohan simply mistaken in believing she needed to save these children from sex trafficking?

I'm reading "Lindsay Lohan gets punched in the face after accusing refugee parents of trafficking, trying to take the kids" (Fox News)(video of the incident at the link). I know it's easy to make fun of Lindsay Lohan, but what does she know, and shouldn't we care?

“Guys, you’re going the wrong way, my car is here, come,” Lohan is heard yelling at the children who continued to follow their parents as she chases them down the street.

How do we know the adults are their parents?

“They’re trafficking children, I won’t leave until I take you, now I know who you are, don’t f--- with me.”

How does she think she knows they are sex traffickers?

While trying to get the children's attention, the actress, who spent a few years living in Dubai, can also be heard shouting Arabic phrases in a what sounds like a Middle Eastern accent.

Lohan speaks Arabic, apparently.

“You’re ruining Arabic culture by doing this. You’re taking these children they want to go,” she said before yelling at the boys, “I’m with you. Don’t worry, the whole world is seeing this right now, I will walk forever, I stay with you don’t worry.”

Lohan tries to take a child's hand, and, in the middle of her own live-stream video, gets punched in the face.

I do not know what is going on there. I also don't know what if anything happened with Christine Blasely Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, decades ago in a Maryland house. But we're spending weeks peering into the distant past of 2 hyper-privileged Americans, and some unknown number of children right now are, it is said, dragged into sex slavery, and we let that be merely a passing tale of celebrity weirdness. That Lindsay Lohan. What was she thinking? But it's not really a story about 2 children arriving in Moscow from Syria and a laughable actress punched in the face. It's a story of thousands of children, all over the world. Do people even care if Lohan was wrong or right? Why are things so distorted and out of proportion?

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"The Queen's first openly gay footman has stood down after reportedly being demoted for 'courting publicity.'"

The Daily Mail reports. What a fantastic job:

Ollie Roberts, 21, was required to accompany Her Majesty on all her carriage rides and carry out other duties like collecting her mail at Buckingham Palace and walking the Corgis.

But you're not allowed to call attention to yourself in this fantastic job!

The former airman was told he would be bumped down to an ordinary footman after the palace became concerned about his increasingly high profile, with several articles in gay publications.

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"And the Chicago Cubs have company at the top of the National League Central."

First place mood. #LetsGo pic.twitter.com/4fwwlDgwMO

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 30, 2018

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"Saturday Night Live" does a fantastic cold open with Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh.

I've watched this and I still have not read what anyone is saying about it, so let me sketch out a few thoughts before I read what people are saying.

1. Matt Damon was great. For a moment there, I thought he was channeling Chris Farley, with the idea of raging and amping up the rage, but that association left my mind as Damon continued and used a lot of the details observed in the hearing: turning the pages angrily, drinking water, sniffling.

2. Yesterday, I was predicting that "SNL" would do a Kavanaugh cold open, and I pictured lines like "I like beer, do you like beer," and I got them.

3. The character of the prosecutor Rachel Mitchell was very well observed, conveying apt criticisms that I myself have about how she was used. The SNL castmember, Aidy Bryant, did a nice job of playing the bland professional who found herself in a place where she didn't belong, asked to do something she wouldn't be permitted even to begin to do.

4. The Lindsey Graham part was a complete disaster. Kate McKinnon will get credit for suppressing any vanity and dressing as a man, but there were 2 things wrong. First, Graham was the loudest, angriest person in the room last Thursday, so McKinnon needed to top Matt Damon, and Damon set a high baseline. McKinnon has a less powerful voice than Damon, unsurprisingly, so the loudness may have been physically impossible, but she also couldn't begin to match him in conveying intense anger. Second, the writers gave her a script premised on the idea that Graham is a gay man. Some of the lines were like lines in a dating ad, saying he's 5'11" and "uncut," and the part ended with "This right now, this is my audition for Mr. Trump's cabinet and also for a regional production of 'The Crucible,' and let me tell you, queen, I was good." Queen???!!! Did I mishear that? I replayed it 10 times, and we turned on the closed captioning, which simply omitted the word (after pausing, so apparently the closed captioner didn't know what to do).

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"Sorry, Democrats, but America is unlikely to have a Democratic president before 2025...."

"[I] you look at historical patterns from the end of the 19th century to now, you’ll see that a party (Republican or Democratic) almost always holds the presidency for at least 8 years. Notice I’m saying a 'party,' not a 'president.' For example, Ronald Reagan was a Republican president for 8 years, followed by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush, for 4 years; that’s 12 continuous years of Republicans, so that whole time follows the 8-year minimum rule, even though one of those presidents was in office for only 4 years. There’s been only one exception since 1897 (when the first 20th-century president took office).... Jimmy Carter...."

Writes my son John (at Facebook).

It sounds like a very strong rule, but there is that one exception.

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"Her neon mouth with the blinkers-off smile/Nothing but an electric sign/You could say she has an individual style/She's part of a colorful time..."

The colorful time was the 1960s and Marty Balin was a transcendent voice...



Marty Balin, dead at 76. Here's the the NYT obituary by Jon Pareles.

[Grace] Slick was often singled out for attention, and she sang lead on “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” the 1967 hits that made the band national headliners. “I always let everybody else take the credit,” Mr. Balin told High Times magazine in 2000. “Grace was the most beautiful girl in rock at the time, so they gave her credit for everything.” In the documentary film “Monterey Pop,” when Mr. Balin sings his ballad “Today,” the camera instead shows Ms. Slick, who was mouthing the words with him. Mr. Balin quit Jefferson Airplane in 1971....

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The Global Crop Map

RTBMaps shows the distribution of different crops around the world. You can use the map to see where potatoes, bananas, sweet potatoes and other root vegetables & tubers are grown across the globe. The map also includes a number of socio-economic layers which allow you to view such things as population density alongside where the different crops are grown.

Select a crop from the map's drop-down

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At the Saturday Café...

... don't get lost in the weeds.

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Now, I am getting email from the Democratic Party soliciting donations based on Brett Kavanaugh.

Yesterday morning, I blogged about getting an email solicitation from the party, under the name of Cory Booker, that didn't mention Kavanaugh. I speculated about what that might mean. But yesterday evening, I got this email, from the party, with the subject line "Brett Kavanaugh" (signed by Seema Nanda, the CEO of the Democratic National Committee). Since I blogged about the Kavanaugh-free email. I've got to share the text of this:

After watching Republican senators' shameful performance in this week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, I'm more certain than ever that it is a moral imperative for Democrats to take back control of Congress this November and the White House in 2020.

Shameful? What was shameful?

Chuck Grassley shouldn't be chairing a congressional committee. People like Lindsey Graham shouldn't be Senators.

People like Lindsey Graham? What does that even mean?! There's a heavy moralistic tone here, but it's so conclusory that I see they're only trying to reach me if I happen to have already taken umbrage and am up for conclusory statements and slurs.

People like Donald Trump shouldn't be appointing anyone to a lifetime term on our nation's highest court., Lindsey Graham and their Republican colleagues...

That's how it looks in the original. Something got cut. I don't know why the DNC is centralizing Graham (other than that he made the most fiery statement during the hearing).

... have shown that they have no interest in seriously investigating the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh -- and Donald Trump has demonstrated time and again that he lacks the temperament and judgment to make an appointment to our highest court.

I thought Trump was making very sober choices, deferring to the experts on the conservative judiciary. I can't think of anything he's done wrong in picking Supreme Court nominees (other than that he's picking conservatives).

My promise to you as CEO of the Democratic National Committee is that I will do every last thing in my power in the next 39 days to fight back against these Republicans. Right now, I'd like to ask for your help.

"Every last thing"?

This Sunday is the final end-of-quarter deadline before Election Day, and every contribution made before Sunday at midnight will help Democrats take back Congress this November. If we do that, we can exert some real checks on this president and stop him from pushing through more extreme Supreme Court nominees.

And that's the problem, distinctly admitted. The Democrats oppose conservative Supreme Court nominees, and they need to win in the midterms to block them, and they're ready to do anything they can toward that goal.

ADDED:  I used the word "umbrage" and felt motivated to look it up in the OED. I'm using it correctly. It has meant "Displeasure, annoyance, offence, resentment" since the 1600s. One of the examples in the OED comes from George Washington:

1796 G. Washington Let. in Writings (1892) XIII. 263 Unless my pacific disposition was displeasing, nothing else could have given umbrage by the most rigid construction of the letter.

But the older meaning is shade or shadow, and it's still not obsolete to use it to mean, specifically, the shade created by a tree:

1849 C. Brontë Shirley II. ii. 34 She would spend a sunny afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of friendly umbrage.

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The University of Wisconsin won a big patent case against Apple in 2015, but it has now lost in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We hold that no reasonable juror could have found literal infringement in this case" said the unanimous court, reported in U.S. News.

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