SNL's "Lindsey Graham" says: "Let's keep this horny male energy going 'til the midterms!"

The cold open shows GOP Senators celebrating their Kavanaugh victory in sports-locker-room style and "Chuck Schumer" weakly whining over the Democrats defeat and then getting punched in the balls by "Joe Manchin":





You can watch the whole sketch if you scroll back to the beginning, but I'm setting it to start at the depiction of Susan Collins, who, of course, can't be shown as a strong, principled woman who gave the best speech anyone can remember a Senator giving. No, she's a witless patsy, just vaguely realizing she's been had:



If it were funnier, I'd make a new tag, Kavanomedy. But it isn't funny. The main idea is that the American people were overwhelmingly opposed to Kavanaugh and are ferociously angry now and will let the clueless Senators feel their wrath in the midterm elections. If the Kavanaugh-haters who watch the show could really believe that, maybe they'd laugh, but there's no evidence that's what's happening out there in the real world. Oh, what am I saying? Who needs evidence?! Live within the fantasy for as long as you can, and "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble. Not much comic potential there, but who cares? It's the Era of That's Not Funny.

IN THE COMMENTS: gilbar — quoting my "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble — links to the "SNL" sketch that acknowledged the bubble within which it pictures its audience:

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Dasom deals with Leeteuk and Tak Jae Hoon

"Because of my allergies, I could no longer have pets. I wish I had someone..."

"How about raising us two?"

"Can I neuter you guys, then?"

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Pann: Dasom deals with Leeteuk and Tak Jae Hoon

1. [+210, -3] There's also this one. They asked Bona to do the "oppa-ya" aegyo and Bona said, "but there's no oppa here?" ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Those ajussis need to stop doing this to female idols.

2. [+154, -0] Appropriate joke to this situation.

3. [+121, -0] ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ She targets them nicely~

4. [+57, -1] Tak Jae Hoon and Leeteuk's hosting is so boring ㅠㅠ My bias was on the show and the MCs kept cutting the flow with boring jokes, ugh.

5. [+49, -0] Am I the only one who doesn't find Leeteuk funny?

6. [+32, -0] So funny ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Sistar members are all girl crushes.

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"The crowd in front of the U.S. Supreme Court is tiny, looks like about 200 people (& most are onlookers)..."

"... that wouldn’t even fill the first couple of rows of our Kansas Rally, or any of our Rallies for that matter! The Fake News Media tries to make it look sooo big, & it’s not!"

Trump tweets.

Also at Twitter, I'm seeing Jordan Peterson promoting (but not necessarily endorsing) the idea that Kavanaugh, confirmed, should step down. Responding to him is Scott Adams, who says, "This feels like a terrible idea to me, but because smart people are saying it, I’m open to hearing the argument."

Peterson replies: "I'm not certain that is the right move. It's very complex. But he would have his name cleared, and a figure who might be less divisive might be put forward."

And Adams says, "Quitting would clear his name? I'm not connecting any of these dots."

I agree with Adams and would add that a "less divisive" figure is a fantasy. If the Democrats dream of stopping Kavanaugh were to come true, they would be fired up to use any means necessary to stop the new nominee. I'm reminded of this passage in the Susan Collins speech:

The President nominated Brett Kavanaugh on July 9th. Within moments of that announcement, special interest groups raced to be the first to oppose him, including one organization that didn’t even bother to fill in the Judge’s name on its pre-written press release – they simply wrote that they opposed “Donald Trump’s nomination of XX to the Supreme Court of the United States.” A number of Senators joined the race to announce their opposition, but they were beaten to the punch by one of our colleagues who actually announced opposition before the nominee’s identity was even known.

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"We need to legalize this plant, this life-saving plant.... It's medicine, natural medicine, and the old 2 parties want to throw you in jail for using it. Vote Libertarian...."

From the Marijuana Harvest Festival on the UW Library Mall today. The video ends abruptly when one of the men on the stage calls out to me, "Ann!" I put the lens cap on the camera.

Actually, the camera continues to run, so I had audio of my reacting to getting run into by a man in an electric wheelchair, who came up behind me, ran into my foot, and kept his motor running with his wheel ramming into my foot as if to say, move your foot, I'm coming through.

Transcription from the audio: "Oh! Oh! Oh! Hey! Hey! Don't run into me. That's a crime. Don't run into people with a motor vehicle. That's wrong! That's wrong! You could be arrested for that! You need to be careful! There are children! There are animals! Don't do that! Don't do that!"

I really cared about impressing him that he could not drive like that on the pavement. He was acting like someone that other people let get away with whatever he wants to do, which I also think is wrong and, frankly, dehumanizing. Either he's capable of driving a motor vehicle or he isn't.

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We went down to the University of Wisconsin Library Mall because we saw the announcement from our local socialists: "We must show the ruling class we are not going anywhere."

"If Kavanaugh is approved tomorrow it will only be the beginning of sustained mass movement that will come for more than the rapists and misogynists they put and hold in power. Down with Trump, down with Kavanaugh, down with the GOP, down with the patriarchy and down with capitalism!"



There are a lot of people milling around downtown Madison. It's a Farmers' Market day on the square. It's a big football Saturday, and the game's not until this evening. And there was the big annual Marijuana Harvest Festival right on Library Mall.

And this is what the Socialist flooding of the street looked like.



It's not as if anyone was gravitating toward the Democratic Party. People cut a wide swath around this table:



That's the Socialist crowd in the background. A few feet away the mall was teeming:



The Libertarians were there, hoping to divert the marijuana-oriented passers-by:



It wasn't hard to see what they had to offer:

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The Senate is about to call the roll on Kavanaugh...

... just as soon as these protesters can be cleared out of the gallery.

AND: That's it! Kavanaugh has survived the ordeal. 50-48, confirmation.

I was touched that Senator Murkowski withdrew her "no" vote in deference to Senator Daines who wanted — needed — to be present at his daughter's wedding, so that he did not need to rush back in the middle of the day to register the "yes" vote that was his to give.

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YG's Netflix show 'YG Electronics' faces criticisms

Article: 'YG Electronics', fans enraged by excessive self-diss... "Mocking the artists?"

Source: Star Today via Nate

1. [+1977, -39] So there's been no YG celebrity who completed active military service ever since YG was established in the 1998? Lee Chan Hyuk will be the first one to do so ㅋㅋ

2. [+1072, -21] What the hell is YG doing... This isn't going anywhere.

3. [+1042, -20] Yang Hyun Suk must've been desperate ㅋㅋ

4. [+93, -1] YG is going reckless now. This isn't even an agency, it's a pharmacy. They don't even write songs for Lee Hi anymore. No wonder why Gummy moved to CJ and she's doing even better with OSTs. The male celebrities always get sick for some reason and then serve in the public service. Do they not know how things work these days? Celebrities do well after completing their military service, come back with good projects, and promote without controversies. They must be full of idiots.

5. [+72, -3] Seungri is overdoing it. Instead, he should've enlisted with the hyungs and then have a group comeback. I don't know why he's doing this.

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Source: Naver

1. [+587, -12] YG must think this is cool but it's not trendy at all. These days, making sexual jokes or insulting others' looks can get you into big trouble. Eun Jiwon's part was also too much.

2. [+264, -10] You can't just use and mock artists who didn't even appear on the show. I can't believe they're doing things that hateful commenters and antis would do in their self-produced show. They need to edit Eun Jiwon's part out before it gets spread.

3. [+229, -3] Where are their manners for their artists? Do they think it's cool to make insults under the excuse of black comedy? Can the producers be sued for this? Before suing the hateful commenters, they should get rid of their inside enemies.

4. [+198, -5] This article is spot on. Insulting and mocking their own artists and calling it a B-level variety show is too much. I'm very disappointed with YG.

5. [+122, -5] The show isn't funny at all...

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Ranking of K-pop album sales in 2018

(Twice, Wanna One, and EXO are still expecting to release new albums this year)

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Pann: Ranking of K-pop album sales in 2018

1. [+217, -8] BTS reached 4M with just two comebacks ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Amazing

2. [+157, -5] BTS is really amazing and so is Twice. Both groups' physical sales are a different world.

3. [+156, -12] Twice daebak ㅋㅋㅋ Seventeen also sold 700K... They're all amazing. BTS and Wanna One are always there and CBX did well despite being a subunit. They're still promoting so they'll sell more ㅋㅋ

4. [+133, -91] EXO is the only subunit one, really amazing...

5. [+74, -2] BTS ㅋㅋㅋㅋ How are you supposed to surpass that...

6. [+64, -2] BTS is outstanding

7. [+52, -5] Why are people defensive against Twice? Blame your bias' lack of popularity for not advancing into Japan. Is it wrong for Twice to advance into Japan and selling a lot?

8. [+44, -6] BTS, Twice, and Wanna One are the top tier right now.

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A new WaPo trend — giving Trump credit?

It takes 4 journalists to see it, but, apparently....



... Trump isn't an impetuous, wildly swinging idiot. What if he is what he says, a political genius?

Let's see how far the WaPo journalists go:

Again and again, President Trump was instructed not to do it. A cadre of advisers, confidants and lawmakers all urged him — implored him, really — not to personally attack the women who had accused Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

So he did it anyway.

Addressing thousands at a boisterous rally in Mississippi, Trump relied on his own visceral sense of the moment and mocked Christine Blasey Ford for gaps in her memory, directly impugning the accuser’s credibility.

Establishment Republicans initially reacted with horror. But Trump’s 36-second off-script jeremiad proved a key turning point toward victory for the polarizing nominee, White House officials and Kavanaugh allies said, turbocharging momentum behind Kavanaugh just as his fate appeared most in doubt....

Trump had no particular personal affinity for Kavanaugh, although a dinner was arranged between the two men and their wives to cultivate a relationship. “I don’t even know him,” the president told the Mississippi crowd, “so it’s not like, ‘Oh, gee, I want to protect my friend.’ ”...

“Kavanaugh’s an establishment guy. He was a Bush guy,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), referencing the nominee’s experience as White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush. “There was a lot of pushback, you know — ‘Don’t go [down] that road,’ ‘That’s not why you won,’ and he said, ‘Wait a minute. I want to pick the best people to be on the court I can,’ and he said he was incredibly impressed by his background, just the whole package of Kavanaugh.”...

[Kavanaugh's Fox News interview] was widely criticized — “objectively a horrible idea,” in the words of one White House official. Kavanaugh appeared wooden and dispassionate, sticking only to a few talking points, and Trump, an avid consumer and critic of television news, thought he appeared weak and unconvincing....

[The Judiciary Committee hearing with Ford and Kavanaugh] left the president seesawing from fatalism to enthusiasm about Kavanaugh’s confirmation prospects.

When Ford had finally finished, [White House counsel Don] McGahn spoke privately to Kavanaugh, who had not watched, urging him to be passionate. “Speak from your heart,” McGahn advised the nominee, according to someone familiar with their discussion.

Kavanaugh roared into the committee room and shouted his opening statement, which he had personally written the night before with the help of one trusted clerk. The hotly defiant performance was so effective in the eyes of his advisers — and, perhaps most importantly, of the president — that a group gathered in Vice President Pence’s Capitol Hill office began to cheer and pump their fists. Some even had tears in their eyes.

The hearing galvanized activists on both sides and left jittery senators — including Flake, one of 11 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee — torn between competing accounts and party loyalties.... McConnell spoke with Trump and convinced him that the only option was to delay a vote and move forward with the FBI probe....

On the campaign trail... Trump ratcheted up the partisan warfare at his rallies. In Mississippi, the president — already fuming over a New York Times investigation into his family’s allegedly fraudulent tax schemes — felt the media was not properly scrutinizing Ford’s account and decided to engage.

“How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember,’ ” Trump said, reenacting Ford’s hearing. “How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ”

The riff lasted less than a minute, but had lasting ramifications. The senators whose votes Kavanaugh was wooing said they were aghast at the president’s rally-stage behavior. But Kavanaugh allies saw a clear benefit: An argument by the president that bucked up Kavanaugh, discredited Ford and became a clarion call for conservatives.

More than two dozen Trump supporters interviewed at the president’s campaign rally Thursday in Minnesota said they wish he had not gone after Ford, fretting that doing so was not presidential. Yet many also acknowledged the president had simply spoken aloud what many of them thought privately.

The reporters don't tie it all up. In fact the headline at the article is toned down from the one on the front page which you see in my image at the top of this post. At the article, there's less credit to Trump. It's just: "‘Willing to go to the mat’: How Trump and Republicans carried Kavanaugh to the cusp of confirmation." But the facts are there in the article. Trump critiqued Ford's testimony in clear powerful terms — something everyone else was afraid to do. He recognized that Kavanaugh's presentation on Fox News wasn't compelling (even though it was what the pushers of the "judicial temperament" argument claimed they needed to see). And during the hearing, after Ford testified, Trump performed a public routine of "seesawing" about whether Kavanaugh could make it, lighting the fire on him to shed his establishment guy/Bush guy demeanor and talk more like Trump.

That's all in the article, but with no strongly stated bottom line, Trump haters can shrug it off and cling to their belief that Trump is an impetuous idiot.

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"Althouse: If you say 'Harumph' you must Link!"

Says Madison Man, in the comments to a post where I said "Harrumph!" He links to this:



Fantastic! My post has an embedded clip from "Putney Swope," because it has a line — "How many syllables, Mario?" — that I have held in my memory for half a century. But there's no chance that I'd have dragged up "Harrumph," because — can you believe it? — I have never seen "Blazing Saddles."

Is it "harrumph" or "harumph"? Double letters are the peskiest spelling problem. The OED says the double-r is correct. It's defined as "A guttural sound made by clearing the throat. Also fig. So as v., to make this sound; to speak in a rasping or guttural voice; to make a comment implying disapproval." One example is from The New Yorker in 1961, a cartoon, I'm guessing: "My goodness, Henry, you're much too young to be going har-rumph, har-rumph all the time!"

I put "Blazing Saddles" on my list of movies that came out during the period of my life when I pretty much went out and saw everything that was supposed to be excellent but that I never did see — not at the time and not in later years, when it became easy to see whatever I wanted on videotape or DVD. Also on my list: "Apocalypse Now" and "The Last Picture Show." I think of those 2 because they are DVDs that I bought as soon as they came out because I assumed surely I'd watch them and that my previous failure to watch them was nothing but a chance omission. They've sat on my shelf for way more than a decade.

And I still don't feel like watching "Blazing Saddles." Harrumph!!

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