"If Stephens and his editors want to insist he was merely misunderstood, they do so at their own peril. As writer Paul Fussell observed long ago, when a writer is as widely 'misunderstood' as Stephens claims he was, it's almost always the writer's fault."
- Jack Shafer, "Bret Stephens and the Perils of the Tapped-Out Column," Politico (December 30, 2019)

If it wasn't bad enough that columnist Bret Stephens wrote a problematic op-ed touting the superior intellectual prowess of Ashkenazi Jews, he compounded his error by citing as a credible source for his musings the late white-wing crackpot eugenicist Henry Harpending, who once opined publicly that the reason people of African descent are inferior to Europeans and Asians is because they are incapable of having and enjoying hobbies.

Not surprisingly, Stephens' column blew up the internet, and left his bosses at the New York Times once again scrambling in damage control mode. It's funny how in all the years he's helmed that paper, executive editor Dean Baquet has never learned that it's always better to first review and edit your employees' work BEFORE its approval for publication, rather than have to subsequently amend it while simultaneously offering a disclaimer.

Then Baquet made a bigger mess by appearing on NBC's Meet the Press this past Sunday with the Washington Post's Marty Baron, and telling the host and the audience that "Trump voters are owed our respect."

Excuse me, but are racists and xenophobes owed our respect? Are misogynists? How about those who openly traffic in ignorance and roundly reject science, history and facts? Those who embrace our enemies? Those who attack and undermine the rule of law?

The answers to those questions are, of course, "No!"; "Hell, no!"; "F*ck, no!"; "You're kidding, right?" and "You can't be f*cking serious!" Responsible and diligent journalists in particular owe their allegiance and respect solely to the truth. Period. To do anything otherwise is to pander.

More to the point, what sort of respect does NBC's Chuck Todd and NYT's Dean Baquet show the rest of us -- you know, the 54% of Americans who DIDN'T vote for Donald Trump -- when in the name of "Balance," they repeatedly provide an uncritical forum to those Republicans who constantly ridicule our values and persistently denounce us as un-American, and then nod like bobblehead dolls at their falsehoods?

As any Journalism 101 professor will teach his or her students, if one person tells you it's raining outside while the other is insisting that it's a beautiful and sunny day, your job is to not quote them both without question. Rather, you instead look out the window, determine the truth for yourself, and then you report accordingly.

At least they could drive away. Thousands had to flee to the beaches, with the largest coastal since Dunkirk still underway.

And they head home to the small town near Melbourne where they and our daughter-in-law's parents had to evacuate last year, with the worst wildfire less than a mile away. The photos from their backyard were terrifying.

This year, sooner than usual -- owing to climate change affecting winds, and after years of drought -- Australia already has lost dozens of dead or missing people, millions of koalas and other wildlife that we so loved there, with millions of acres burned, destroying a lot of eucalyptus that koalas need.

And the worst weather still is ahead, this weekend, hotter than ever in a year of record heat already. And it's still early in the season.

Enough.

I have a new policy.  If I don't see an actual recipe with one upward swipe, I'm gone.

Appreciate any sites that have actual recipes without the BS.  I like Allrecipes

Great fun for me because most of the best work I did on movies was exactly the kind of stuff is showcased in 1917.

That is the invisible kind.  The kind where if you do your job no one should ever know you did a thing.  It can be a little thankless with civilians but industry people always get it.

On Netflix, I'm finishing up the third season of The Crown and trying to get into The Witcher.  

I finally saw this.  Not the biggest Tarantino fan but a movie about a movie about Sharon Tate in Aug 1969 that leaves you smiling is pretty special.

-- In 2016, Hillary Clinton would have needed to flip 38 additional Electoral College votes to reach 270[1], thereby winning a majority in the Electoral College.

-- Using 2016 presidential election results, we can map out the different paths that Clinton had to winning 270 electoral votes. These routes -- and how far Clinton was from winning them -- give us a template for how presidential candidates might plan their strategies for this November's election.

-- Flipping Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is likely Democrats' best chance at winning back the presidency. But last election's results reveal other paths to 270 for Democrats (like Florida and Arizona) that were competitive in 2016 and could be decisive this November

LINK

Mr. Mercedes Review: David E. Kelley Takes A Disturbingly Fun Ride With Stephen King

Interesting because of the defense.  The woman shot the bad guy in the head in the courtroom with a printed plastic gun.  The defense is he was a mass murderer and he deserved it.

It's kind of shocking.  You can't help root for the killer because she is a great central character much developed before she pops a cap into the bad guy but it's still a sort of horrifying defense.

CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.

The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.

Sandmann's lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, the Washington Post and NBC Universal.

Sounds like there will be other lawsuits...

A lawsuit is expected to be filed against Phillips, Wood said. He indicated that lawsuit would seek $5 million, but the judge said that Phillips does not have as much money as the other defendants.

They also plan to sue Gannett, owners of The Enquirer, according to Wood.

`The Outsider' Review: HBO's New Stephen King Adaptation is Incredibly Scary

second shift

Manfred's investigation began when pitcher Mike Fiers, who played for the Astros in 2017, told the Athletic magazine that the team had stolen signs using a center-field camera that fed pictures to a television monitor behind the dugout, which constitutes a clear and blatant violation of MLB rules prohibiting that use of technology during games.

So, it's no longer a question if the Astros cheated but rather, to what extent did their cheating help them defeat the Dodgers in the 2017 World Series, during which L.A. pitching aces Yu Darvish and Clayton Kershaw were clearly rocked early by Astros batters who, in obvious retrospect, likely knew exactly what pitches were coming their way.

(Although to be fair, Clayton Kershaw has also been rocked in every postseason he's been involved in while playing for the Dodgers. In a sport where the nickname "Mr. October" is considered the ultimate compliment, Kershaw has been "Mr. May, June and July.")

Manfred also fined the Astros organization $5 million (the maximum allowed under MLB rules), stripped the team of its first and second round draft picks for the next two years, and announced that Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended for the 2020 season.

Shortly after that announcement, Astros owner Jim Crane fired both Luhnow and Hinch. "Neither one of them started this, but neither one of them did anything about it," he said. "We need to move forward with a clean slate."

It's obvious that of everyone in Houston, at least Crane took Luhnow's and Hinch's enabling behavior very seriously because even though spring training begins in a few weeks, he didn't hesitate to decapitate the team's on-field and front office leadership and start anew.

It'll likely next be the Boston Red Sox's turn in the barrel. The common denominator here is Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who served as the Astros bench coach during the 2017 season and presently stands accused of creating the team's sign-stealing technology system with players.

It's been further alleged that Cora brought that very same system with him to Boston for the 2018 season, and employed it to likewise help the Red Sox win the championship. Ironically, the team Boston beat in that year's World Series was also the L.A. Dodgers.

Russian government resigns after Putin proposes reforms that would weaken his successor

"It is about the journey and regardless of what happens, um, I have had an enormous life. I have had a lot of opportunities that a lot of people could only dream. I've done a lot of things over my 48 years a lot of people would never have an opportunity to do."

And now, he risks spending the next 20 years of that enormous life and journey behind bars because a few of those things are allegedly stuff he shouldn't have done.