"There's really no point in risking injury, if the result of a fight is predictable."

I'm quoting Sir David Attenborough, transcribed from a video at "When a hippo is angry, even other hippos get out of the way/Hippos are huge and possess powerful teeth, so real fights are rare because the risk of injury is so great" (BBC).

I stumbled into that after beginning the day posting about the death of Peggy Sue Gerron, which felt off because I'd received the clear impression — as I scanned the news on my iPhone while still in bed and listened to the NYT podcast as I made my coffee and toast — that the theme of the day was anger. Why angry hippos? I had the idea that there was an old children's game called "Angry, Angry Hippos," and the rest is blogging happenstance. I can't embed the Attenborough video, so here are some children, viewing hippos, noticing the teeth — which Attenborough says are for threatening violence — and receiving the fake news from a woman that the hippos are smiling:



• Here's the NYT podcast. The episode is "Kavanaugh's Classmates Speak Out." It's not mostly about anger, but drinking. I learned the jocular phrase "holding up the wall." It means so drunk you need to lean against the wall.

• Here's the main article that influenced me to believe the subject of the day is anger: "'The trauma for a man': Male fury and fear rises in GOP in defense of Kavanaugh" (WaPo). I'm going to do a separate post about that. I'm just warming up. I have an aversion to anger, and I have a sense of how that can be used to manipulate me — me, a microcosm of women. Don't make me angry!, smiles the hippo.

• And here's the real children's game that became more ominous in my imperfect memory: Hungry, Hungry Hippos:

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"I believe that the flat-6 chord in the bridge of 'Peggy Sue' (F major in the key of A major) when Buddy Holly sings 'pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue'..."

"... was a prophetic moment in early rock ‘n’ roll — a rare example of an uptempo ‘50s rock song to venture outside the conventional 1, 4, and 5 chords — that probably inspired the Beatles to make similarly bold chord choices in songs like 'I Saw Her Standing There.'"

Writes my son John (at Facebook). The occasion to think about that song is the death of Peggy Sue Gerron. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal has the obituary:

Gerron, an Olton native, went to Lubbock High, where she met and dated Jerry “J.I” Allison, who along with Holly was a founding member of the Crickets, according to A-J Media archives. Her namesake song, which went to No. 3 on the charts for Holly in 1957, was originally titled “Cindy Lou” after Holly’s niece, according to A-J Media archives. The title was changed to “Peggy Sue” - then Allison’s girlfriend - after the couple were briefly broken up.

Gerron and Allison were married through much of the 60s, but later divorced. Gerron went on to Pasadena Junior College in Pasadena, California, becoming a dental assistant. She would re-marry and had two children and multiple grand-children....

[Bryan Edwards, now living in New Mexico after operating the business called Edwards Electronics in Lubbock] remembers that he knew Peggy Sue from Lubbock High School, and in recent years she had asked him about ham radio. “She said, ‘Ive always wanted to be a ham.’ At the time, I thought it was just a passing comment. Then she said, ‘I want to get a ham license.’ A couple of other guys and I started helping Peggy, and the result was that she got a ham radio license. In the mid-1990s, we decided we wanted to have a special event station commemorating Lubbock and Buddy Holly, and Peggy would always take a very active part in that. She would come over to my house and spend hours talking to people on the special events station. We might talk to from 1,000 to 1,500 people all around the world during the time commemorating Buddy Holly. Peggy would be the one who would be talking to people, and it was fascinating for her to tell stories to those people. When they would mention an association with Buddy Holly, she would immediately have a fantastic comeback. She would share with people from all over the world — it was a really great time.”

How strange to be declared pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty over and over again all your life and to know the prettiness that inspired the declaration belonged to Cindy Lou (who?!).

And then there's Jerry “J.I” Allison, the divorced husband and former Cricket. He seems to still be around. Here's a 2015 interview with him. My favorite thing about it is this picture of his surrealistically preserved childhood home:



ADDED: This post has been corrected to reflect John's correction: "I meant 'I Saw Her Standing There'; I inadvertently mentioned another Beatles song, but I changed it now. Thanks to a reader who noted the mistake."

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At the Dogs-Should-Vote Café...

... you can howl all night.

And buy stuff at Amazon through the Althouse Portal if you like.

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"It would have felt wholly inappropriate to have an actress imitating Christine Blasey Ford, 'doing' her voice, wearing a wig, picking out which mannerisms to play up."

"And the most galvanizing two minutes of television of the week — two women tearfully and angrily confronting Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator — was nothing a comedy show could or should touch. Points to SNL for avoiding both. Knowing where not to go doesn’t make you funny, but it at least prevents you from being horrific.... Let nobody argue that Matt Damon doesn’t understand the fragile interior of the douche bro [Kavanaugh]; he went there. But he went there more empty-handed than should have been the case. All those referential moments weren’t shaped comic ideas so much as touchpoints of familiarity — they were SNL’s way of telling you that yes, it noticed what you noticed.... It may be that we’re in a moment — and by 'moment,' I mean 'endless soul-killing years-long slog' — so defined by anger that a certain kind of political comedy is all but impossible. You can’t win by being so afraid of losing half your audience that you say nothing...."

Writes Mark Harris at Vulture in "The Matt Damon Kavanaugh Sketch Proves How Hard It Is to Do Politics on SNL Now." He's apparently concerned not that the show doesn't go after liberals (and therefore misses half the targets of humor) but that it doesn't go after conservatives more viciously. It wouldn't be good to make fun of Christine Blasey Ford, but it would be good to kick Brett Kavanaugh around more intensely sadistically. I've got to give Harris credit, though, for pointing me to this. But this is what social media can do and that's just too rough to go on network TV:

Check out the big brain on Brett pic.twitter.com/3nH4hxENzI

— oscarboyson (@ohboyson) September 28, 2018

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Oh! I'm surprised at myself, forgetting the first Monday of October! Did anyone notice the actual Supreme Court cranked back into gear today?

The empty seat is so interesting that maybe you, like me, forgot to hail the return of the actual Supreme Court today. I'd given in a thought now and then, maybe last week, but it slipped my mind today until just now.

Here's Joan Biskupic at CNN, noting the return of the Court, but forefronting the unfilled seat: "An empty space and an idle microphone: The Supreme Court returns."

The associate justices repositioned their tall black chairs on the two sides of Roberts, in their new order of alternating seniority without Kennedy... At the end of the bench, where the new justice would sit, was an empty space and idle microphone.

In their first case, testing the reach of federal environmental law, the eight appeared to be dividing along familiar ideological and political lines, conservatives versus liberals.... [T]he high court [might fail] to set a national standard on some bubbling controversies, whether regarding the Endangered Species Act, in dispute Monday, or related to a Tuesday case brought by a Death Row inmate with dementia, when elderly convicts may be exempt from capital punishment....

In a practical vein, 4-4 splits may not be the only consequence for a shorthanded court. Without a full slate of justices, they may also avoid taking up substantial new questions, as happened when the Senate had stalled on Obama nominee Judge Merrick Garland. Among the contentious issues currently pending for possible review is whether federal law prohibiting sex discrimination covers bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity....

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Trump takes some questions today about the Kavanaugh investigation.

Trump delivers a virtuoso performance here (I've clipped the Kavanaugh-related part):



The best part is when the reporter (Kaitlan Collins) pushes Trump to answer the question whether he will pull the nomination if the FBI investigation shows Kavanaugh lied about drinking, and Trump offers a great nonanswer:

I don’t think he did. Look, here’s what — I’m just saying, I’m not a drinker. I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life. It's one of my only good traits. I don't drink. Whenever they're looking for something, I’m going to say I’ve never had a glass of alcohol. I have never had alcohol. You know, for whatever reason. Can you imagine if I had, what a mess I would be? I would be the world's worst, but I never drank. I never drank, okay? But I can tell you I watched that hearing, and I watched a man saying that he did have difficulty as a young man with drink. The one question I didn't ask is how about the last 20 years, have you had difficulty the last 20 years? Because nobody said anything bad about him in many, many years. They go back to high school.

You've got to watch the whole clip, because it's funny when Trump uses the phrase "You've had enough" to try (playfully) to cut off Collins. She isn't really cut off. She gets loads of time.

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Slate — at the behest of my son John — corrects a false accusation that Kavanaugh lied.

Here's a link to the tweet.

Here's the follow-up correction tweet:

On 9/12 I criticized @thinkprogress for a headline claiming that Kavanaugh "said" he'd overturn Roe. On Friday I made the same mistake, writing that Kavanaugh "claimed" he was legal to drink in HS. Thanks to @jaltcoh for catching my error.

That thanks @jaltcoh (my son) and links to the correction at Slate, where the article is still called "Kavanaugh Lied to the Judiciary Committee—Repeatedly."

Update, Sept. 30, 2018: This article originally said that Kavanaugh “claimed that his beer consumption in high school was legal because the drinking age in Maryland was 18.” Kavanaugh’s exact words were: “The drinking age, as I noted, was 18, so the seniors were legal, senior year in high school, people were legal to drink, and we—yeah, we drank beer.” These words could imply that his beer drinking at age 18 was legal, which would be false, since the drinking age in Maryland was raised to 21 before he turned 18. Alternatively, they could imply that his drinking at age 17 was understandable, if he was with 18-year-old seniors who were legal at the time. In keeping with the standard applied to others, it’s incorrect to report that Kavanaugh “claimed” his beer consumption that summer was legal. Therefore, the sentences have been removed.

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Brewers vs. Cubs.

A place to talk, in case you, like us, are watching the game.

UPDATE: Win!

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The outside prosecutor Rachel Mitchell opines that the evidence would not justify bringing criminal charges and does not even meet a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

According to the 5-page memo she sent to the Judiciary Committee Republicans, which WaPo got its hands on. The basis of the opinion is what a lot of Kavanaugh proponents have observed:

In the memo, Mitchell argued that Ford has not offered a consistent account of the alleged assault, including when exactly it occurred. Mitchell also noted that Ford did not identify Kavanaugh by name as her attacker in key pieces of evidence, including notes from sessions with her therapist — records that Ford’s lawyers declined to provide to the Senate Judiciary Committee....

[I]n the memo, Mitchell also argued that Ford “has no memory of key details of the night in question — details that could help corroborate her account,” nor has Ford given a consistent account of the alleged assault. Noting that Ford did not remember in what house the incident allegedly occurred, or how she left the gathering and got back home, Mitchell said “her inability to remember this detail raises significant questions.”

Mitchell also stressed that nobody who Ford has identified as having attended the gathering — including Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth and Leland (Ingham) Keyser — has been able to directly corroborate Ford’s allegations....

Mitchell notes that "There is no clear standard of proof for allegations made during the Senate’s confirmation process," but she is a prosecutor and she can only give an opinion from her point of view, from "the legal world, not the political world."

It is, of course, only her legal opinion, not The Legal Opinion in some grand sense, and she was chosen by the Republican Senators, who have their political goals and needs, even if she has none. And, really, we can't know if what she calls a legal opinion is really just that. She could be lying or unwittingly swayed by political or personal beliefs. We never know whether purported legal minds are really operating in some purely legal way (if such a thing is even possible).

The nominee, in the initial phase of the hearings, performed the usual theater of presenting himself as a judge who does nothing but decide cases according to the law. We in the audience of that theater may not really believe all that but think it's nevertheless close enough to get by, and it's only what every other nominee does, so we must suspend disbelief if we're going to have judges at all.

But when we see ourselves in this predicament, what can we do when we don't like the way the nominee leans? We could just accept the power of the President to make a nomination and demand that the Senate confirm as long as the nominee performs well in the usual theater of acting like a proper judge. The President won the election after all. That's a fact. But why defer there unless it's what you already want to do? Those who don't want a staunch conservative in the swing-vote-Kennedy seat want to resist. Trump didn't legitimately win, they might say — or: Obama didn't get deference when the Scalia seat opened up during his term.

Here's another thing that can be done when we don't like the leaning of a presidential nominee who adequately performs the Neutral Judge act in the initial political theater: Bring in something unrelated to his judicial work, something that makes him unacceptable, and allegations about something that happened in private long ago could do the trick.

But how good do these allegations need to be before they work? Rachel Mitchell can only say she has no idea. And if we are honest, shouldn't we admit that we're all drawn to the standard that gets us to the result we wanted before we ever heard about Christine Blasey Ford? I'd say no. There is one other factor: The short- and long-term interests of the 2 political parties. Republicans may fear that backing Kavanaugh now will hurt them. They might ruthlessly cut loose the damaged goods. Similarly, Democrats may see that voting Kavanaugh down will mollify their voters and energize conservatives in the midterm elections.

Maybe everyone's hoping that the FBI investigation will produce some very clear indications that Christine Blasey Ford is either lying or mistaken and the intensity of the partisan energy will dissipate. I don't think the FBI will save them. All the Senators have is one more week to worry about how to extricate themselves from this horrible trap they're caught in.

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Mapping the American Dream

The American Dream is based on the idea that everyone in the USA has the same opportunities to achieve prosperity and success. No matter where you are born, no matter who your parents are, with hard work, ambition and determination you can achieve wealth and success.

A new interactive map from Opportunity Insights visualizes the average outcomes in adulthood for people in every census tract in

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