Minette Walters The Players Allen & Unwin, October 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Minette Walters has moved beyond the familiar historical fiction featuring the fight for power in court circles, to giving one such person a life outside the court where he meets and pursues a woman whose intelligence, and physical disability would make her eminently unsuited to the superficial life at court. Beginning with the Duke of Monmouth’s attempt to take the throne, the spying and intrigue as well as the blood stained, and tragic warfare enacted in his name Walters propels the reader into the familiar. However, with the introduction of Althea Ettrick the story moves into unique territory which gives the novel an exciting alternative to the established history. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
A find worth pursuing if you like spy thrillers
The first two Ava Glass books appeared on Book Bub initially and were so good I bought the third at full price!
From the blurb: ‘Ava Glass is a former crime reporter and civil servant. Her time working for the government introduced her to the world of spies, and she’s been fascinated by them ever since…’
Ava Glass – The Chase, The Trap and The Traitor
Spy thrillers
A new find
Emma Makepeace is the spy who dominates the narrative but leaves space for the character development of her co-protagonists and those they pursue. She works for an unnamed agency, with Russian spies in Britian as its main target. Charles Ripley is her mentor and boss. The Chase features Emma’s fraught journey across London with the son of spies who does not want to be saved. Four Russian scientists under the protection of the British government have already been murdered. Dimitri and Elena Primalov are seen as the key to why the murders have taken place, are assumed to be under threat, and plans are in place to send them to safety. Mikhail Primalov, their son and a successful doctor, objects to leaving his life behind. Emma must persuade him to do so and get him to safety. The chase across London is thrilling, breathtaking at times, and an insight into Emma’s work, the heartbreak of leaving a known life behind, and the challenges faced by both spy and the man she is bound to protect.
The Traitor begins with fear – an exhausted computer numbers analyst is coming to a conclusion that will provide valuable information to British intelligence. Emma Makepeace must find out why he was murdered and catch those responsible. At the same time, she must outwit a traitor.
The Trap has an Edinburgh setting, the location for a meeting of the Group of Seven Summit. It begins with some excellent coverage of what the G7 is, and its impact on the city and international relations, cleverly establishing the novel at the same time as providing readers with the information they might need to understand events. A new character is introduced, a police officer Kate Mackenzie. The expansion of the narrative to include a partner for Emma is clever way of developing her character, as well as highlighting more of the intricacies of her work.
After the book reviews: Naples; CNN – Democracy is hard; Women’s History Network call for papers – Women and the Making of Art History; NGA current exhibition details; National Portrait Gallery, London, exhibition.
Naples streetscapes
The churches we visited were beautiful. However, the nativity scenes in one while popular, were quite a contrast.
Food in Naples
Naples food on display in the street featured various pastas, very thick crust pizzas with a small amount of topping, arancini balls and luscious pastries.
The hotel at which we stayed served a delightful breakfast with all the usual bacon, eggs, tomatoes, sausages, toast etc. as well as an irresistible array of pastries. The bar snacks were not so refined but served us well when we returned precipitately from a trip to a very tempting restaurant. A successful pickpocket who took advantage of our waiting for the restaurant to open hastened our return to the hotel to begin the laborious task of sorting out the stolen cards. The rather plain sandwiches that had to serve instead of the attractive items on the restaurant menu were a disappointing alternative. However, the meal was served in a rather attractive space! And there were no pickpockets.
Naples restaurant
This was close to our hotel, a pleasant walk and no pickpockets!
Bus ride around Naples and the coast
The tour began at the castle, below, went through very salubrious suburbs and some not quite so. The photos of the pristine area around the rubbish bins compares well with the state of the bins in areas closer to the city. These bins suggest that the area is as well cared for as those served by Westminster council in London.
The sea front was near the end of our bus trip – for us, this Hop on Hop off was the only way to see the outskirts of Naples and made an excellent late afternoon and morning trip. The castle in the photos below is described in Wikipedia, and I am grateful to one of my friends for alerting me to the following information. I am a bit inclined to take photos, enjoy, and not do enough research when travelling!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The castle seen from the west
Castel dell’Ovo (“Egg Castle”) is a seafront castle in Naples, located on the former island of Megaride, now a peninsula, on the Gulf of Naples in Italy. The castle’s name comes from a legend about the Roman poet Virgil, who had a reputation in the Middle Ages as a great sorcerer and predictor of the future. In the legend, Virgil put a magical egg into the foundations to support the fortifications. It remains there along with his bones, and had this egg been broken, the castle would have been destroyed[1] and a series of disastrous events for Naples would have followed. The castle is located between the districts of San Ferdinando and Chiaia, facing Mergellina across the sea.
This is the end of our Italian sojourn. I found the tour group organisation, guide, and companions a positive experience. The eight days was enough, as i feel that too many early mornings and rushing spoil the experience (I’ve been on a tour like that, and the organisation and guide might have something to do with my negative feelings about the length of time). The What’s App group has continued to function, with updates on further travel and kind messages between members. I appreciate being in messenger and email contact with a particularly interesting woman from Virginia.
Next week I’ll post photos and comments of our few days in Cambridge, before we returned home.
Left: French National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet announces approval of no-confidence vote against the French government on Wednesday in Paris. Right: Protests erupt outside South Korea’s National Assembly in Seoul after opposition parties submitted a motion to impeach the president. (CCTV+ via Reuters)
President Joe Biden made the preservation of global democracy a top goal of his White House term.
But as he prepares to leave office, much of the democratic world is in turmoil and strongman leaders and far-right populists have governing institutions under assault.
In France, Michel Barnier has become the country’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party helped left-wing lawmakers topple the government in a no confidence vote. President Emmanuel Macron, who helped trigger the crisis by calling snap elections this year, now must somehow find a new prime minister who can survive — otherwise the last two years of his presidential mandate will be consumed by chaos. It’s hardly the backdrop Macron wanted as he prepares to welcome world leaders including US President-elect Donald Trump this week for the reopening of the reconstructed Notre Dame cathedral.
When France is weak, it often falls to the other great European power, Germany, to lead the European Union. But political uncertainty is also rocking Berlin and a badly weakened Chancellor Olaf Scholz is likely to face an election early next year after his coalition fell.
Instability also stalks US ally South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol stunningly declared martial law before backtracking under pressure from parliament. Now Yoon is facing calls for his impeachment and the main opposition Democratic Party is formalizing treason charges against the president, as well as the defense and interior ministers.
One nation where stability has returned — after years of political pandemonium that saw prime ministers come and go like the seasons — is Britain. But despite the huge majority he won in this year’s election, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is yet to hit his stride.
Uncertainty in Western democracies comes at a perilous moment, since weak leaders will find it harder to stand up to Trump. The incoming president will likely amp up pressure on America’s friends next year, and has already sparked infighting in Canada, where a weakened Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is desperate to head off the president-elect’s tariff threats that could rock the economy ahead of next year’s election.
You could argue that global democratic instability is a symptom of democratic societies working through their problems. In Seoul, for instance, the strong push back to Yoon suggests that a comparatively young democracy is in good shape. “South Korea’s democracy is robust and resilient,” Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday, after the White House was caught by surprise by the political crisis.
And even in France, the far-right leaders who are closer to ultimate power than ever before won their new influence through democratic elections. The same is true of Trump, though his hardline Cabinet picks and lust for revenge against political foes suggests he’ll test US democratic guardrails as never before when he’s back in office.
Recent political uproar has shattered years of complacency about the endurance of Western democracy. As Biden put it at a White House global democracy summit in 2023, “Democracy is hard work. The work of democracy is never finished.”
“We have to continually renew our commitment, continually strengthen our institutions, root out corruption where we find it, seek to build consensus, and reject political violence and give hate and extremism no safe harbor. “
Women’s History Network Call for papers
CFP Women’s History Today Special Issue: Women and the Making of Art History
Since the publication of Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), feminist art historians have led a revolutionary movement to review women’s and gender roles in art practices. However, many other women during, and before, the twentieth century had contributed to the (re)shaping of art history as a discipline.
To celebrate women working in art history, Women’s History Today invites contributions to the topic of Women and the Making of Art History. We particularly encourage submissions on historical discussions of women as pioneering and/or distinctive art historians, curators, collectors, critics and educators.
We welcome articles on the topic from a global perspective and from a variety of historical eras. Women’s History Today also encourages and supports submissions from PhD students new to publishing. Contributions can be either academic articles (6000 to 8000 words), or shorter contributions (1500 to 3000 words) on funded research projects, on archives or public history activities and events.
Abstracts (250 words) for proposals should be submitted to Catia Rodrigues at crodrigues@womenshistorytoday.orgby 10 January 2025, with initial drafts of papers due on 28 March 2025.
ETHEL CARRICK | ANNE DANGAR 7 Dec 2024 – 27 Apr 2025, free Now showing, Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar are major retrospectives presenting the work of two ground-breaking women artists who deserve to be better known.
Working in parallel in the first decades of the twentieth century, Carrick and Dangar pushed against convention, made France their base and forged unique artistic paths. The outlooks of both artists were shaped by developments in French art, and they shared their experiences and new ideas with their Australian networks.
Explore the lives and artistic legacies of these important women artists this summer.
Last chance to see!
★★★★★ – The Guardian ★★★★★ – The i Paper
“The modern master at his most raw and revealing.” – The Telegraph
“A stirring show…confirms the artist as Britain’s greatest postwar painter.” – Financial Times
“Breathtaking” – The Observer
The ★★★★★ exhibition showcases Bacon’s life story and deep connection to portraiture. It features more than 55 artworks from both public and rarely seen private collections.
Dava Sobel The Elements of Marie Curie How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science Grove Atlantic | Atlantic Monthly Press, October 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
The Marie Curie who emerges from this book would appreciate the way in which it is organised to give other women status in the unique scientific world she created. She would also be pleased with the position given her husband. That her scientific mind and ambitions were intertwined so convincingly with affection for her family and delight in partnership is a theme which gives this work a warmth and depth that is striking. Continuing the pattern in which scientific women are given status is the connection made with the elements which provide the headings for each chapter.
The preface, Formula for an Icon: Marie Curie 1867-1934, combines the outline of Marie Curie’s story as is to be expected. However, early on Sobel demonstrates her commitment to illuminating the vagaries of the sexist world in which this icon of a sphere seen as masculine excelled. The Nobel Prize medals, of which she won two is described in its emphasis on the perceived difference between the feminine and masculine spheres. Cleverly she moves on to the impact of the first prize on the Curie’s lives – no dwelling on her assertion, just a fine depiction of the world in which Cuire moved, and then the practicalities that embraced her, one of the few, equally. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Barbara Kingsolver, Holding the Line Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike, Faber and Faber Ltd, October 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Barbara Kingsolver has written a non-fiction book that echoes the skill she demonstrates in her fiction. The preface is a wonderful insight into the author as well as her subject. Kingsolver’s future as a writer of impactful fiction is one of the joys to realise through this, one of her early works as a journalist. Here, we see the woman who has written so masterfully about issues while drawing the reader into a fictional world from which it is difficult to emerge unchallenged. Now, to the content of this non-fiction example of her work. The women portrayed in Holding the Line are engaging and confronting, at the same time as demanding awareness and empathy. They provide a valuable history of women’s contribution to this particular strike, while presenting a thoughtful understanding of the way in which so many women, their contributions unrecorded, may have contributed to industrial action.
Kingsolver sees the women’s stories as promoting hope, that they recognised that the goal should be seeking justice rather than revenge and their contribution to demonstrating that people who see themselves as ordinary can scale impregnable heights. She also has a word of warning – no-one is necessarily exempt from what happened during these women’s fight for justice. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
You may want to prepare yourself for the coming Trump administration by rereading George Orwell’s “1984” if it’s been a while. I know many of you, like me, read it at the beginning of Trump’s first term in office. For me, it was right after Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts” in response to Trump’s lies about the size of his inauguration day crowd. Trump’s first press secretary Sean Spicer (who only lasted six months in the job), quickly backed up Trump’s obvious lie.
The parallel to Orwell’s book, which is about the manipulation of truth and facts as an aid to government control in a totalitarian society, was unavoidable. In “1984,” the dictator, Big Brother, rules through his cult of personality, perpetuated by the “Thought Police.” Independent thinking is no longer allowed. 2+2=5. Trump’s crowd size, we were told, was enormous—and his followers accepted it despite the proof before their own eyes that he was lying. The satire hit presciently close to the mark.
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
What happens when people give up the right to think for themselves? 1984. It’s a warning, not just an instruction manual for would-be dictators.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
In July of this year, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and one of the chief architects of Project 2025, proudly announced on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” What happened after that stunning pronouncement? Trump disclaimed all knowledge of Project 2025. Within 24 hours, if even that, the news cycle moved on. Four months later, Americans returned Donald Trump to office.
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
That is how it begins. Of course, as in 2016, saying this out loud provokes dismissive laughter and claims that anyone concerned about dictatorship is being dramatic. “It’s about the price of gas and groceries,” people—even those who didn’t vote for Trump—say. Now that the final vote tallies are in and we know how slim Trump’s margins were, it’s become popular to point out that he doesn’t have a mandate—as though that matters to Trump.
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”
“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
How did people like Orwell and Margaret Atwood, who wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale,” get it so right from a distance of years? Atwood has even said she stopped writing “The Handmaids Tale” repeatedly because it seemed “too far-fetched.” But the Founding Fathers saw this possibility too, and they tried to create a system of government that would resist a slide into monarchy or dictatorship.
To encourage the adoption of the new Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers, 85 essays, from 1787 to 1788. They defended their vision of government against claims made by anti-federalists that the country was too big, that a president would become a dictator, and that a national army would crush any possibility of dissent.
To protect against those prospects, Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that the system of government under consideration contained checks and balances to protect individual liberties. The legislative branch and the judicial branch would act as checks on the executive, and there would be a balance of power shared between states and the federal government.
Those are the checks that Trump wants to undo, whether it is through the substantive plans contained in Project 2025 that consolidate and centralize the powers of government in the presidency, or nominees for key positions in the cabinet whose loyalty is to Trump, not the Constitution.
Monday afternoon, Senators Blumenthal and Warren wrote to President Biden, urging him to take action designed to prevent, or at least call attention to, potential efforts by Donald Trump to quell domestic protest using the military, precisely the type of thing the Founding Fathers were concerned about.
“We write to urge you to issue a policy directive that prohibits the mobilization of active duty military or federalizing National Guard personnel to be deployed against their fellow Americans unless specifically authorized. The Posse Comitatus Act ‘outlaws the willful use of any part of the Armed Forces to execute the law unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.’”
The senators point to the narrow exception to the prohibition against using the military for domestic law enforcement under the Insurrection Act, which, they explain, “allows the President to deploy military personnel within U.S. borders under narrow circumstances of insurrection, rebellion, or extreme civil unrest,” but even then, use of the military is “strictly” limited “to emergency needs” and the purpose behind its use must be reestablishing civilian control as soon as possible. The senators asked President Biden to issue guidance that would clarify the Insurrection Act can only be used when state or local authorities are overwhelmed and that even then, the President “must consult with Congress to the maximum extent practicable before exercising this authority, as well as transmit to the Federal Register the legal authorities.”
Why are Senators Warren and Blumenthal writing this letter, and why are they writing it now? They explain that it’s because “President-elect Trump’s comments have indicated he could invoke the Insurrection Act ‘on his first day in office.’ He has called his political opponents ‘the enemy from within’ and said they ‘should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.’’ They point out that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said that Trump would use force against Americans when asked about it and refer back to Trump’s efforts to use the military against protestors during his first term in office. They are concerned that members of the military need guidance to understand that despite the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, there are still limits on presidential power because, “unaddressed, any ambiguity on the lawful use of military force, coupled with President-elect Trump’s demonstrated intent to utilize the military in such dangerous and unprecedented ways, may prove to be devastating.”
It is shocking, but not surprising, that an effort to educate the public and members of the military about the limits on a president’s use of the Insurrection Act is necessary as we approach Trump 2.0. But even without in-depth understanding of the law, we all know that in this country, the military cannot be turned loose on citizens who have assembled to exercise their First Amendment rights. If Trump does that, it may well be too late. The Senators are correct that every possible step must be taken to prevent it from happening in advance.
Back to “1984”: “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?”
In other words, stay informed. That is our most fundamental duty as Americans right now. Don’t look away. Don’t hope it won’t happen. Educate yourself, and prepare for the days ahead. “Do not obey in advance,” Yale Professor Tim Snyder’s advice, has become something of a mantra these days. It rests on the premise that dictators demand obedience. If it is not given voluntarily, if there are protests, even completely peaceful and lawful ones—the right of assembly granted to us by the Constitution—the dictator will come at us with his military. As Atwood wrote, “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Let’s not be the ones who get boiled because they can’t be bothered to pay attention.
First, there was the Sunday night announcement of President Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter. The cases against him are over.
Second, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument this week in U.S. v. Skremetti, a case involving the right of transgender minors to receive gender affirming medical care. *
Hunter Biden
Instead of two sentencing hearings scheduled for later this month, Hunter Biden got a pardon. People have reacted strongly. On the one hand, people are concerned about a president issuing a pardon for his child, especially because Hunter Biden pled guilty to the tax case against him. On the other hand, people have expressed the belief the Joe Biden did the right thing and that the family has endured enough.
I come down closer to the latter side of that equation. The pardon process is supposed to be used to do justice. And this is justice. Hunter Biden would likely not have been charged on these facts if he was anyone else.
The gun charge is possession of a firearm by someone who is a user of or addicted to illegal drugs. Absent aggravating facts, like evidence the person is a danger to the community, this type of charge is not usually brought. It’s easy to understand why. Almost 10% of Americans struggle with drug addiction, and many more use drugs. Prosecuting every one of them would force the Justice Department to abandon far more serious cases. Hunter Biden possessed a gun briefly and never used it in connection with violent crime. He’s been in recovery for more than five years. It’s not the kind of case that gets charged if your name is John Smith.
The tax case involves amounts Hunter Biden acknowledged he owed but said he didn’t pay while he was in the grips of addiction. He pled guilty to the charges. While people who fail to pay taxes are frequently charged under the same provision used for Hunter Biden, the argument here is that given the extenuating circumstance of his addiction and his repayment of amounts owed plus interest and penalties, the prosecution was unwarranted. Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued persuasively that similarly situated cases were handled with administrative or civil penalties, not criminal prosecution. Again, the Justice Department doesn’t have unlimited resources, and they are reserved for the most serious cases—tax cheats who execute complicated schemes, cheat the public, and refuse to pay the amounts they owe. John Smith probably wouldn’t have been charged like Hunter Biden was.
No one loves the optics of a president pardoning his child, especially after he said he wouldn’t. But President Biden was in between the proverbial rock and a hard place, with sentencings in both the gun and the tax cases coming up later this month and the prospect of his son being at the mercy of Trump’s Justice Department after he had already been targeted. The Constitution gives the president a largely unrestricted pardon power. Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 provides that:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Joe Biden exercised that power; he did not abuse it. He did not accept a bribe in exchange for a pardon. He has not tried to pardon himself. He issued a pardon he was entitled to give. But it is a departure for this president, who has been so careful to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and who had said he would not pardon his son, to reverse course. That is reason to pause and reflect on this pardon, but Biden seems to have taken the least bad option, given the situation.
Virtually every president issues pardons that are questioned. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, after he completed a sentence for trafficking cocaine. Donald Trump famously pardoned or granted clemency to a number of people, including his son-in-law’s father and future ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, Roger Stone, who was accused of interfering in an investigation that involved Trump himself, Paul Manfort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and former General Michael Flynn. Like the younger Biden, Flynn pled guilty to the charges before he received a pardon.
But it’s not a particularly productive exercise to compare the Hunter Biden pardon to those that have and will be issued by Donald Trump. Joe Biden operates within the law. Donald Trump has explicitly said he will use the criminal justice system for revenge. That has to have weighed heavily on President Biden’s mind, knowing that his son would be in the control of a man who has used him to try and score political points for years. Trump could have ordered more charges against Hunter Biden absent the pardon, or even made his life in federal prison extremely difficult—he would have been imprisoned during a Trump Administration in facilities under Trump’s control. President Biden’s decision is justifiable in those circumstances.
In his statement accompanying the pardon, President Biden wrote, “I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.” All of that is spot on.
He also writes, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
With his typical candor, Biden writes that he believes in telling the American people the truth because he believes they are fair-minded. He writes, “Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice…I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.” I do understand, particularly since, in my judgment, these cases would not have been indicted absent a political motivation to attack a political rival’s son. Look at how quickly MAGA dropped its focus on Hunter Biden once Joe Biden left the ticket.
Just because the trial judges didn’t find selective/vindictive prosecution to the high legal standard required before they can dismiss a case when Hunter Biden’s attorney asked them to do so doesn’t mean the prosecutions weren’t actually tainted by political animus. My office would not have brought these charges, and other former federal prosecutors feel the same way. Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted, “Here’s the reality. No US Atty would have charged this case given the underlying facts.” Barb McQuade posted on BlueSky, “Pardon of Hunter Biden is in the best interests of justice. Based on the facts, most federal prosecutors would have declined to charge him.” Former Delaware U.S. Attorney Charlie Oberley, who joined us for “Five Questions” in September 2023 when Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart in court said he would not have indicted the case.
There is certain to be political fallout. Trump will use the pardon to justify anything he does down the road. But the reality is, whatever he is going to do—blanket pardons for January 6 defendants and perhaps every single person in federal prison anywhere who is a supporter of his—he would have done anyhow. Charges of politics and corruption will fly for the next few days. But the reality is that Biden lawfully exercised the powers given to him by the Constitution and whether people approve or not, he was within his rights to do so.
*I have not included the second part of this article.
Amalfi Coast Trip
Bus trip to catch the ferry to Capri – an early start
Boat trip to Capri
Capri and care for cats
Walking around Capri
Bus trip returning to the village, Bomerano
Havenist is a Western Australian publication which I thoroughly enjoy receiving online. Following is a feature about a Western Australian artist. It is exciting to see this work. However, the regular articles and photographs of Western Australian architecture and houses gives the magazine its particular edge.
“I view each painting as an experiment rather than anything calculated, and that’s the way I prefer it.” —Miik Green, WA Artist
Describe your childhood. I moved from Albany, Western Australia, to Canada when my father decided to study to be a reverend. My three sisters and I travelled the world twice – we each got to pick a country to visit. When we arrived back in Australia, I was awarded a scholarship to Kalamunda Senior High School for the gifted and talented program. It was called ‘Special Art’, and is one reason I still think I’m special.
How would you describe your work being seen for the first time? It’s work you need to see in person. Screen and print don’t do justice to the depth and reflective (and reflexive) qualities of the glossy surfaces. When you stand in front of these works, your image and the image of those around you wax and wane; you’re part of it. Often the paintings appear like landscapes viewed from above, alternate seascapes, or contain a gradient of sunrises or sunsets.
How have your life experiences influenced your aesthetic style? Completing a PhD had the biggest impact on my work. I completed my written work in 2014, following years of integrating my own practice, researching the field and also rationalising the ideas behind my sculptural works and paintings. During this time, I not only had to consider my work (studio and academic) from various perspectives but also the philosophy that underpinned my making and processes. If I could go back and do it all again, I would.
What materials do you use to create your art? I use a mix of resins, chemicals and pigments. These combinations often dictate what happens in the surface, whether a blending of opposing colours or highlights containing pigments that delineate. I’m also always looking for new materials and substances that allow the reactions I’m searching for.
What is the process of creating your art? I pour sections of colour onto large panels of aluminium and inject them back into the artwork. This process sets up a material reaction, and the outcome of the process forms the work. Once the resin sets, the forms in the painting are sealed in motion. I open the studio doors 48 hours later to view the results. It’s always surprising that a pinpoint injection can become a tennis-ball sized bloom.
How have you built trust in your process? I trust that I’ll always be surprised with the results. I view each painting as an experiment rather than anything calculated, and that’s the way I prefer it. There are certainly elements of the process that require planning and design, but the outcome of that more deliberate stage changes each time.
Which stage of creating artwork do you spend the most time on? I spend a lot of time planning, specifically for in-situ sculptures. A few years ago, for example, when the Ritz-Carlton [hotel] was still in the project phase, I was commissioned to create a series of wall-based works for their restaurant on level 1. Most of the time spent on that project was figuring out how my pieces would present in the environment and react within that space. I love workshopping ideas, discussing new possibilities of traditional materials with fabricators and experimenting with new methods and ways of making.
Your work feels intuitive, not forced. Yes, I’m interested in the organic nature of the work. I start the process and the work emerges of its own accord. I rarely enter the studio with a pre-planned approach; it’s about the journey, not the destination! My role as the artist is to allow and enable the process, not control it if I can help it. In a way, this manner of making frees me up to enjoy the result as a bystander.
“I learn that I’m never truly in control of the result, and that each work is a step in a different direction.” —Miik Green, WA Artist
What did you have to develop, try or learn to create your unique style of artwork? I’ve carried out a lot of testing over the years and the goal was to create things that always looked fresh, evolving. There’s a great Frank Stella quote along the lines of ‘trying to create something that looks as good as it does in the can’. I read this as Stella trying to recreate the experience of, say, popping a fresh tin of paint and catching that first glimpse of glossy pigment. Resin traps the movement and evolution of the colours in my works, and testing various surfaces and epoxies over the years has led to the current series of works.
You are inspired by the microscopic aspects of nature and cross-disciplinary artistic collaborations that integrate science, mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics. Where does this interest stem from? Having a parent who was a maths teacher ruined mathematics for me early on (thanks, mum), yet I persisted in later life and embraced at least the visual side of mathematics. The recurring forms in the microscopic of fractals, diatoms and pollens have always been a source of inspiration for my work. The further you delve into these forms, the more you realise there is a boundless visual geometry. My role became about bringing these forms to life, not by recreating them but by finding ways to allow their emergence. I agree with art historian James Elkins, who likens art and science to a drunken conversation between the two.
Do you learn anything once you have completed a piece? I learn that I’m never truly in control of the result, and that each work is a step in a different direction. Some paintings feel like they mimic the cosmos, others are like something you might view through a microscope. I also learn more about the works when they’re exhibited together. As a collection they tell a specific story – one I’m not often privy to while working on the pieces individually.
What colours do you like to use? As many as I can get my hands on. I’m interested in the interaction of colour and material, and I use a wide range of pigments to explore this. I also love playing around with the finishes on my works. For example, the majority of the three-dimensional works have a matte finish, so they strike up a visual relationship with the 2D pieces. I also experimented with the powdercoating process for these sculptures, with some having a two-toned, metallic pearl sheen, some I feel I got carried away completing.
What sort of reaction does your art get? People are always surprised at the depth of the works, and the way the reflective property of the work allows them to become immersed in it. You can view my work in print or online, but the experience of standing in front of the piece, of becoming a part of it, is what viewers respond to.
Tell me about our cover art, a piece from your latest show, Convergence. My work is about the resistance and opposition in materials, and this painting is a good example of this process. There is a contagious vibrancy in the work; when I had it hanging in my studio, I’d walk in and smile at its exuberance.
How do you know when a work is finished? My work is designed to be engaged with, so I think of it as being finished (or fully realised) when it is in situ, reflecting its surrounds and the various elements of the new space.
What are you working on at this time? I’m working on a new set of large paintings that will be shown at Holly Hunt [design studios] in Miami and New York in late November. I’m also planning on a trip to Chicago to meet the Holly Hunt design team and talk possibilities and projects!
It is quite a while since I ate at 86, not because I did not want to, after all it is one of my favourite places, but travelling and its aftermath has kept me away. I was particularly pleased to have with me (as well as my usual companion) a young, sporting couple whose work involves physical labour. All these features made choosing five dishes, as well as dessert a welcome change from the difficulty of choosing limited dishes from the exciting menu.
There are two mocktails and a lengthy alcoholic beverage list. The ones we chose were Elderflower soda and Rhubarb soda – both were delicious, and the alcoholic Sicilian Hit – also deemed delicious by our guests.
The favourite eggplant dish was not on the menu on this occasion. However, another – Pumpkin and mascarpone tortellini with a sage burnt butter sauce was. Also, the charred corn was there, and the duck buns also made a pleasant start. Our other main courses were the fried chicken with two accompaniments; nectarine salad with prosciutto, basil and mozzarella; spiced cauliflower with goat curd and dates; and cone bay barramundi with shitake, salted cucumber and yoghurt. Both couples shared their desserts – banoffee pie and strawberry cheesecake.
Charlotte Booth and Brian Billington The Crime Movie and TV Lover’s Guide to LondonPen & Sword | White Owl, November 2024.
Thank you NetGalley and Pen & Sword for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
The Crime Movie and TV Lover’s Guide to London provides yet another source for understanding and exploring London through a popular and, at times, familiar, gateway. Previous books published by Pen & Sword have used other entry points, all of which were instructive, interesting, and worth following. This guide follows in their footsteps as a well thought out way of viewing London. The information can be used in two ways – as a wonderful instruction manual about the films and television series that have been made in London, and the localities and as a way of understanding the way in which films and television series may impact the environment in which they are made. See Books: Reviews for complete review.
Some interesting post American election observations
Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, in Washington this year. Eric Lee/The New York Times
Fetterman to Democrats: You need to calm down
Jess Bidgood
Senator John Fetterman wasn’t in Washington for the first Trump administration. But he has a few ideas about how Democrats should handle the second.
He wants his party to accept its losses. He wants his party to chill out a little. And he wants his party to please stop with all the hot takes about what went wrong in November, since Democrats have four long years to figure it out.
Fetterman has some experience taking on President-elect Donald Trump’s G.O.P. He won his seat in 2022 after overcoming a near-fatal stroke and beating the Trump-endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has since become the president-elect’s pick to run Medicare. As the Democratic Party reckons with its losses in places like Pennsylvania — where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.7 percentage points and Bob Casey, a third-term Democratic senator, lost his seat — I called Fetterman.
Our conversation was the first in a series of interviews I’ll do in this newsletter about the path forward for the Democratic Party. Drop me a line and tell me about others you want to hear from.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Incumbent parties struggled or lost elections around the world this year, particularly in Western democracies. Do you think the Democrats’ losses in November were inevitable?
That’s a question worth asking. I had a lot of concern — there was a couple of one-offs. One of them was the assassination in Pennsylvania. I think some people seem to forget that, or how incredibly dangerous that was for a nation, God forbid, if he would have been mortally wounded. But the kind of imagery and the kinds of energy that emerged from that, absolutely, I witnessed that on the ground in Pennsylvania. I thought, well, that might be ballgame.
Then, Musk was involved. He was described as moving to Pennsylvania. And sometimes that doesn’t really mean much, but he was an active surrogate — and I mean, his checkbook was helpful. That wasn’t really the defining facet for me. I was concerned that he’s going to have a lot of sway with a part of the demographic that the Democrats have to win, and we’ve struggled with.
You’re talking about the tech billionaire Elon Musk, but what’s the demographic in question?
Whether it’s the “bros,” that negative term that perhaps even your publication uses, as a negative — it’s the bros, or, you know, males, blue-collar guys, just people. It’s very rare, in my opinion, that surrogates have “fanboys.” Making fun of him or make light of it, you do that at your peril, because it is going to matter.
How do you think Democrats should be talking to bros, and should be talking to men, and should be talking to working-class voters?
Have a conversation. Have a conversation with anyone that’s willing to have an honest conversation. That’s always been the rule, and that’s what I’m going to continue. I’ve had conversations on Fox News, and they’ve played me straight. I’ve shown up on Newsmax, and they’ve played it straight. And Rogan. Rogan was great. He was cordial and open and warm.
Why was it important to you to go on Joe Rogan?
I’m a fan. I’m a huge fan of Bill Maher, a huge fan of Colbert.
Why do you think Democrats have struggled with men?
It’s already migrated. In 2016, I was doing an event with the steel workers, across the street where I live, and I was noticing different kind of energy with this, with Trump. It was clear at that time that people were voting for Trump. And the Democrats’ response was, “Aren’t they smart enough to realize they’re voting against their interests?” And that’s insulting, and that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s just not helpful. It’s condescending. And if anything, that reinforces that kind of stereotype.
Telling them that “I know better than you do,” that’s not helpful.
In 2022, you won your Senate race by almost five points. It wasn’t particularly close. Why do you think you did so much better in 2022 than Democrats in Pennsylvania did in statewide races in 2024?
A lot of different kinds of things converged in this cycle. So, in some sense, it’s not perfectly analogous to compare ’22 to ’24. Trump absolutely is a much more compelling top of the ticket than Dr. Oz, or, you know, the ultimate Democratic candidate dream of Doug Mastriano.
Is there something that you think you understand, though, about the recipe for success in Pennsylvania or the voters you need to talk to, that other Democrats don’t?
I don’t have “You should, you should, you should.” This is “I do, I do, I do.”
The opinions and the hot takes from the safety of, like, a deep blue seat or state, that doesn’t really count for much.
The things that they say, and those kinds of positions, are filling the clips that the Republicans unload on us in states like Pennsylvania.
How do you think the Democratic Party needs to change right now?
I don’t give advice except on fashion. Again, I want to thank your publication for putting me on the best-dressed list, so you understand why I am a fashion plate.
Do Democrats need to do an analysis of what went wrong? And, if so, who should do it?
We’re not even at Thanksgiving, and Democrats just can’t stop losing our minds every fifteen minutes. We really need to pace ourselves, or, you know, for FFS, just grab a grip. Realize that this is how elections go. At least for the next two years, they’re going to have the opportunity to write the narrative and to drive the narrative.
Trump is assembling a cabinet of people many Democrats find deeply objectionable. How do you think Democrats should respond?
I’m just saying, buckle up and pack a lunch, because it’s going to be four years of this. And if you have a choice to freak out, you know, on the hour, then that’s your right. But I will not. I’m not that dude, and I’m not that Democrat. I’m going to pick my fights. If you freak out on everything, you lose any kind of relevance.
Do you think Democrats have done too much freaking out when it comes to Trump?
It’s symbiotic. One feeds off the other. The Democrats can’t resist a freakout, and that must be the wind under the wings for Trump.
I saw a quote from you where you referred to, the Matt Gaetz pick, as “God-tier-level trolling.”
Obviously! The response or the opinions on the Democratic side aren’t interesting. They’re not. They’re not surprising. The real interesting ones are going to come from my colleagues on the Republican side.
It sounds like you want Democrats to be quiet and let Republicans have their own fight.
All I’m saying is, the freakout and all the anxiety and all that should have been before Nov. 5.
Does clutching the pearls so hard — does that change anything? Did it work? Did it change the election? Was it productive? And, like, I can’t believe the outrage. That has to be candy for Trump.
You said Democrats needed to pick their battles. What’s one you’d choose?
I’m not going to pick one before Thanksgiving.
One analysis of the election that we’ve heard from your colleague Senator Bernie Sanders is that Democrats failed to recognize how bad people were feeling about the economy, about the country generally, and failed to name a villain. Do you agree with that analysis?
I do not.
Why?
I think there was a lot of other issues. I would even describe them as cultural. Walk around in Scranton, tell me what an oligarch is. I think it’s like, “Whose argument is the closest match to the kinds of things that are important to me?” And I think some of them are rooted in gender and worldviews, and even backlash of things like cancel culture.
I witness people, now there’s specific kinds of clothing. They call it Blue Collar Patriots. I’m willing to bet you know who they’re voting for.
And why is that? I don’t think it’s because we haven’t talked enough about oligarchs, and how it’s rigged.
What do you think Democrats need to do to bring about the kind of cultural shift you’re talking about?
For a party that’s had way too many bad takes, we should take our time.
I had plans to write about a number of things tonight, most importantly, the not-unexpected but still deeply disturbing dismissal of the federal criminal cases against Donald Trump. Instead, I’m going to just share a few quick thoughts with you, and then I’m going to turn in. Thanksgiving preparation is not for the weak, and I’m exhausted from it! It’s only Monday, and today, I went to three stores looking for the broccolini a recipe I’m making calls for, only to be shut out at the first two places and disappointed by the quality at a third. I need some sleep before I try to process what happened today in a serious way.
I may not have accomplished everything I needed to today, but I did make these amazing fresh-squeezed orange juice ice cubes for use in Thanksgiving morning Mimosas.
But I did want to leave you with a quick and hot-ish take on the dismissals. The most important thing is this: Donald Trump is not innocent.
Often, when prosecutors dismiss criminal cases that have been indicted, it’s because they’ve learned a defendant is actually innocent or at least discovered they do not have sufficient evidence to prove guilt. That is not the case here. Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote that his view of the merits of his case—in other words, his ability to obtain and sustain convictions against Donald Trump, has not changed.
Trump outran the justice system by winning the election. It is DOJ policy, not a lack of evidence, that compelled Smith to move to dismiss the cases. That is no small thing. Trump won’t face juries in these cases. But that does not mean Trump can claim he has been exonerated. He has not been. Full stop.
Smith will write a report and it’s extremely likely it will be public. How fulsome it will be and what it reveals remains to be seen. The question is whether it will make a difference in some meaningful way in the future.
I continue to think it will. We have lived through one of the most difficult months our democracy has endured. But our democracy has endured. We don’t get to quit just because it isn’t easy. Sometimes, you give it your all and it still doesn’t go your way. But if you believe the Constitution and the rule of law mean something, mean a better way of life for us and our children—and I do—then you can’t just give up and walk away. You have to keep going.
So even as I’m getting ready to spend the rest of the week with friends and family, I’m thinking about what we are going to do, how we are going to be prepared to do the big things and the small things necessary to prevent Donald Trump from controlling our futures. We will have work to do.
Trump has threatened to fire and prosecute investigators and prosecutors who followed the law, took their evidence to a grand jury, obtained indictments, and proceeded against him, while providing him with every measure of due process. His Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi said in August of 2023 that when Trump returned to office, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones — the investigators will be investigated.” That’s unconscionable for a person who aspires to be the country’s top law enforcement officer. Bondi, unless she changes her tune, and that seems unlikely since she Donald Trump’s pick, is precommitted to using the Justice Department as a political tool to please a president.
But that’s easier said than done. Former FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe won his lawsuit against the Trump Administration after he was wrongfully fired. And it’s easy to see how efforts like this could backfire. If Trump’s DOJ goes after Smith’s team, claiming their prosecutions were political, the ensuing litigation would almost certainly reveal the full scope of the Special Counsel’s office investigation and the evidence that was compiled against Donald Trump and others. Defending themselves against claims their prosecution wasn’t legitimate would necessarily call for a full account of the investigation and the basis for prosecutors’ decision to indict. Trump should remember that old adage: Be careful what you ask for.
There is much more to come. I’m not giving up and I hope you won’t either.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Heather Cox Richardson – letters from an American
Since the night of the November 5, election, Trump and his allies have insisted that he won what Trump called “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” But as the numbers have continued to come in, it’s clear that such a declaration is both an attempt to encourage donations— fundraising emails refer to Trump’s “LANDSLIDE VICTORY”—and an attempt to create the illusion of power to push his agenda.
The reality is that Trump’s margin over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will likely end up around 1.5 points. According to James M. Lindsay, writing for the Council of Foreign Relations, it is the fifth smallest since 1900, which covers 32 presidential races. Exit polls showed that Trump’s favorability rating was just 48% and that more voters chose someone other than Trump. And, as Lindsay points out, Trump fell 4 million votes short of President Joe Biden in 2020.
Political science professor Lynn Vavreck of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Peter Baker of the New York Times: “If the definition of landslide is you win both the popular vote and Electoral College vote, that’s a new definition” On the other hand, she added, “Nobody gains any kind of influence by going out and saying, ‘I barely won, and now I want to do these big things.’”
Trump’s allies are indeed setting out to do big things, and they are big things that are unpopular.
Trump ran away from Project 2025 during the campaign because it was so unpopular. He denied he knew anything about it, calling it “ridiculous and abysmal,” and on September 16 the leader of Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, said there were “Absolutely zero. No connection. Zero” ties between the team and Project 2025. Now, though, Trump has done an about-face and has said he will nominate at least five people associated with Project 2025 to his administration.
Those nominees include Russell Vought, one of the project’s key authors, who calls for dramatically increasing the powers of the president; Tom Homan, who as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversaw the separation of children from their parents; John Ratcliffe, whom the Senate refused in 2019 to confirm as Director of National Intelligence because he had no experience in intelligence; Brendan Carr, whom Trump wants to put at the head of the Federal Communications Commission and who is already trying to silence critics by warning he will punish broadcasters who Trump feels have been unfair to him; and Stephen Miller, the fervently anti-immigrant ideologue.
Project 2025 calls for the creation of an extraordinarily strong president who will gut the civil service and replace its nonpartisan officials with those who are loyal to the president. It calls for filling the military and the Department of Justice with those loyal to the president. And then, the project plans that with his new power, the president will impose Christian nationalism on the United States of America, ending immigration, and curtailing rights for LGBTQ+ individuals as well as women and racial and ethnic minorities.
Project 2025 was unpopular when people learned about it.
And then there is the threat of dramatic cuts to the U.S. government, suggested by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are calling for cuts of $2 trillion to the items in the national budget that provide a safety net for ordinary Americans at the same time that Trump is promising additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Musk, meanwhile, is posturing as if he is the actual president, threatening on Saturday, for example: “Those who break the law will be arrested and that includes mayors.”
On Meet the Press today, current representative and senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) reacted to the “dictator talk,” with which Trump is threatening his political opponents, pointing out that “[t]he American people…voted on the basis of the economy—they wanted change to the economy—they weren’t voting for dictatorship. So I think he is going to misread his mandate if that’s what he thinks voters chose him for.”
That Trump and his team are trying desperately to portray a marginal victory as a landslide in order to put an extremist unpopular agenda into place suggests another dynamic at work.
For all Trump’s claims of power, he is a 78-year-old man who is declining mentally and who neither commands a majority of voters nor has shown signs of being able to transfer his voters to a leader in waiting.
Trump’s team deployed Vice President–elect J.D. Vance to the Senate to drum up votes for the confirmation of Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. But Vance has only been in the Senate since 2022 and is not noticeably popular. He—and therefore Trump—was unable to find the votes the wildly unqualified Gaetz needed for confirmation, forcing him to withdraw his name from consideration.
The next day, Gaetz began to advertise on Cameo, an app that allows patrons to commission a personalized video for fans, asking a minimum of $550.00 for a recording. Gaetz went from United States representative to Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general to making videos for Cameo in a little over a week.
It is a truism in studying politics that it’s far more important to follow power than it is to follow people. Right now, there is a lot of power sloshing around in Washington, D.C.
Trump is trying to convince the country that he has scooped up all that power. But in fact, he has won reelection by less than 50% of the vote, and his vice president is not popular. The policies Trump is embracing are so unpopular that he himself ran away from them when he was campaigning. And now he has proposed filling his administration with a number of highly unqualified figures who, knowing the only reason they have been elevated is that they are loyal to Trump, will go along with his worst instincts. With that baggage, it is not clear he will be able to cement enough power to bring his plans to life.
If power remains loose, it could get scooped up by cabinet officials, as it was during a similarly chaotic period in the 1920s. In that era, voters elected to the presidency former newspaperman and Republican backbencher Warren G. Harding of Ohio, who promised to return the country to “normalcy” after eight years of the presidency of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the nation’s engagement in World War I. That election really was a landslide, with Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, winning more than 60% of the popular vote in 1920.
But Harding was badly out of his depth in the presidency and spent his time with cronies playing bridge and drinking upstairs at the White House—despite Prohibition—while corrupt members of his administration grabbed all they could.
With such a void in the executive branch, power could have flowed to Congress. But after twenty years of opposing first Theodore Roosevelt, and then William Howard Taft, and then Woodrow Wilson, Congress had become adept at opposing presidents but had split into factions that made it unable to transition to using power, rather than opposing its use.
And so power in that era flowed to members of Harding’s Cabinet, primarily to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who put into place a fervently pro-business government that continued after Harding’s untimely death into the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, who made little effort to recover the power Harding had abandoned. After Hoover became president and their system fell to ruin in the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took their lost power and used it to create a new type of government.
In this moment, Trump’s people are working hard to convince Americans that they have gathered up all the power in Washington, D.C., but that power is actually still sloshing around. Trump is trying to force through the Senate a number of unqualified and dangerous nominees for high-level positions, threatening Republican senators that if they don’t bow to him, Elon Musk will fund primary challengers, or suggesting he will push them into recess so he can appoint his nominees without their constitutionally-mandated advice and consent.
But Trump and his people do not, in fact, have a mandate. Trump is old and weak, and power is up for grabs. It is possible that MAGA Republicans will, in the end, force Republican senators into their camp, permitting Trump and his cronies to do whatever they wish.
It is also possible that Republican senators will themselves take back for Congress the power that has lately concentrated in presidents, check the most dangerous and unpopular of Trump’s plans, and begin the process of restoring the balance of the three branches of government.
Positano is undeniably touristy – but thoroughly delightful in my opinion. The walks through the town are attractive, with domestic attributes as well as churches, glimpses of the ocean from the heights, and beach walks, ocean side eateries and picturesque ceramics amongst the stonework. The care for cats, although not as wholehearted as on Capri, is a lovely feature.
Eating in Positano
Morning tea on the square was lovely – coffees came with a jug of milk and the pastries were delicious. Lunch was close to the beach, but not right on the beach – after all the claim that Nureyev had a connection to the cafe was incentive enough. The meals were fresh, plentiful and served with pleasant smiles.
Trip back up the mountain in traffic jam – narrow road, parked cars and us looking down to wither cars that risked being scraped or a steep incline.
Eventually the bus started moving at a brisker pace!
Capri will be covered in the next post, together with Naples – the end of our Amalfi Coast experience.
Carol Ann Lloyd Courting the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I And Her Suitors Pen & Sword | Pen & Sword History, July 2024.
The great strength of this account of Queen Elizabeth and her suitors is its commitment to providing a broad account of marriage in the period, the context in which a woman, and a queen, was courted and the significance both personally and politically. Elizabeth is drawn as a woman, and a queen; a person with agency, as well as being at the mercy of a patriarchal structure enhanced by the political nature of the courting; a woman with personal ambitions for love and comradeship at the same time as having political ambitions and no need to seek companionship, which was hers by dint of her status. While maintaining the accessibility at which the Pen & Sword publications excel, Carol Ann Lloyd compiles a pleasingly complex discussion of marriage, politics, personal ambition, and human frailty in this book. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Valerie Keogh The Wives Boldwood Books, November 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley and Boldwood Books for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
What a clever novel this is, with its hints of being a domestic drama with familiar themes to becoming a thriller, with touches of comedy and a graphic punishment for the most heinous character in the book. The latter makes uncomfortable reading but also fulfills the desire to see the ‘villain’ suffer – all too often not given enough space for the reader who seeks imaginary revenge. Possibly deplorable but thank you Valerie Keogh for indulging this fault!
The wives are three, until Natasha meets Daniel who is charming, attractive, and wealthy. He provides a pleasant way out of Natsha’s increasing dissatisfaction with her work. She would like to retire, have children, and like her friends lead a more domesticated life. Daniel appears to be ideal husband material. He even approves Natasha’s married friends, dull though Natasha thinks they might be in comparison with her highflyer partner. Daniel and Natasha marry after a short courtship, and the four couples enjoy outings as couples, as well the men meeting when the wives pursue their outings at which Natasha was once the spinster friend. The highlight of this togetherness is the cruise for the four couples with Daniel footing the bill. At the same time, Daniel ensures that he and Natasha have superior accommodation and the diverse benefits that go with this. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
After the book reviews: Amalfi Coast; Civil Discourse by Joyce Vance.
Bus ride to hotel, arrival at village and a lovely balcony to our room
Sorrento, Capri and Positano
The tour followed the tourist sites of the Amalfi coast – Sorrento, Capri and Positano. each had its distinctive features, each had its touristy aspects, and each was fun. Although travelling in an organised group for eight days has its challenges, it also has benefits. This was particularly the case with this tour company and group. Some people, like us, had chosen the Amalfi Coast Tour because it was organised through The Guardian – surely the way to meet likeminded people? And indeed, we did. There were British Labour Party members and supporters, most of the Americans were Democrats, some members of the group were nonpolitical, four supported Trump. A credit to the group was that we all enjoyed ourselves, forming small groups, walking around as couples, being part of a large group. The What’s App group continues to be a source of interest and kindness to each other. There was plenty of free time, and plenty or organised activities. Twenty-one people in a group for eight days was enough, but a tremendous way in which to visit the Amalfi Coast, stay at a pleasant hotel, and meet a well-informed and friendly guide.
Photos from Capri and Positano will be in next week’s blog.
In the first section of her article, Joyce Vance discusses X and Blue Sky. The topic has been raised on Facebook and Vance makes some worthwhile observations.
Joyce Vance from Civil Discourse <joycevance@substack.com>
The Week Ahead, November 24, 2024*
A number of you have written to ask my thoughts about social media and whether I’ll be part of the exodus from X. I feel the same way about this issue that I felt about breastfeeding and cloth diapering as a young mom. They worked great for us in our household. But I had lots of friends who used formula or disposable diapers with great success. I’m a big fan of people doing what works best for them on these sorts of issues, and that’s how I feel here. Different options make sense for different people. As for me, I’m keeping a toehold on Twitter because I don’t believe in making it easy for them. Nolite te bastardes carborundum,as fans of Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” say. But I am posting more often on BlueSky, and I’m liking it there. The tone is respectful, and more and more interesting people, including journalists so you can find breaking news, are there. Also, the knitters, chicken and other animal people, and liberal Alabamians (yes, there is such a thing), seem to be out in full force. I like the respectful conversations and the tone so far. You can find me here if you’re considering heading in that direction, too.
Looking towards the week ahead, I’ve been forced to confront the past. It’s that feeling of déjà vu—we’ve been here before—and honestly, I have no clue how so many Americans could have thought it was a good idea to go back. My tweet from 2018 fills me with such a sense of sadness and naivete. At the time, a lot of people dismissed me as an overly dramatic female type. But I understood that Trump was pushing the country into klepto- and kakistocracy (a government whose corruption benefits its leaders and a government of incompetence, respectively) and stacking the Court to gain power, even though I couldn’t yet contemplate that Court would one day give Trump absolution for his crimes and Americans would return him to power nonetheless…
So many of us are stuck in that place of sadness and wondering what more we could have done. That’s understandable. But we cannot let it prevent us from getting back to work. We teach our children that when you fail, you pick yourself up and get back to work. I intend to remain relentlessly in favor of democracy.
Donald Trump was scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom this week, on Tuesday, November 26, to be sentenced for his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to keep Americans from learning he’d paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to keep her from making their sexual encounter public. Trump denies it ever happened. A Manhattan jury didn’t believe him and found him guilty of cooking the books to conceal the payment.
Now, that sentencing has been delayed indefinitely. It’s not clear it will ever happen. Trump’s lawyers have suggested evidence that the Supreme Court said is protected as part of his presidential immunity was improperly used against him, and the Judge has given them until December 2 to file a motion to dismiss based on the fact that Trump is now the president-elect. We don’t even whisper that no man is above the law in this country anymore.
It’s not clear what the DA’s position is, although they’ve suggested they may argue that sentencing could be continued until after he leaves office, although Trump’s lawyers say the threat of that sentencing would be an unlawful impediment on his performance while in office. In a practical sense, for those who fear Trump will not leave once reinstalled in the White House, it would be yet another incentive to cling to power.
At this point, it does not appear that Trump will face justice in a criminal court, despite being indicted in four of them and convicted in one. Future historians will undoubtedly assess this era as a dark time where the rule of law was under attack and a demagogue rose to power. But it does not have to be the final chapter in the American experiment. Already, as Trump prepares his next administration, there is work for us to do.
Last week saw the announcement of people who were absolutely unfit to hold office to take cabinet positions, including some who made it clear that Trump’s effort to separate himself from Project 2025 last summer was a farce. As you doubtless recall, Project 2025 was so stunningly unpopular that Trump lied and said he knew nothing about it to keep the association from dampening his chances. To put it down where the hogs can get it, he lied to the American people, unsurprisingly and again, about what he was committed to doing if he became the president. Let’s not let him get away with that. There is still value in the truth, and this is a big one: the truth that Project 2025, which frightened and disgusted many Americans, is Trump’s plan.
Project 2025 was 900+ pages of anti-American authoritarianism and Christian nationalism brought to life under the rubric of conservatism. But I have never known conservatives who thought it was a good idea to have Russia-friendly people like Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, or a man like Seth Hegseth, who has been accused of sexual assault and who paid off his accuser, in charge of the Department of Defense. Conservatism is out, even more so than during the first Trump administration, and Trumpism is in—firmly and exclusively in place.
Sometimes it’s the “little” things that take your breath away, like this from Marjorie Taylor Greene [ who has threatened the funding for National Public Radio].
National Public Radio (NPR) was founded in 1970. According to the MacArthur Foundation, it serves as a major source of news and cultural programs for more than 60 million Americans each week, with 260 local member stations and more than 50 podcasts. Its mission from the outset: To be a “source of information of consequence,” “celebrate the human experience,” help citizens be “enlightened participants” in society and “speak with many voices and many dialects.” So, of course, that means it’s on the chopping block with Trumpism. I wonder how many of you share my experience of having learned important details about daily news and democratic principles while commuting to or from work and listening to NPR? Greene would take aim at that free flow of information in our society.
Then there is Federal Communications Commission nominee Brendan Carr, who wrote the FCC chapter in Project 2025. The mission statement sounds good, “The FCC should promote freedom of speech, unleash economic opportunity, ensure that every American has a fair shot at next-generation connectivity, and enable the private sector to create good-paying jobs through pro-growth reforms that support a diversity of viewpoints, ensure secure and competitive communications networks, modernize outdated infrastructure rules, and represent good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.” But it goes downhill fast, for instance early on, where he lays out the the tradition of bipartisanship on the FCC is a matter of tradition, not law, suggesting without coming out and saying it that Trump could change that.
The FCC regulates radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable networks. In response to an LA Times tweet, suggesting Carr might “make life more difficult” for media companies, Carr confirmed it, suggesting he could take away broadcast licenses from media companies that don’t “operate in the public interest.” That’s preparation for authoritarianism.
So many people on both sides of the political equation have checked out, and, for entirely different reasons, are unaware of the truth. But these are facts that people need to be aware of, and we are the people who can do that. Make sure you share what Carr has threatened or that Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense is a TV presenter who paid off a woman who filed a police report accusing him of rape.
We live in times where courage is called for. We already see signs that some people will not be brave, that some people will obey in advance. But I take heart from the following quote, a line from the film “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”—that speaks forcefully to how I am feeling as we enter this holiday week: “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
What small acts of kindness or truth-telling can you plan for yourself this week? I’d love to hear about your ideas. Let’s make a difference, even when that seems challenging.
Marc Wanamaker and Steven Bingen Hollywood Behind the Lens Treasures from the Bison Archives Globe Pequot Lyons Press, May 2024.
Thankyou, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
This is the story of loss and an amazing effort to redeem this loss – the accumulation of Hollywood memorabilia undertaken through the Bison Archives. The focus of this non-fiction book is an archive replete with fascinating material, collected through diligence, imagination, and love. The story of how this collection has grown is so convincingly told that it almost leaps off the page. I enjoyed reading about the way in which Marc Wanamaker and Steven Bingen began collecting the missing items that tell us about Hollywood, the films that were made, and the actors, writers, directors – everyone involved in film making – in the Bison Archive. Both authors have impeccable backgrounds in the industry – but more importantly, both seem to have a deep affection for the work they have undertaken on behalf of the industry. See Books: Reviews
Articles following: American Politics; Civil Discourse, Joyce Vance – 3 articles related to the election and outcome; Vice-President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and President Barack and Michelle Obama – posts; Heather Cox Richardson; Tom Nichols, The Atlantic; Amalfi Coast Trip – Herculaneum and Pompeii; articles about Pompeii; Archeological Museum, Naples.
American Politics
The devastating decision was not predicted in Bob McMullan’s article on this blog last week, although it was part of the three scenarios he out lined. I am grateful that his high regard for voters, and hope for the best outcome, contributed to maintaining the democratic ideal. Wrong this time, but this is a rare occasion. Some of the cynical posts on Facebook, in their rush to predict the outcome as votes were being counted or demonstrate their ‘knowledge’ about why the vote went the way it did, ignore what this outcome will mean for not only America but the world. See comment by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), ‘who campaigned for Harris every single day the House was out of session,‘‘ below.
In contrast with some of the cynicism Joyce Vance wrote with optimism on 4 November, and then when the results became increasingly ominous, with hope for the future of democracy, while acknowledging the threat.
Joyce Vance ended her optimistic article on November 4 as follows:
I’ll vote first thing this morning with friends from my neighborhood. Our polling place has been combined with another polling place. Instead of a school, we now vote at a library. It’s a little bit further from our house, but not significantly so. We’ve been wondering what the lines will be like with the combined precincts. It feels festive, important, and very American to be preparing to vote in this most crucial of all elections…
In many ways, this campaign has been a form of slow torture. But I have also learned something important in the past few months: We still have what it takes. We are strong. We care deeply about our democracy. We can build community. Of course, that’s not true for everyone. Some people have gone astray and have given in to the allure of easy money, snake oil and a would-be-strongman who gives them permission to blame all of their woes on immigrants and communist-Democrats. But there are enough of us who still care about democracy and about having the ability to live our lives in freedom and with dignity. And we are going to prevail.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
A Tough Election Day
Joyce Vance
It’s not the election day we were hoping for, but it’s also not over yet. I’m writing at 11 p.m. and while it looks dark at the moment, key states remain close and undecided. We likely won’t know the result for certain before tomorrow. But my heart is heavy, thinking that so many people in our country, knowing exactly who Donald Trump is, have voted for him again.
While we all continue to watch the votes come in and worry about the ultimate result, I want to make sure you were aware of a really disturbing development: the plethora of bomb threats at polling places that broke out today…
Only cowards call in bomb threats. I know this because I used to prosecute bombings and bomb threats, and the common thread in the crimes and the criminals is that they want people to be afraid and they want to use that fear to manipulate them. In this situation, they are the antithesis of what our elections are about. They are foreign terrorism. It is an outrage, and the entire country should be jumping up and down about it. But we all know that it’s unlikely that Donald Trump will…
This is a difficult night, and it’s made more difficult still by news of Russia’s attempted attack on our election. Russia doesn’t want Americans to be able to vote. There is a sustained attack on democracy at work on multiple fronts, from people who object to our freedom.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
It was a difficult night, followed by a hard day. I’m not far enough away from the reelection of Donald Trump to have much in the way of perspective yet, and I’ll leave the post-mortems about what went wrong to others. It doesn’t feel important or valuable to me right now to have someone to blame. What I realized when I woke up this morning was that my concern had already turned towards what we’re going to do. What comes next?
After the election in 2016, which feels like a very like time ago—I was still at the Justice Department when Trump won—people like me knit the ubiquitous pink pussy hats and joined the Women’s March on January 21, the day after Trump was inaugurated. We prepared for the fight we knew was coming for civil rights, without knowing precisely what it would consist of or what we would be called to do.
In that moment, I learned something really important—that there is great value in community, fellowship, and sisterhood. That, when times are tough, you need to circle the wagons and be with the people you care about, the people who lift you up. There is nothing wrong with recharging your batteries by laughing with friends or enjoying a beautiful fall day. You can do that online or in person; it’s all good. The important thing is, Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum. As Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale says, don’t let the bastards get you down.
That’s not to say we should forget about the fact that this is bad, that a Trump 2.0 administration has the potential to be devastating. But living in a difficult time doesn’t mean that we are powerless. It means we have to be thoughtful about organizing and using our power, and that means we need to prepare, because we have work to do. I had hoped we would be talking about fixing democracy, repairing institutions that had been stretched out of shape, in 2025. Sadly, that is not where we are going to be.
Donald Trump won the election, and he won the popular vote. But he won it with almost ten million fewer people participating (71,725,928) than when Joe Biden won in 2020 (81,284,666). What that means about the level of support for his policies, as opposed to the general malaise of “prices are too high” that afflicted the country ahead of the election, remains to be seen. But if there are protests, and I suspect there will be, we are going to have to discuss how Trump will wield presidential powers, like those granted to him under the Insurrection Act, to quell any protest.
Earlier today, NBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that Jack Smith is consulting with DOJ officials about closing the two federal criminal cases against Trump since DOJ policy doesn’t permit prosecution of a sitting president. The reports painted a picture of prosecutors who had concluded their only option was to close up shop because Trump prevailed in the case. It’s possible that is what is happening, but there is another possibility, too.
At the conclusion of a special counsel’s investigation, section 600.9(a)(3) of the Special Counsel Regulations requires the Attorney General to provide Congressional leadership with “a description, and explanation of instances (if any)” where the Attorney General overruled an action the special counsel wanted to take. That requirement would be triggered if Smith proposed moving forward despite DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president (there were earlier reports he intended to continue his work through inauguration day), and the Attorney General countermanded him because of existing policy. It’s hard to assess what value a report like that might have, beyond information and evidence Smith’s court filings have already made public. It would at least guarantee there would be a permanent public record that would survive Trump’s certain demand that the Justice Department kill the cases against him. This is one potentially intriguing possibility in a day that didn’t have much optimism to offer. It bothers me deeply, nonetheless, that Trump has avoided accountability at the hands of a jury that would consider the evidence against him and decide whether to convict him or not. I know I’ll struggle with that for a long time.
Whatever the next days and weeks hold, the most important thing is not to let Donald Trump take away your sense of power as an American. Do not, as Tim Snyder says, obey in advance. We did not quit during Trump’s first four years in office and we are not going to quit now. We will pick our priorities and marshal our resources to do what must be done. Make sure you take the time now to nurture yourself for what is ahead. There will be a role for each of us.It is very hard to lose an election, and this one more than most. I don’t know yet what specific challenges we’ll face and what we’ll be called upon to do. But I am confident we will meet those challenges just like we always have.
We’re in this together, Joyce
Kamala Harris
Vice-President Kamala Harris Post
My heart is full today—full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve.
The outcome of this election is not what we wanted or what we fought for, but hear me when I say: The light of America’s promise will always burn bright—as long as we never give up, and as long as we keep fighting.
Earlier today, I spoke with President Trump. I told him that we will help him and his team with the transition, and we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.
In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or party, but to the Constitution of the United States, our conscience, and our God. My allegiance to all three is why, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, and for fairness and the dignity of all people.
That is a fight I will never give up.
I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions, and aspirations; a future where women have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and not have their government telling them what to do; where we protect our schools and our streets from gun violence.
We will never give up the fight for rule of law, equal justice, and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms that must be respected and upheld.
To the young people watching, it is okay to feel sad and disappointed. On the campaign, I would often say: When we fight, we win. Sometimes the fight takes a while, but that doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is to never stop trying to make the world a better place.
There is an adage: Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time. For the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But, America, if it is: Let us fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars.
May the light of optimism, faith, truth, and service guide us—even in the face of setbacks—toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.
President Joe Biden post
What America saw today was the Kamala Harris I know and deeply admire.
She’s been a tremendous partner and public servant full of integrity, courage, and character.
Under extraordinary circumstances, she stepped up and led a historic campaign that embodied what’s possible when guided by a strong moral compass and a clear vision for a nation that is more free, more just, and full of more opportunities for all Americans.
As I’ve said before, selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made when I became the nominee for president in 2020. It was the best decision I made. Her story represents the best of America’s story. And as she made clear today, I have no doubt that she’ll continue writing that story.
She will continue the fight with purpose, determination, and joy. She will continue to be a champion for all Americans. Above all, she will continue to be a leader our children will look up to for generations to come as she puts her stamp on America’s future.
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama post
Here’s our statement on the results of the 2024 presidential election:
Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>
Yesterday, November 5, 2024, Americans reelected former president Donald Trump, a Republican, to the presidency over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. As of Wednesday night, Trump is projected to get at least 295 electoral votes to Harris’s 226, with two Republican-leaning states still not called. The popular vote count is still underway.
Republicans also retook control of the Senate, where Democrats were defending far more seats than Republicans. Control of the House is not yet clear.
These results were a surprise to everyone. Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, and said during his campaign that he would be a “dictator” on his first day in office.
Pollsters thought the race would be very close but showed increasing momentum for Harris, and Harris’s team expressed confidence during the day. By posting on social media—with no evidence—that the voting in Pennsylvania was rigged, Trump himself suggested he expected he would lose the popular vote, at least, as he did in 2016 and 2020.
But in 2024, it appears a majority of American voters chose to put Trump back into office.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, offered a message of unity, the expansion of the economic policies that have made the U.S. economy the strongest in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the creation of an “opportunity economy” that echoed many of the policies Republicans used to embrace. Trump vowed to take revenge on his enemies and to return the country to the neoliberal policies President Joe Biden had rejected in favor of investing in the middle class.
When he took office, Biden acknowledged that democracy was in danger around the globe, as authoritarians like Russian president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping maintained that democracy was obsolete and must be replaced by autocracies. Russia set out to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that enforced the rules-based international order that stood against Russian expansion.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who overturned democracy in his own country, explained that the historical liberal democracy of the United States weakens a nation because the equality it champions means treating immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women as equal to men, thus ending traditionally patriarchal society.
In place of democracy, Orbán champions “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy.” This form of government holds nominal elections, although their outcome is preordained because the government controls all the media and has silenced opposition. Orbán’s model of minority rule promises a return to a white-dominated, religiously based society, and he has pushed his vision by eliminating the independent press, cracking down on political opposition, getting rid of the rule of law, and dominating the economy with a group of crony oligarchs.
In order to strengthen democracy at home and abroad, Biden worked to show that it delivered for ordinary Americans. He and the Democrats passed groundbreaking legislation to invest in rebuilding roads and bridges and build new factories to usher in green energy. They defended unions and used the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies and return more economic power to consumers.
Their system worked. It created record low unemployment rates, lifted wages for the bottom 80% of Americans, and built the strongest economy in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, setting multiple stock market records. But that success turned out not to be enough to protect democracy.
In contrast, Trump promised he would return to the ideology of the era before 2021, when leaders believed in relying on markets to order the economy with the idea that wealthy individuals would invest more efficiently than if the government regulated business or skewed markets with targeted investment (in green energy, for example). Trump vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and to make up lost revenue through tariffs, which he incorrectly insists are paid by foreign countries; tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers.
For policies, Trump’s campaign embraced the Project 2025 agenda led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to Orbán. That plan calls for getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service the U.S. has had since 1883 and for making both the Department of Justice and the military partisan instruments of a strong president, much as Orbán did in Hungary. It also calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights, across the U.S. Part of the idea of “purifying” the country is the deportation of undocumented immigrants: Trump promised to deport 20 million people at an estimated cost of $88 billion to $315 billion a year.
That is what voters chose.
Pundits today have spent time dissecting the election results, many trying to find the one tweak that would have changed the outcome, and suggesting sweeping solutions to the Democrats’ obvious inability to attract voters. There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.
There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.
But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.
In the U.S., pervasive right-wing media, from the Fox News Channel through right-wing podcasts and YouTube channels run by influencers, have permitted Trump and right-wing influencers to portray the booming economy as “failing” and to run away from the hugely unpopular Project 2025. They allowed MAGA Republicans to portray a dramatically falling crime rate as a crime wave and immigration as an invasion. They also shielded its audience from the many statements of Trump’s former staff that he is unfit for office, and even that his chief of staff General John Kelly considers him a fascist and noted that he admires German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
As actor Walter Masterson posted: “I tried to educate people about tariffs, I tried to explain that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes and are the foundation of this country. I explained Project 2025, I interviewed to show that they supported it. I can not compete against the propaganda machines of Twitter, Fox News, [Joe Rogan Experience], and NY Post. These spaces will continue to create reality unless we create a more effective way of reaching people.”
X users noted a dramatic drop in their followers today, likely as bots, no longer necessary, disengaged.
Many voters who were using their vote to make an economic statement are likely going to be surprised to discover what they have actually voted for. In his victory speech, Trump said the American people had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
White nationalist Nick Fuentes posted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” and gloated that men will now legally control women’s bodies. His post got at least 22,000 “likes.” Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, previously funded by Russia, posted: “It is my honor to inform you that Project 2025 was real the whole time.”
Today, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would launch the “largest mass deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants, and the stock in private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic jumped 41% and 29%, respectively. Those jumps were part of a bigger overall jump: the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up 1,508 points in what Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said was the largest post-election jump in more than 100 years.
As for the lower prices Trump voters wanted, Kate Gibson of CBS today noted that on Monday, the National Retail Federation said that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost American consumers between $46 billion and $78 billion a year as clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, and footwear all become more expensive. A $50 pair of running shoes, Gibson said, would retail for $59 to $64 under the new tariffs.
U.S. retailers are already preparing to raise prices of items from foreign suppliers, passing to consumers the cost of any future tariffs.
Trump’s election will also mean he will no longer have to answer to the law for his federal indictments: special counsel Jack Smith is winding them down ahead of Trump’s inauguration. So he will not be tried for retaining classified documents or attempting to overthrow the U.S. government when he lost in 2020.
This evening, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán posted on social media that he had just spoken with Trump, and said: “We have big plans for the future!”
This afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at her alma mater, Howard University, to concede the election to Trump.
She thanked her supporters, her family, the Bidens, the Walz family, and her campaign staff and volunteers. She reiterated that she believes Americans have far more in common than separating us.
In what appeared to be a message to Trump, she noted: “A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.
“My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”
Harris urged people “to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” She told those feeling as if the world is dark indeed these days, to “fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service,” and to let “that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.”
Donald Trump won a significant victory in both the popular vote and the Electoral College because he offered a majority of Americans what they wanted: anger, drama, and a renewal of their favorite political reality-TV show.
Democrats and liberal pundits are already trying to figure out how the Trump campaign not only bested Kamala Harris in the “Blue Wall” states of the Midwest and the Rust Belt, but gained on her even in areas that should have been safe for a Democrat. Almost everywhere, Donald Trump expanded his coalition, and this time, unlike in 2016, he didn’t have to thread the needle of the Electoral College to win: He can claim the legitimacy of winning the popular vote.
Trump’s opponents are now muttering about the choice of Tim Walz, the influence of the Russians, the role of the right-wing media, and whether President Joe Biden should not have stepped aside in favor of Harris. Even the old saw about “economic anxiety” is making a comeback.
These explanations all have some merit, but mostly, they miss the point. Yes, some voters still stubbornly believe that presidents magically control the price of basic goods. Others have genuine concerns about immigration and gave in to Trump’s booming call of fascism and nativism. And some of them were just never going to vote for a woman, much less a Black woman.
But in the end, a majority of American voters chose Trump because they wanted what he was selling: a nonstop reality show of rage and resentment. Some Democrats, still gripped by the lure of wonkery, continue to scratch their heads over which policy proposals might have unlocked more votes, but that was always a mug’s game. Trump voters never cared about policies, and he rarely gave them any. (Choosing to be eaten by a shark rather than electrocuted might be a personal preference, but it’s not a policy.) His rallies involved long rants about the way he’s been treated, like a giant therapy session or a huge family gathering around a bellowing, impaired grandpa.
Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by promising to solve a litany of problems that always seem to involve money, immigrants, and minorities. The appeals from these charlatans resonate most not among the very poor, but among a bored, relatively well-off middle class, usually those who are deeply uncomfortable with racial and demographic changes in their own countries.And so it came to pass: Last night, a gaggle of millionaires and billionaires grinned and applauded for Trump. They were part of an alliance with the very people another Trump term would hurt—the young, minorities, and working families among them.
Trump, as he has shown repeatedly over the years, couldn’t care less about any of these groups. He ran for office to seize control of the apparatus of government and to evade judicial accountability for his previous actions as president. Once he is safe, he will embark on the other project he seems to truly care about: the destruction of the rule of law and any other impediments to enlarging his power.
Americans who wish to stop Trump in this assault on the American constitutional order, then, should get it out of their heads that this election could have been won if only a better candidate had made a better pitch to a few thousand people in Pennsylvania. Biden, too old and tired to mount a proper campaign, likely would have lost worse than Harris; more to the point, there was nothing even a more invigorated Biden or a less, you know, female alternative could have offered. Racial grievances, dissatisfaction with life’s travails (including substance addiction and lack of education), and resentment toward the villainous elites in faraway cities cannot be placated by housing policy or interest-rate cuts.
No candidate can reason about facts and policies with voters who have no real interest in such things. They like the promises of social revenge that flow from Trump, the tough-guy rhetoric, the simplistic “I will fix it” solutions. And he’s interesting to them, because he supports and encourages their conspiracist beliefs. (I knew Harris was in trouble when I was in Pennsylvania last week for an event and a fairly well-off business owner, who was an ardent Trump supporter, told me that Michelle Obama had conspired with the Canadians to change the state’s vote tally in 2020. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the conversation.)
As Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, put it in a social-media post last night: The election went the way it did “because America wanted Trump. That’s it. People reaching to construct [policy] alibis for the public because they don’t want to grapple with this are whistling past the graveyard.” Last worries that we might now be in a transition to authoritarianism of the kind Russia went through in the 1990s, but I visited Russia often in those days, and much of the Russian democratic implosion was driven by genuinely brutal economic conditions and the rapid collapse of basic public services. Americans have done this to themselves during a time of peace, prosperity, and astonishingly high living standards. An affluent society that thinks it is living in a hellscape is ripe for gulling by dictators who are willing to play along with such delusions.
The bright spot in all this is that Trump and his coterie must now govern. The last time around, Trump was surrounded by a small group of moderately competent people, and these adults basically put baby bumpers and pool noodles on all the sharp edges of government. This time, Trump will rule with greater power but fewer excuses, and he—and his voters—will have to own the messes and outrages he is already planning to create.Those voters expect that Trump will hurt others and not them. They will likely be unpleasantly surprised, much as they were in Trump’s first term. (He was, after all, voted out of office for a reason.) For the moment, some number of them have memory-holed that experience and are pretending that his vicious attacks on other Americans are just so much hot air.
Trump, unfortunately, means most of what he says. In this election, he has triggered the unfocused ire and unfounded grievances of millions of voters. Soon we will learn whether he can still trigger their decency—if there is any to be found.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who campaigned for Harris every single day the House was out of session, told us that if you were out there listening to union members, to Black voters, to men, to young people, to working women and men struggling to pay for groceries … you knew what was coming. “Democrats shouldn’t do the blame game,” she said. “They should do: ‘What aren’t we doing right — all of us?'”
Amalfi coast trip
The highlights of this trip, as interesting as all the other activities were, were the excursions to Pompeii and Herculaneum. These were undertaken one after the other, with a break for lunch, so really made for a very full and energetic day. We all survived very well, despite uneven pathways, staircases, distressing sights and the warm weather.
Herculaneum
Long-held beliefs about ancient residents of Pompeii debunked by DNA testing
DNA testing of some inhabitants of the buried city of Pompeii has found popular narratives around their identities and relationships are largely wrong, a study finds.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD buried the ancient Roman town in ash, leaving behind an entire archaeological site almost perfectly preserved before its rediscovery in 1748.
Published in scientific journal Current Biology, the study was lead by researchers at the University of Florence in Italy and Harvard University in the US, and is part of a wider project to map the DNA of over 1,000 human remains uncovered at the site.
Pompeii’s status as a port city influenced a wide range of eastern Mediterranean, Levantine and North African DNA samples found, representing a wider range of ethnicities than originally assumed, the authors said.
A 2015 restoration of some plaster casts of remains found many had been significantly altered by the first archaeologists and restorers who found them, meaning interpretations based on the final pose or shape of the victims’ bodies were impacted, as well as assumptions around proximity and gender roles.
The study’s authors took samples from individual bone fragments mixed with plaster from 14 casts and analysed the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA left behind after thousands of years preserved in ash.
Jewellery’s associations found to be false
A group found in 1974 in the House of the Golden Bracelet, named for the piece of jewellery found on the arm of one resident, was previously assumed to be a family group that included a mother, based on the bracelet and child in close proximity.
However, the researchers concluded the four individuals were unrelated and all were male, with “considerable variation” in their genetic diversity.
One of the people found had black hair and dark skin, which alongside genetic markers indicated eastern Mediterranean or North African ancestry.
“These discoveries challenge longstanding interpretations, such as associating jewellery with femininity or interpreting physical closeness as an indicator of biological relationships,” the authors wrote.
“Instead of establishing new narratives that might also misrepresent these people’s lived experiences, these results encourage reflection on conceptions and construction of gender and family in past societies as well as in academic discourse.”
Nuclear genetic testing showed one of the pair was a young adult male, meaning the first two theories were excluded, and the pair were not related through the maternal line.
The young man’s ancestry was also Mediterranean, and consistent with modern day Turkish populations, the study showed.
The researchers were unable to determine the sex of the second individual, though CT skeletal scans suggested they were aged in their mid to late teens.
Pompeii
The Independent
‘Fragile’ Pompeii to cap daily tourist numbers at 20,000 to protect the site
The Pompeii archaeological park plans to limit visitor numbers to 20,000 a day and introduce personalised tickets starting next week.
It comes after a record high 36,000 tourists visited the site on the first Sunday of October, when entry was free, according to local media.
The ancient Roman city in southern Italy was buried under ash and rock following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Nearly four million people visited the main Pompeii site in 2023, a third more than the previous year, according to authorities.
The site is one of the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere in the world (Parco Archeologico di Pompei/Handout via REUTERS)
Visitor counts had been climbing in the run up to the 2020 pandemic and in 2023 were above pre-Covid levels.
“We are working on a series of projects to lift the human pressure on the site, which could pose risks both for visitors and the heritage that is so unique and fragile,” the park’s director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said.
The park’s management is also trying to attract more tourists to visit other ancient sites connected to Pompeii by a free shuttle bus under the “Greater Pompeii” project, including Stabia, Torre Annunziata and Boscoreale sites.
“The measures to manage flows and safety and the personalisation of the visits are part of this strategy,” Mr Zuchtriegel said.
In October 2024, there were more than 480,000 visitors, putting the average at about 15,500 a day (Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images)
“We are aiming for slow, sustainable, pleasant and non-mass tourism and above all widespread throughout the territory around the Unesco site, which is full of cultural jewels to discover,” he added.
Post-pandemic, the influx of millions of visitors to tourist-strewn towns has, in some cases, risen to levels above those seen in 2019.
Archeological Museum Naples
Artifacts from the Pompeii and Herculaneum sites are housed in the Alcohological Museum in Naples. We visited Naples for three days at the end of the Amalfi trip and visited the museum.
Articles and some light relief: Bob McMullan; Heather Cox Richardson; Joyce Vance; Jess Piper; Cindy Lou and food.
American Politics
Bob McMullan
Final US election review
Less than one day until the polls close. In Australia it will be Wednesday before we know who wins.
The election remains very unpredictable. That does not necessarily mean that it will be close. A small consistent error in the polls could point to a clear victory for either side.
But it is extremely difficult to forecast a result with confidence.
I think it is possible to isolate three strands of thinking about the prospects of the candidates.
The first was outlined by veteran Democrat political consultant, James Carville. Carville outlined three reasons why he is confident Kamala Harris will win. My summary of his arguments is:
1) Under Trump’s leadership the Republicans have lost every election since 2018 and Trump has made very little effort to broaden his base of support.
2) Harris has a distinct financial advantage which should enable her to run a bigger and better ground game in the final days than Trump.
3) He can’t believe that the country he grew up in could re-elect such a man.
The first two arguments have validity, I hope the third one does, but I am not certain.
The second view of the likely outcome is represented by Nate Silver, the respected analyst of data-based probabilities. His criticism of some pollsters and analysis of the “herding” phenomenon by which some pollsters make sure their results are not too far from the mainstream is very interesting.
In this review, however, I am more interested in his polling averages. The most recent Silver averages have Harris winning only Michigan and Wisconsin among the battleground states. Which would mean Trump winning 287/251 in the electoral college.
A third view is from the Washington Post, which has been very careful in selecting only high quality pollsters for its voting average. The Post shows Harris increasing her lead over Trump in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin while continuing to hold a narrow but shrinking lead in Pennsylvania. Such a result on Tuesday would mean Harris winning 276/262.
These divergent views from smart and informed people show the difficulty in forecasting the result this time.
Some other indicators which I have fed into my ultimate conclusion.
1. The gender gap remains very large and early voting data suggests that women are voting more than men.
2. Related to this, Trump has always had a strong base but has seemed to have a ceiling of support at about 46-47%. In this election he seems to be relying on a low-propensity voting group, young men, to turn out for him. The early voting data suggests this may not be happening sufficiently to overcome the gender gap problem, but of course they may turn out on election day.
3. The measures of enthusiasm and indicators of organizational capacity appear to favour Kamala Harris, which should help with turn out on the day.
4. We recently had the astonishing Iowa poll from the usually very reliable Des Moines Register which gave Harris a three point lead in Iowa. If this is true Harris is in for a big win, but it may be an outlier.
5. Such data as exists suggest that those few late deciders are trending more towards Harris than Trump.
6. Late polls from NYT/Sienna, YouGov and Focaldata all have Kamala Harris winning enough states to win the Electoral college, although they don’t agree about which states she will win. These forecasts would mean Harris winning 270-292 votes to Trump 268-246.
7. Conversely Real Clear Politics predicts Trump will win all 7 battleground states. This would mean Trump winning 312/226.
Conclusion
Nobody knows who is going to win, but if the gender gap and the differential in turn-out between men and women continue I think Harris is more likely to win.
Those who read my predictions last time will recall that I ventured a guess about the margin. This time it is more difficult, as the range of possibilities makes clear.
Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>
However, the pattern of credible polling data over recent weeks has consistently suggested the most likely result is 276/262 to Harris.
I’m home tonight to stay for a bit, after being on the road for thirteen months and traveling through 32 states. I am beyond tired but profoundly grateful for the chance to meet so many wonderful people and for the welcome you have given me to your towns and your homes.
I know people are on edge, and there is maybe one last thing I can offer before this election. Every place I stopped, worried people asked me how I have maintained a sense of hope through the past fraught years. The answer—inevitably for me, I suppose—is in our history.
If you had been alive in 1853, you would have thought the elite enslavers had become America’s rulers. They were only a small minority of the U.S. population, but by controlling the Democratic Party, they had managed to take control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They used that power to stop the northerners who wanted the government to clear the rivers and harbors of snags, for example, or to fund public colleges for ordinary people, from getting any such legislation through Congress. But at least they could not use the government to spread their system of human enslavement across the country, because the much larger population in the North held control of the House of Representatives.
Then in 1854, with the help of Democratic president Franklin Pierce, elite enslavers pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act through the House. That law overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept Black enslavement out of the American West since 1820. Because the Constitution guarantees the protection of property—and enslaved Americans were considered property—the expansion of slavery into those territories would mean the new states there would become slave states. Their representatives would work together with those of the southern slave states to outvote the northern free labor advocates in Congress. Together, they would make enslavement national.
America would become a slaveholding nation.
Enslavers were quite clear that this was their goal.
South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond explicitly rejected “as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’” He explained to his Senate colleagues that the world was made up of two classes of people. The “Mudsills” were dull drudges whose work produced the food and products that made society function. On them rested the superior class of people, who took the capital the mudsills produced and used it to move the economy, and even civilization itself, forward. The world could not survive without the inferior mudsills, but the superior class had the right—and even the duty—to rule over them.
But that’s not how it played out.
As soon as it became clear that Congress would pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Representative Israel Washburn of Maine called a meeting of thirty congressmen in Washington, D.C., to figure out how they could fight back against the Slave Power that had commandeered the government to spread the South’s system of human enslavement. The men met in the rooms of Representative Edward Dickinson of Massachusetts—whose talented daughter Emily was already writing poems—and while they came to the meeting from all different political parties, often bitterly divided over specific policies, they left with one sole purpose: to stop the overthrow of American democracy.
The men scattered back to their homes across the North for the summer, sharing their conviction that a new party must rise to stand against the Slave Power. They found “anti-Nebraska” sentiment sweeping their towns; a young lawyer from Illinois later recalled how ordinary people came together: “[W]e rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s cleaver.” In the next set of midterm elections, those calling themselves “anti-Nebraska” candidates swept into both national and state office across the North, and by 1856, opponents of the Slave Power had become a new political party: the Republicans.
But the game wasn’t over. In 1857, the Supreme Court tried to take away Republicans’ power to stop the spread of slavery to the West by declaring in the infamous Dred Scott decision that Congress had no power to legislate in the territories. This made the Missouri Compromise that had kept enslavement out of the land above Missouri unconstitutional. The next day, Republican editor of the New York Tribune Horace Greeley wrote that the decision was “entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room.”
By 1858 the party had a new rising star, the young lawyer from Illinois who had talked about everyone reaching for tools to combat the Kansas-Nebraska Act: Abraham Lincoln. Pro-slavery Democrats called the Republicans radicals for their determination to stop the expansion of slavery, but Lincoln countered that the Republicans were the country’s true conservatives, for they were the ones standing firm on the Declaration of Independence. The enslavers rejecting the Founders’ principles were the radicals.
The next year, Lincoln articulated an ideology for the party, defining it as the party of ordinary Americans defending the democratic idea that all men are created equal against those determined to overthrow democracy with their own oligarchy.
In 1860, at a time when voting was almost entirely limited to white men, voters put Abraham Lincoln into the White House. Furious, southern leaders took their states out of the Union and launched the Civil War.
By January 1863, Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending the American system of human enslavement in lands still controlled by the Confederacy. By November 1863 he had delivered the Gettysburg Address, firmly rooting the United States of America in the Declaration of Independence.
In that speech, Lincoln charged Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work for which so many had given their lives. He urged them to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
In less than ten years the country went from a government dominated by a few fabulously wealthy men who rejected the idea that human beings are created equal and who believed they had the right to rule over the masses, to a defense of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and to leaders who called for a new birth of freedom. But Lincoln did not do any of this alone: always, he depended on the votes of ordinary people determined to have a say in the government under which they lived.
In the 1860s the work of those people established freedom and democracy as the bedrock of the United States of America, but the structure itself remained unfinished. In the 1890s and then again in the 1930s, Americans had to fight to preserve democracy against those who would destroy it for their own greed and power. Each time, thanks to ordinary Americans, democracy won.
Now it is our turn.
In our era the same struggle has resurfaced. A small group of leaders has rejected the idea that all people are created equal and seeks to destroy our democracy in order to install themselves into permanent power.
And just as our forebears did, Americans have reached for whatever tools we have at hand to build new coalitions across the nation to push back. After decades in which ordinary people had come to believe they had little political power, they have mobilized to defend American democracy and—with an electorate that now includes women and Black Americans and Brown Americans—have discovered they are strong.
On November 5 we will find out just how strong we are. We will each choose on which side of the historical ledger to record our names. On the one hand, we can stand with those throughout our history who maintained that some people were better than others and had the right to rule; on the other, we can list our names on the side of those from our past who defended democracy and, by doing so, guarantee that American democracy reaches into the future.
I have had hope in these dark days because I look around at the extraordinary movement that has built in this country over the past several years, and it looks to me like the revolution of the 1850s that gave America a new birth of freedom.
As always, the outcome is in our hands.
“Fellow-citizens,” Lincoln reminded his colleagues, “we cannot escape history. We…will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”
–-
Notes:
James Henry Hammond, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond, of South Carolina (New York: John F. Trow and Company, 1866), 126.
This is it folks. This is the week we’ve been waiting for.
And it’s a jungle out there. The Trump camp’s borderline frivolous and outright meritless lawsuits, challenging both voters and ballots, are coming at a frenetic pace.
This morning I wrote about a lawsuit in state court in Georgia that was an effort to stop people from turning in their absentee ballots in person over the weekend. It’s too late to put them in the mail; they don’t count unless they’re received by election day. But lawyers for the Georgia GOP opposed keeping county offices open so people could turn their ballots in.
It wasn’t much of a case, and the judge promptly dismissed it. That should’ve been it, but it wasn’t. Tonight, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Georgia Republican Party filed the case a second time, in federal court.
You really can’t make this stuff up. It’s all about voter suppression and helping develop a winning narrative of voter fraud (that isn’t true) in case he loses.
Trump has, of course, spent his weekend exactly as you’d expect, saying it was okay with him if members of the press were killed.
He also said that he should not have left the White House after losing the 2020 election. Thankfully, no microphones appear to have been abused in his Sunday appearances.
As the candidates make their very different closing arguments to the American people, expect the election-related litigation to continue. It will morph into recounts and challenges once the race is decided, which we should not expect to happen quickly. I’ve written before that I don’t expect the outcome to be decided in the Supreme Court. That can happen if you’ve got a situation like Bush v. Gore in 2000, where a small tranche of ballots in one state were going to decide the whole thing. But that’s not the usual case. It’s likely most of the litigation will be decided quickly in state courts, with some cases in federal district and appellate courts.
Law professor and election law expert Justin Levitt has written an excellent piece about this that you’ll enjoy if you want to dig in on this topic. It’s an antidote to the frenzy of concern that the Court we’ve come to hold in low esteem will weigh in for Trump: Please Stop Wishcasting the Supreme Court into a Decisive Election Role.
The GOP pre-election lawsuits were primarily designed to erode confidence in the election and fuel post-election narratives that the entire election was tainted by fraud. Some cases hinted at a post-election strategy of refusing to certify election results. But certification of election results is a mandatory legal duty, and courts like Georgia that have considered it have held thatstate and local officials do not have discretion to refuse to certify election results.
If an official delays or refuses to certify results, state officials and courts (as well as candidates and voters, in some circumstances) can step in to compel certification. Officials who refuse to certify can be held accountable through both civil and criminal penalties. There are plenty of opportunities baked into the process to ensure that the count is correct. But certification is not one of those points. Refusal to certify election results is really a refusal to count an entire jurisdiction’s votes.
Each state sets its own deadline for certifying the count. Some examples below. A key date to look for is December 11, when the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) requires the governor of each state to certify the appointment of electors well in advance of the electors’ votes. On December 17, the electors meet in their respective states to take part in the Electoral College and formally cast their state’s electoral votes for president and vice president. The ECRA removes the ambiguity that Trump’s lawyers exploited to create the fake electors scheme in 2020. Any refusal to certify the vote can be dealt with by lawsuits that force the certification or state rules that provide alternate paths for certification. People who refuse to follow the law and certify results can even face penalties.
In preparation for Tuesday, law enforcement officials have been vigilant about the possibility of violence at the polls or around the election, while hoping it won’t occur. Keep in mind that if it does, we will not see federal law enforcement or troops out at the polls. Election oversight is largely left to to the states; it’s even a crime for armed federal agents like FBI or U.S. Marshals’ personnel, along with members of the military, to be sent in. I’m told there is an unprecedented level of cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement to keep the election—and election workers—safe.
There’s also good news in preparation for election day. As many as 17,000 voters in Erie County, Pennsylvania, who didn’t receive their mail-in ballots are being permitted to vote early in person. The voters requested ballots but didn’t receive them, but a judge gave them permission to vote up through Monday and, equally as important, ordered that polling places needed to have sufficient numbers of ballots on hand in case these voters all show up at the precinct on election day. This case is a great example of how election-related issues frequently get resolved in the lower courts. And one of the sleeper stories emerging in this election already is about how some pockets of slow and delayed mail delivery are factoring into who gets a ballot and whose ballot makes it back in time to be counted.
In other words, we are all over the place as election day approaches, with lots of moving parts. I hope you’ll leave a note in the comments about what’s going on in your part of the country.
Today in North Carolina, Trump referenced a candidate named David as “one of the best” and looked around at the crowd, asking if he was out there. The only problem? David is David McCormick, a candidate for office in Pennsylvania. Imagine what would have happened if Joe Biden had done that?
S.V. Dáte at Huff Post tweeted tonight that he had reached out to the Trump campaign to ask “why the coup-attempting, now convicted criminal, former president is an unfocused mess in these final days.” He got this in response:
President Trump is the greatest orator in political history and his patented Weave is a brilliant method to convey important stories and explain policies that will help everyday Americans turn the page from the last four years of Kamala Harris’s failures. The media is too stupid and ignorant to understand or comprehend what is happening in the country and, therefore, is unable to accurately report on President Trump’s achievements while in office and the pro- American agenda he will implement in his second term. Or they knowingly misrepresent and purposely lie about President Trump because they suffer from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that prevents critical thinking or commonsense.
If this leaves you in need of an emotional support chicken, I’ll be here for you this week. This is Guida, who only agreed to sit on my lap this morning because I had Buñuelos that I shared with her. But she purred softly, and that was just what I needed.
I’m really grateful to all of you for being here with me this week.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Jess Piper Nov 3, email
Harris Could Take …Iowa?
Let me start by saying that I am not a data person. Numbers make my head hurt. I am a narrative person. I am full of the stories of rural people and rural areas and rural organizing.
I also know a lot about the people in Iowa. I live three miles from the IA border, and I frequently speak in the state. There is a reason people who know numbers and assemble polls are talking about Iowa today.
The Des Moines Register headline: Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. The nationally recognized Iowa Poll shows Kamala Harris picking up support from women to surpass Donald Trump in a ruby-red state he has won twice.
The Selzer Poll shows something I have been talking about for a few years. The story of organizing in rural spaces and the stories of the women who make it happen.The poll shows that women — particularly those who are older or who are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris. “Age and gender are the two most dynamic factors that are explaining these numbers,” Ann Selzer said of the numbers.
I know this intuitively. I know that because I have been traveling into Iowa to speak to groups large and small for two years. I have been in small towns and big cities across the state and I know who is doing the organizing…It’s the women. I was in Howard County, Iowa a year ago. I was invited by a local Howard County Democrat, Laura Hubka. The entire county has fewer than 10K people.Laura and her group organized a potluck dinner with me as the keynote speaker and several candidates driving from across the state to talk politics and what sort of shot the Democrats had. The community center was full and as I drove back to Laura’s farmhouse to stay the night, I thought about the courage it takes to have a meeting in a rural space when you might only have ten folks show up. Laura did it anyway.
I spoke in Davis County, Iowa almost two years ago. We met at the fairgrounds in the building next to the Swine Pavilion. I was asked to come and speak on state politics including Kim Reynold’s school voucher scheme and the Iowa abortion ban. I sat down to another potluck with midwestern sushi — a pickle slathered with cream cheese and rolled up in a piece of ham, sliced into little sushi rolls. I washed it down with lemonade and made sure to snag a Scotcharoo before I spoke.The abortion ban was the topic of conversation with the women in this group, and I have news for those politicians going around thinking that abortion bans are only relevant to women of child-bearing age…they are wrong.
Women know that abortion bans impact every part of our lives. We know bans drive OBGYNs out of our states making any gynecological care difficult. We are losing women’s healthcare in states with bans. Rural women are hit particularly hard with an abortion ban.Fairgrounds, Davis County, Iowa.
I drove from Davis County to Johnson County the next day. I was invited to be the Keynote speaker at a large event in Johnson County, Iowa. It was the annual BBQ held at the fairgrounds as well. This was a big event with several special guests including the Iowa Democratic Chair, Rita Hart and Congressional candidate Christina Bohannan. Again, the topic that most women were concerned about? Abortion and reproductive healthcare. I spoke on the issue at length and grabbed a piece of butter cake on the way out.The women who saw me out the door hugged me and told me that their daughters and granddaughters would not suffer the health repercussions that an abortion ban ushers in. That they would do whatever they had to do to make sure their children would be safe in Iowa.
Here’s the thing that a lot of pollsters have been getting wrong: they don’t think abortion will be the reason that older women choose to vote for a Democrat. And I know that isn’t true. I have talked to hundreds of folks on the ground in places like Iowa. I’ve spoken to so many women. Abortion may be seen as a political strategy to some, but it is life or death for women and girls. I spoke in Mt Ayr, Iowa last year. The population is 1600. I was again summoned by the Ringgold County Democrats led by a woman. We met in a woman-owned bookstore. There was wine and food and desserts and they gave me one of my favorite t-shirts. It says “Hard Working Rural Democrat” and I wear it often.Over half of the folks who showed up to this Mt Ayr event were teachers. That’s very often the case in the spaces I travel to speak…they are quiet, but they always show up. You’d think with all of those teachers that the topic would be public schools and that is indeed where we started, but the Q and A session turned into a forum on abortion bans. Most of the women at the event were grandmothers — they worried that their daughters would need reproductive care and could die waiting for it under an abortion ban.
That is a fair worry. A worry that women have been dealing with since the creation of the United States. “ desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. ”Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams, 1776.
We have been fighting for equal rights under the law for hundreds of years.I have been in Council Bluffs. I have spoken in Iowa City. I traveled to Sioux City. I have been to Mount Pleasant. I have traveled the state for the past two years and I can tell you that while I am excited to see the data on Iowa, I have been telling you the stories for a while now. The rural stories — the organizing stories.The poll reinforces what we are seeing on the ground.The Selzer Poll shows that Trump still leads in rural spaces in Iowa, but here is what I know: he’s losing his grip on those folks. And the reason? Women voters. Rural women voters.The Republican ban on abortion was a step too far for most women…even for Independent and Republican voters. Especially with those rural voters who believe in limited government. Who believe that lawmakers don’t belong in doctor’s offices. Who believe in freedom.
I also have to take every poll with a grain of salt. We know that polls don’t win elections — voters will decide who takes the Presidency on Tuesday. But here is what I am telling you; the vibes have changed. I am in the rooms and you have a reason to be hopeful. You have reason to think Iowa may just go for Harris and wonder if it can happen there, where else may it happen?I know that the women are making it happen. Boys, look away while I tell a funny story. Recently, I was at an event with Fred Wellman…he doesn’t speak at small rural events as often as I do. He said of this particular event: “This is running so well. We are on time and there is a schedule of events and food too.”I told him. “You know why, right? Women organized the event.” He laughed and then realized how truthful I was. I then told him about the one event I have attended in the last two years that was organized by a man. I knew it as soon as I arrived because there was no water, no coffee, and no sweet treats.
True story.
Women are taking the lead in this election and it’s because we have everything to lose. Our lives are on the line. Our children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences of a Trump win.Women will organize events and knock doors and make calls and participate as election judges and create GOTV events and we will also feed you. We will give you information and warm your belly. Women are driving this election and it’s being done in a particularly feminine fashion.This is the year of the woman. The stars have aligned. I am optimistic but a little scared. Excited but pragmatic.If Iowa can go for Harris, any state can go for Harris. The women are working. The women are voting. We can do this.~JessP.S.
Thank you to all of the male allies. We couldn’t do this without you. Also, remember the snacks when you organize 🙂
Cindy Lou eats in Bomerano
The village was not a culinary paradise. However, this cafe was a pleasant place to be as the rain poured down outside. Pizzas and pasta were the staples, with pizzas served only at dinner. There was also a range of pastries. So, pasta it was. Oh, and meat balls.
A gelato in Napoli
Eating in Sorrento – la Villa
This cat joined us, but as she turned her nose up at the idea of a bread crumb, but leapt upon the prawn I did not think she was particularly hungry. I was, so ate most of my delicious prawns. The omelette (more suited to the breakfast hour at which we ate, was also deemed delicious).
A shocking ‘meal’ at the Archeological Museum in Napoli
The museum is worth a visit but avoid the cafe. How anyone can serve such a mess is beyond comprehension. The side of green beans was cold, over cooked beans. The pastas were lukewarm. The juices served in unopened bottles. Service was unpleasant.
Food in Napoli cafes observed as walking through the streets.
Lidia LoPinto and Winnie LoPinto I Was a Woman Pilot in 1945 Women Airforce Training Pilots November 2022, Independently Published.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
I was glad to have read this independently published book which shows only a few signs of not having been through a trade publishing process. It is fairly well written, although the writing could be livelier to make this a more engaging work. However, the book’s real impact is in the content, in particular the way in which this woman pilot, along with others, has a far different story from the ones I have previously read. I Was a Woman Pilot in 1945 is a worthy addition to the non-fiction books that have been written about this service, and the Marge Piercy novel, Gone to Soldiers, in which a fictional woman pilot endures some of the sexism that forms an important part of this account.
Sexism is not the only issue raised in the book, and indeed there are male heroes who also face challenges in relation to the service. Together their stories give a vastly different account of the way in which it operated. The economic advantages taken by some businesses connected to the women pilot’s training are a crucial point in the book. A point made well, without too much recrimination. Instead, the pilots whose careers were blighted, as portrayed by Lidia and Winnie LoPinto are remarkably resilient, move on with their lives and write movingly of their experiences.
I am pleased to have read I Was a Woman Pilot in 1945 Women Airforce Training Pilots as part of the information I have about the women ferry pilots.
Lidia LoPinto and Winnie LoPinto have made an important contribution to a familiar body of work.
Following articles: Amalfi Coast; American Politics – Bob McMullan; Meanwhile in America; Kamala Harris might have sealed the deal; Heather Cox Richardson; Iowa poll.
Amalfi Coast Trip Highlights
Pizza Demonstration
The hotel provided a dynamic pizza making session, where we ate some of the most well-known pizzas before, and the more elaborately flavoured after the demonstration.
Pasta demonstration
The pasta demonstration was accompanied by a feast of bread, cheese and jam with white wine while we watched. Much of the meal for that night was demonstrated – pasta, fish, tiramisu. The non-fish dish was artichokes which I understand were wonderful. I had the fish which was not nearly so nice as the clam and pipi pasta. The tiramisu was fantastic. One of the tour group assisted. The cream was a combination of whole eggs, egg whites, cream and mascarpone, with a dash of very strong coffee. It was great to see that the simple sponge fingers dipped in coffee were a feature of this elegant dish as well as the one I make. The soup was for another night – when we tasted it the necessity for cooking soup over a long period was made abundantly clear. It was delicious with a flavour that was mellow and developed with each mouthful.
American Politics
Bob McMullan
US election review at 29th October
It is definitely “white knuckle” time!
One week to go and the election is too close to call. There are definitely factors causing concern about the likely outcome as the possibility of a Trump victory looms on the horizon. There are also opportunities for Kamala Harris to win.
The main cause of concern is obviously the trend towards Trump in the polls. Some of the polling averages (e.g. 538 and Silver) have Trump winning Pennsylvania as well as the sunbelt states with the possible exception of Nevada. If this were the case Trump would win the Electoral College 281 /257.
If Trump wins Pennsylvania, Harris would need to win Nevada and one of Georgia or North Carolina to prevail in the Electoral College,
The narrowing of Harris’ lead in the national polls points to another area of risk for her. Should Trump overperform the published polls as he has in the last two presidential elections or if the Electoral College bias is as strongly in favour of Republicans as recent history would suggest then Kamala Harris would need more than her current 1-2% lead in the published national polls.
Conversely the most recent major poll, from the US ABC network gave Harris a 4% lead.
A fascinating part of the data from this poll is that it records Harris polling 56% amongst women. Combine this with the early polling statistics which suggest that women are turning out in larger numbers than men and you get the fascinating possibility that Trump’s great triumph of overturning Roe v Wade could be his downfall.
Furthermore, the Washington Post polling average, which is possibly the most rigorous in terms of focussing on the most credible polls, continues to show Harris leading in the same four states as previously, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada. If this is maintained, Harris would win 276/262.
Another variable in the US system which may help Vice President Harris is the “turn-out” factor. This tends to be determined by enthusiasm and organisation. Data suggests that the Democrats should do better in both these aspects, but it is far from certain.
Jen Psaki, the former Biden press secretary who is now an MSNBC commentator quoted some interesting statistics recently. She quoted polling which suggests that at this late stage Harris is doing better than Trump among those who have not yet decided or have only a loose attachment to their current choice. The New York Times Sienna poll showed 15%of voters as “not fully decided” with Ms Harris leading with that group 42/32. This suggests the late deciders may favour Harris.
Two other factors which may impact the outcome. First, recent history, particularly 2022, suggest Democrats are overperforming the polls rather than Republicans as has been the case in 2016 and 2020. The other is that analysis of the data suggests that the pro-Republican bias in the electoral college may be less this election. Harris only leads by 1-2% in the Washington Post average but would still win the college on their numbers. This may fit in with polling showing Trump narrowing the gap in New York, for example (although still losing the state).
There will still be unexpected events which may impact the outcome. Who knows what impact the Puerto Rico jokes at Trump’s New York rally will have on the 300,000 Puerto Ricans who live in Pennsylvania.
So, to sum up, it is a very difficult election to predict, but the biggest factor may be the gender gap in support if it continues to be reflected in turn-out data. We will know in a week.
Only Americans get to vote in next week’s presidential election, but whoever wins will have enormous power to influence the lives of tens of millions of foreigners. So it’s hardly surprising that tensions and emotions are rising across the globe as Tuesday looms.
Always discerning Meanwhile readers are also weighing in, and some are expressing concerns that if Vice President Kamala Harris loses, part of the blame will lay with the US media. Some readers believe that Harris, who is running a largely reality-based campaign and the twice-impeached former President Donald Trump — a notorious purveyor of untruths who tried to steal the 2020 election — are being unfairly held to the same standards over performance and policy nuts and bolts. While Harris works for a president whose 41% approval rating could doom her campaign, some readers worry she’s not being given a fair go – including in our coverage.
Christopher in Tasmania accused the American press of setting “an almost impossible task” for Harris by scrutinizing her talking points and platform while throwing up their hands at Trump’s idiosyncrasies. If Trump wins on November 5, he said, the question will be: “How did things go so badly wrong that the voters of the US elected a convicted felon, a four-times indicted criminal, a serial liar, a fascist … to the highest office in America, and arguably the most powerful position in the world?” “The answer is glaringly evident. Trump may be re-elected primarily because the national US media held Kamala Harris and the Democratic Campaigns to a completely different standard of scrutiny on issues of policy and character during the last six months,” Christopher concluded.
Reader Paulette also took aim at media coverage of Harris, arguing that the vice president could still benefit from the momentum that swept Joe Biden to the Oval Office in 2020, when the Biden-Harris ticket won a historic number of votes. (Trump’s vote count in that election made him the second-highest vote earner in US history after Biden – although a combined swing of only about 77, 000 votes in the key battleground states could have kept Trump in the Oval Office). “How dare you write that she is part of an unpopular administration. They were elected by huge numbers!” Paulette wrote.
And Maureen, an ex-pat living in Austria, argued that there’s too much focus on how Americans perceive the economy rather than its true performance. (For more on this, see CNN business editor David Goldman’s analysis of why the US economy feels cruddy for many despite strong jobs, GDP, consumer spending and paycheck metrics). Inflation is coming down “even if Bidenomics seems unpopular,” she said, pointing out that Harris has made promises to smooth the economic path forward for parents, minimum-wage workers, renters and other still-hurting groups.
In contrast, Maureen argued, Trump “can’t even complete a sentence.” As CNN has previously reported, he’s calling for dramatic economic overhaul including steep new tariffs, tax giveaways and mass deportations – measures that have repeatedly been questioned by economic experts. Tension and worry are palpable in the United States ahead of the final weekend before one of the most fateful elections in modern American history. We’ll be back to report what happens next week. Keep the views, reactions and critiques coming to meanwhile@cnn.com.
Kamala Harris May Have Sealed The Deal With One Of The Great Closing Arguments Ever
Kamala Harris didn’t just make a closing argument at The Ellipse. She may have sealed the deal.
Sarah Jones and Jason Easley , October 30, 2024
*The Daily is a reader supported newsletter that is committed to democracy and freedom. We are committed to truth, and if you would like to join us, please consider becoming a subscriber.
A Closing Argument For The Ages
The media often talks about candidates delivering their closing arguments, but if we are being honest, does anyone remember a closing speech from a candidate? Usually, presidential elections are so long that by the end all of the speeches melt together in the minds of voters.
The closing argument isn’t a real thing. Presidential candidates have always spent the final week making a mad dash to get out the vote in critical states. Speeches don’t normally stand out, but the 2024 election is not normal.
When President Joe Biden stepped aside and decided to finish out his term and not run again, Vice President Kamala Harris was placed into a mad dash of a campaign. Suddenly every moment and every speech came with intense pressure and scrutiny. Each time Kamala Harris has risen to the occasion and delivered.
With 75,000 or more people watching in Washington, D.C. VP Harris did it again.
*Three Important Quotes From Kamala Harris’s Speech
1). “Look, we all know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election that he knew he lost. Americans died as a result of that attack. 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And while Donald Trump sat in the White House watching, as the violence unfolded on television, he was told by staff that the mob wanted to kill his own vice president. Donald Trump responded with two words: “So what?” That’s who Donald Trump is.”
2). “I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote. And here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress. I pledge to listen: To experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table. I pledge to approach my work with the joy and optimism that comes from making a difference in people’s lives. And I pledge to be a President for all Americans. To always put country above party and above self.
* I am not a paid subscriber so have only two of the arguments – these should be good enough!
Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday, in Time magazine, Eric Cortellessa explained that the electoral strategy of the Trump campaign was to get men who don’t usually vote, particularly young ones, to turn out for Trump. If they could do that, and at the same time hold steady the support of white women, Trump could win the election. So Trump has focused on podcasts followed by young men and on imitating the patterns of professional wrestling performances.
At the same time, he has promised to “protect women…whether the women like it or not,” and lied consistently about crime statistics to keep white suburban women on his side by suggesting that he alone can protect them. Today in Gastonia, North Carolina, for example, Trump told the audience: “They say the suburban women. Well, the suburbs are under attack right now. When you’re home in your house alone and you have this monster that got out of prison and he’s got, you know, six charges of murdering six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump.”
The crime rate has dropped dramatically in the past year.
Rather than keeping women in his camp, Trump’s strategy of reaching out to his base to turn out low-propensity voters, especially young men, has alienated them. That alienation has come on top of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion.
Early voting in Pennsylvania showed that women sent in 56% of the early ballots, compared to 43% for men. Seniors—people who remember a time before Roe v. Wade—also showed a significant split. Although the parties had similar numbers of registrants, nearly 59% of those over 65 voting early were Democrats. That pattern holds across all the battleground states: women’s early voting outpaces men’s by about 10 points. While those numbers are certainly not definitive—no one knows how these people voted, and much could change over the next few days—the enthusiasm of those two groups was notable.
This evening, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll conducted by the highly respected Selzer & Co. polling firm from October 28 to 31 showed Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa 47% to 44% among likely voters. That outlying polling result is undoubtedly at least in part a reflection of the fact that Harris’s running mate is the governor of a neighboring state, but that’s not the whole story. While Trump wins the votes of men in Iowa by 52% to 38%, and of evangelicals by 73% to 20%, women, particularly older women, are driving the shift to favor Harris in a previously Republican-dominated state.
Independent women back Harris by a 28-point margin, while senior women support her by a margin of more than 2 to 1, 63% to 28%. Overall, women back Harris by a margin of about 20 points: 56% to 36%. Seniors as a group including men as well as women are also strongly in Harris’s camp, by 55% to 36%.
A 79-year-old poll respondent said: “I like her policies on reproductive health and having women choosing their own health care, and the fact that I think that she will save our democracy and follow the rule of law…. [I]f the Republicans can decide what you do with your body, what else are they going to do to limit your choice, for women?”
The obvious driver for women and seniors to oppose Trump is the Dobbs decision. The loss of abortion care has put women’s lives at risk. Within days after the Supreme Court handed the decision down, we started hearing stories of raped children forced to give birth or cross state lines for abortions, as well as of women who have suffered or died from a lack of health care after doctors feared intervening in miscarriages would put them in legal jeopardy.
As X user E. Rosalie noted, Iowa’s abortion ban also has long-term implications for the state. It has forced OBGYNs to leave and has made recruiting more impossible. As people are unable to get medical care to have babies, they will choose to live elsewhere, draining talent out of the state. That, in turn, will weaken Iowa’s economy.
That same process is playing out in all the states that have banned abortion.
It seems possible that the Dobbs decision ushered in the end of the toxic American individualism on which the Reagan revolution was built. When he ran for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan set out to dismantle the active government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. Such a government was akin to socialism, he claimed, and he insisted it stifled American individualism.
In contrast to such a government, Reagan celebrated the mythological American cowboy. In his telling, that cowboy wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to provide for and to protect his family. Good women in the cowboy myth were wives and mothers, in contrast to the women who wanted equal rights and jobs outside the home in modern America. That traditional image of American women had gotten legs in 1974, when the television show Little House on the Prairie debuted; it would run until 1983. Prairie dresses became the rage.
Reagan’s embrace of women’s role as wives and mothers brought traditionalist white Southern Baptists to his support. Those traditionalists objected to the government’s recognition of women’s equal rights because they believed equality undermined a godly patriarchal family structure. They made ending access to abortion their main issue.
At the same time that the right wing insisted that women belonged in their homes, it socialized young men to believe in a mythological world based on guns and the domination of women. In 1980 the previously nonpartisan National Rifle Association endorsed Reagan, their first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate, and the rise of evangelical culture reinforced that dominant men must protect submissive women.
When federal marshals tried to arrest Randy Weaver at his home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992 for failure to show up in court for trial on a firearms charge, right-wing activists and neo-Nazis from a nearby Aryan Nations compound rushed to Ruby Ridge to protest what right-wing media insisted was simply a man protecting his family.
The next February, when officers stormed the compound of a religious cult in Waco, Texas, whose former members reported that their leader was sexually assaulting children and stockpiling weapons, right-wing talk show hosts—notably Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones—blamed new president Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, for the ensuing gun battle and fire that killed 76 people. Reno was the first female attorney general, and right-wing media made much of the idea that a group of Christians had been killed by a female government official who was unmarried and—as opponents made much of—unfeminine.
When he ran for office in 2015, Trump appealed to those men socialized into violence and dominance. He embraced the performance of dominance as it is done in professional wrestling, and urged his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies. The Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted of sexual assault did not hurt his popularity with his base. He promised to end abortion rights and suggested he would impose criminal punishments on women seeking abortions.
And then, in June 2022, thanks to the votes of the three religious extremists Trump put on it, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, stripping women of a constitutional right that the U.S. government had recognized for almost 50 years.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested that women could change state laws if they saw fit, writing in the decision that “women are not without electoral or political power.” Indeed, since the Dobbs decision, every time abortion rights have been on the ballot, voters have approved them, although right-wing state legislators have worked to prevent the voters’ wishes from taking effect.
In this moment, though, it is clear that women have electoral and political power over more than abortion rights.
The 1980 election was the first one in which the proportion of eligible female voters who turned out to vote was higher than the proportion of eligible men. It was also the first one in which there was a partisan gender gap, with a higher proportion of women than men favoring the Democrats. That partisan gap now is the highest it has ever been.
The fear that women can, if they choose, overthrow the patriarchal mythology of cowboy individualism that shaped the modern MAGA Republican Party is likely behind the calls of certain right-wing influencers and evangelical leaders to stop women from voting. For sure, it is behind the right-wing freak-out over the video voiced by actor Julia Roberts that reassures women that they do not have to tell their husbands how they voted.
The right-wing version of the American cowboy was always a myth. Nothing mattered more for success in the American West than the kinship networks and community support that provided money, labor, and access to trade outlets. When the economic patterns of the American West replicated those of the industrializing East after the Civil War, success during the heyday of the cowboy depended on access to lots of capital, giving rise to western barons and then to popular political movements to regulate businesses and give more power to the people. Far from being the homebound wives of myth, women were central to western life, just as they have always been to American society.
In Flagstaff, Arizona, today, Democratic presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz told a crowd: “I kind of have a feeling that women all across this country, from every walk of life, from either party, are going to send a loud and clear message to Donald Trump next Tuesday, November 5, whether he likes it or not.”
Joel Brokaw – Foreword by David Geffen Driving Marilyn Life and Times of Legendary Hollywood Agent Norman Brokaw Globe Pequot|Lyons Press, October 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Joel Brokaw has woven an absorbing story of his father’s professional and domestic life. While at times giving way to concerns verging on criticism about his father’s domestic conduct Joel Brokaw’s approach is overall generous and understanding, ensuring that the book is fair to the impressive professional whose life as a successful agent to high profile figures becomes a story of a man of substance and big-heartedness towards his clients. This is an engaging and warm story at the same time as one that provides an extraordinary insight into the world of celebrities and their agent.
Norman Brokaw’s story of three marriages, six children, desire to maintain financial control over his family, seeming lack of interest in their day to day lives, and eventual decline into dementia is one thread in this book. As a thread, woven throughout Brokaw’s professional life, it is a gentle reminder that people are not one dimensional rather than making an insistent comparison with the concern that he showed towards his clients. Joel Brokaw’s approach is such a joy, he is honest about his feelings, recognises his father’s virtues, and ensures that his reputation remains intact. In particular, the section about Bill Cosby, for whom Brokaw Senior was agent, is sensitive to the judgments about Cosby, recognises that some people believe that his agent must have known about him, but argues convincingly that this is not necessarily so.
Norman Brokaw’s beginning in the mail room of the William Morris Agency provides an example of the detail and thoughtfulness that goes into this book. Rather than leave it as a hackneyed ‘rags to riches’ event, Brokaw provides background to the way in which the mail room worked to enable senior staff to assess the young people who worked in this capacity. The advent of television, actors’ move from large screen to small screen and vice versa and the expanding role of an agent from collaborating with actors to working with political figures is another thread in the book. In the case of Norman Brokaw, attention is drawn to the ways in which an agent could expand their role to be a much-loved mentor. The latter supported by numerous of Brokaw’s clients, and in David Geffen’s introduction where he is described as a person who nurtured relationships, expecting nothing in return.
Famous figures appear on almost every page, part of the story rather than contrived appearances to demonstrate the author and his father’s own importance. Joel Brokaw ensures that each figure is relevant to the ideas he is voicing about the work of an agent, the circumstances in film, television, and political life. This is part of the charm of this book. It is a story of a sphere in which Brokaw’s father was a major figure but while it is his story, it is also a story of that world.
The acknowledgements are informative, there is an index and endnotes. Together with the accessible writing and the spirit behind the work, Driving Marilyn The Life and Times of Legendary Hollywood Agent Norman Brokaw is an engaging and professionally researched tribute.
After review: comments on the Amalfi Coast trip; meals at the hotel; Bob McMullan and American politics.
Amalfi Coast Trip
This was my second group trip and, in contrast with the first, marvellous. The group was lively, sometimes too loud, opinionated, and of course there was the person who always looked as though they would be late but managed to scramble aboard the coach at the last minute. The first people we met were Democrats who had voted before leaving America. It couldn’t have been much better for us than that. We also met some delightful British Labour supporters and members. One couple, like us, had decided on this particular tour group because it was advertised in The Guardian. This worked to a certain extent, although some of the group would certainly not be Guardian readers! Nevertheless, everyone socialised amicably and were incredibly friendly and ready to enjoy every moment. So, a perfect experience.
The company had several groups at the hotel, and our cultural group looked on in awe as the hiking groups left early in the morning with walking equipment and hearty sounds. Our group was given the opportunity to do the Walk of the Gods, which I declined. There was plenty of walking every day, after our trip down the mountain, an experience in itself.
Hotel Due Torre meals
The accommodation was 3* in a family run hotel. The chefs gave two demonstrations, one making the pasta dishes and tiramisu we were to eat for that night’s dinner, and the other making pizzas. On the latter occasion we had already eaten too much of the two choices of vegetarian pizzas so that when the five more that we had observed being made from start to finish arrived at the table attempts to eat more were sadly poor. However, the demonstrations were great fun, including seeing that the tiramisu cream included eggs, cream, mascarpone and icing sugar with a good lacing of strong coffee. A bit different from my plain whipped cream with coffee.
The meals demonstrated that Italian cooking is more than pizza and pasta, although they featured. Breakfast was the usual continental as well as some cooked items, and lovely crusty Italian bread .
Meals associated with the cooking demonstrations were pizza one night, and pasta on another. As well as the demonstration items, there were fish and artichokes on one night, giant olives, bread and balsamic with oil, and dessert. More of the tiramisu next week, as it was part of the demonstration and looks better before it is served.
Dinner, Wednesday night – broccoli orecchiette, pork and potatoes in a mustard sauce, caprese salad, pumpkin risotto and panna cotta.
Lunch on Wednesday was a different sort of treat – hard bread and accompaniments. The bread was lowered into water, drained on the top of the water receptacle, and then eaten with pork sausages; tuna stuffed pentimentos, salad of lettuce, fennel and tomatoes; chickpeas; several varieties of cheese; and spinach.
Dinner Tuesday was soup (we had seen it cooking during one demonstration, and the flavour was probably the outcome of long slow cooking); chicken – very home cooked in appearance; salad; eggplant dish; and icecream.
Thursday was a free day, and much appreciated. We, as did many of the group, chose to go to Sorrento for the day. We were unaccompanied so wove our way around the city, purchasing bags, limoncello and gelato and eating in small groups. That night people chose to eat in the village, or have the barbeque, featuring meat or fish as desired. The items were brought out singly in many cases, so make for rather strange photos. Large salads with fennel, lettuce and rocket (arugula) were served, along with the delicious chips that were a real find – no talk of crisp outside and fluffy inside – just crisp, crisp, crisp! I seem to have concentrated on my fish below. However, the meat eaters also did well, with chicken, turkey, beef and sausages. Limoncello was served…and dessert.
Friday dinner ended with birthday cake for one of the group. The meal was aubergine parmigiana, a fennel lasagna with loads of creamy bechamel sauce, tomato and basil ravioli or fish in paper, and loads of fresh crisp lettuce (not a limp lettuce leaf anywhere on any of the salads – what a boon).
American Politics
Bob McMullan – US election review at 22nd October
Harry Enten, the CNN political analyst summed up my thinking in a report today: “…two weeks to election day, I feel more uncertain about this year’s election result than any election I have covered professionally.”
The most recent commentator on Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a very good political analysis site from the University of Virginia said the same thing in a more colourful way: “Has any body seen our crystal ball, it seems to have gone missing.”
It is not only that the polling in virtually all the battleground states is extremely close and, in most cases, getting closer. There are also significant shifts in voter support in both directions amongst some key voting groups. For example, white women are moving towards Harris while black men are moving towards Trump.
Furthermore, in such a close election, the direction of polling error and its magnitude will be decisive and is entirely unpredictable. And history provides no clear indication of the likely direction of error. It is true that in 2016 and 2020 Trump outperformed the polls. However, in 2022 the Democrats proved the forecasts of a red wave to be totally wrong and on at least one occasion Obama outperformed polling expectations.
State voting averages have always missed the mark. This is also often true about individual electorate polling in Australia. Over the last 50 years the American battleground states averages have been out by approximately 3% and sometimes by much more.
If the averages are out by 3% in either direction the result will be a comfortable victory for the beneficiary, whoever that may be.
What polling can tell is whether the election is likely to be close, and whether anyone is gaining ground in a marked way.
Even these basics are not clear this time. Most analyses show Trump gaining by small increments. For example, Nate Silver reported Harris still ahead in the usual four states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada but showed Trump gaining in all pf the battleground states except Nevada. However, the Washington Post most recent survey showed Harris gaining in Nevada and North Carolina and Trump only gaining ground in Michigan and Georgia.
One other wild card factor in such a close election is the role of the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. Media reports suggest that friends and family have been encouraging her to pull out for fear of helping Donald Trump, as she did in 2016. However, she has refused to do so. It would be a cruel irony if the perfect was the enemy of the good on this occasion when the consequences are so important.
So, on balance on the polling front there is no clear evidence of significant movement over the week. It is probable that such movement as there has been was slightly in favour of Donald Trump. So far it has not been enough to shift the numbers in the four states in which Harris leads which if maintained would see her win 276 electoral college votes to 262 for Trump. But they are all perilously close.
On the early voting front, Target Smart, which is obviously Democrat aligned, has Democrats leading 51/41 in the battleground states although some other analysts see a small improvement in the relative early voting data for the Republicans as the negative impact of Trump’s attacks on early voting wears off. There is certainly a surge of early voting in some states, notably Georgia, which is probably beneficial to the Democrats at the margin, and margins are likely to count at this election.
On balance, it is still a very close election with the national vote still clearly going to Harris but the Electoral College potentially favouring Trump if the present trends continue. If it was today, I think Harris would win, but two weeks is a long time in a close election.
Anton Rippon, Nicola Rippon Wartime Entertainment How Britain Kept Smiling Through the Second World War Pen & Sword|Pen & Sword History, September 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Wartime Entertainment How Britain Kept Smiling Through the Second World War is so much more than a nostalgic trip amongst the entertainers of the time, the familiar films, and the impact of food rationing. All these topics are covered, and include material that is not well known, but where this book shines is in the information about less well-known aspects of Second World War entertainment. The material is enhanced with the occasional comment from the authors – tart, humorous or poignant and anecdotal evidence from conversations recorded at the time or recalled by those were war time adults and children. This, together with the immense amount of research that must have gone into Anton Rippon’s and Nicola Rippon’s book, makes it a tome of testimony to the range of entertainment, ideas, government responses and community acceptance, together with the thrill of finding new aspects of entertainment on offer at the time. Written in the familiar Pen & Sword style of accessible and lively language, this work stands out as one to devour. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Further articles: Canterbury trip, Trafalgar Square, Portrait Gallery, American politics – Bob McMullan, Tom Moore – Australian Artist, Tortworth Manor visit, Napoli Airport, Bus rides between Bomerano, Agerola in the Campania region, and Amalfi, Bomerano coffee and accommodation.
Short trip to Canterbury
The last time I was in Canterbury I was at a Women’s History Network Conference (pre-Covid) held at the university of Kent. That was an excellent event, but visiting just to see the town made a day trip from London by train. It was raining on and off, so it was a walk through the town to the cathedral, a snack and return to London.
Trafalgar Square
Some pigeons have reappeared after many years’ absence.
Portrait Gallery
A day trip to the portrait gallery is always a pleasure. However, on this occasion I saw very little as I went with a friend and we spent most of our time talking, including a trip from Trafalgar Square to Paddington on the 23 bus. This bus route used to be an excellent tourist route from Paddington to Liverpool Street, but the shorter trip was fine this time.
Recently I went to see the Tudor exhibition at the gallery, but this time we saw self-portraits and some women artists’ work.
American Politics
Bob McMullan
US election review at 14th October
Three weeks to go and the race appears to be tightening.
The usual Democrat anxiety at every worrying trend is starting to emerge.
I am not convinced that the level of apparent concern is justified by the objective data, but all the signs suggest it is likely to be a very close election.
The major polling averages are all suggesting some narrowing of Harris’ margin in the critical states in which she has been leading in recent weeks, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. However, she remains ahead in all four which would give the Harris/Walz ticket a 276/262 win in the electoral college.
So, on the one hand Harris continues to lead in sufficient states to win and is competitive in North Carolina and possibly Georgia and Arizona. On the other hand her lead in these states has apparently been falling slightly for the last two weeks at a rate that would put one or all of them at risk if it is maintained for the next three weeks.
There is no political law of gravity which means that a political trend will remain in motion. But if you want to change a trend it is wise to take action to change the political dynamics. It appears Kamala Harris has got this message and has been undertaking a “blizzard” of face to face interviews.
It was also a smart move to release her doctor’s report on her health because it has put new emphasis on Trump’s age and physical and mental health.
A balancing item against the tightening of the polls can be found in analysis of early voting trends.
In the USA most voters register for one major party or the other, principally to participate in candidate selection primaries. This when taken together with early voting lists enables an approximation of early voting trends.
The Democrats have led in this category for years, helped by Trump’s rhetoric against early voting. The interest is in the margin of advantage the Democrats are enjoying.
The early data from the battleground states is encouraging. The analysis by Target Smart suggests that Harris has a 58/29 lead in early voting compares to 50/35 at a similar stage in 2020. I don’t have any experience to draw on in assessing the importance of this data but serious and experienced US analysts place weight on its utility and claim to have used it in correctly rebutting the prevailing forecast of a red wave in 2022.
One clear strength of this Target Smart work is that it is based on real people voting rather than polling results which are based on declared intention to vote.
Whatever the truth about the current situation it seems clear that the result will be close in all the battleground states and therefore in the Electoral College.
Australian interlude: Tom Moore – Australian Artist
Tom Moore exhibited his work at CMAG in Canberra, and I was thrilled to see them. This article adds to the information about his work.
Acclaimed artist Tom Moore uses ancient glassblowing technique to create prize-winning Dandy Lion *
When Tom Moore first watched a team of glass blowers at work, he says “it felt like they were juggling fire … it blew my mind”.
Decades on, the now-acclaimed Australian artist contorts this molten material himself, with a familiarity and control that is hard to fathom.
“When you see hot glass fresh out of the furnace. It is very beautiful, and it is just so full of potential. There’s so many things you could do with it,” says Moore.
“Most of the time, because it’s expensive to get this hot, you really have to know what you’re going to do with it. You can’t really mess around with it. You just work.”
Moore uses an oxy propane torch to smooth a surface during the final stages of making. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
Guided by Moore, his team of four work together at Adelaide’s Jam Factory, executing their precise roles to build his latest work — which he describes as a “bird on bird on bird situation”.
A pig-tailed assistant uses a metal rod to thrust open the glowing furnace, which is burning at around 1,150 degrees Celsius.
“That thing is a dragon,” says Moore. “Just going up to a furnace and opening the door is intimidating.”
“We singe the hair on [our] head all the time.”
Glass blowers are highly trained at working in teams. They can anticipate next steps in the process when working with open flames and hot objects. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
Over a three-hour period, the glass is rotated inside the furnace, momentarily removed for a bout of shaping, stretching or fusing of elements, and then returned to the flames — again and again.
“Weirdly, glass is a very bad conductor of heat, so it takes a long time to get it hot. And once it’s hot, it stays hot, and once it gets cold, it takes a long time to get it hot again,” says Moore.
“You’ve got to stand up and sit down and put it back in the fire all the time, constantly. That’s one reason why we need to work in teams.”
Moore’s had more hands-on experience with the material than most. He led the making of all sorts of glass objects — like trophies, light shades, bottles and bowls, and movie props — as the Jam Factory Glass Studio production manager between 1999 and 2015.
“I really do feel connected to the history of glass blowing, and that is because I’ve spent thousands of hours working as part of teams making objects, which are the same objects that have been made now for thousands of years,” says Moore.
“Right at the end of making [an artwork], they can just fall off the stick, fall off the rod, and you know, smash” says Moore. Pictured with glass assistant Gautriya Murathietharan. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
His own highly distinct, skilful glass creations have been featured in exhibitions at most of Australia’s major state galleries, along with a national tour of his solo exhibition Abundant Wonder from 2020-2023.
And this year, he took out the 2024 FUSE Glass Prize, Australia’s richest prize for glass art, which goes on display at the Australian Design Centre in Sydney this October.
Moore’s funny glass things
Most glass objects in our modern lives are functional, but Moore’s acclaimed, idiosyncratic creations are “intentionally impractical, ludicrously delicate and not dishwasher safe”.
Moore is known for his imaginative, humorous characters. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
The short version: “I make funny animals.
“But if I have more time to explain it, then I will talk about the desire to combine plants, animals, people and machines, and the history of that kind of imagery, which is more or less universal — this imaginative combination of different things.
“I understand they don’t actually come to life and wander around … but it feels a bit sad to just call them objects.”
Moore’s glass creations are layered in meaning. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
His art often features stacks of imagery, inspired by pictures like the Bremen Town Musicians – depicting a rooster atop a cat on a dog standing on a donkey, from the 1800s Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
“Another thing I love is the Cat in the Hat, where he’s balancing all the precarious things, the fish bowl and all these things stacked on each other, and it defies gravity, and I find that very, very exciting and satisfying.”
Moore’s mother was a children’s librarian, exposing him to a lot of illustration as a child and fuelling his imagination. Pictured: Night Gardener Bottle, 2021. (Photo: Grant Hancock )*
The “stickiness” of glass allows Moore to combine different animal characters and objects in his own work.
“Glass is glue, and so I can just fuse it together with itself,” Moore says. “I can make these constructions of all these pre-made parts, and then I have to basically balance it — it’s a kind of magical material for replicating that vision that apparently defies gravity.”
Before art school, Moore had always imagined he’d realise his creative visions in clay.
But that fateful moment when he saw the trio of glass artists “juggling fire” together, at an open day at Canberra School of Art in the early 90s, changed his course.
And it wasn’t just the dangerous, alluring skill that stuck, but the specific and mesmerising glass-blowing technique they were using, dating back thousands of years.
In his backyard studio, Moore cuts pieces of decorative cane to size. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)*
Venetian style of glass-making
Observing Moore’s art up close, you’ll see intricate, thin lines stretching through all the forms.
This skilful, detailed approach uses decorative glass techniques first invented by the Ancient Romans, then perfected in Venice in the 1200s.
Dancey Merganser, 2023. (Photo: Grant Hancock )
Moore describes the technique as an “international standard for glassblowers”. But it was at risk of being forgotten in the 20th century as traditional glass factories began to close in Venice.
In an “unprecedented” move, some Venetian maestro glassblowers shared the secrets of this ancient craft with members of the international glass community.
“They are very clever tricks that I feel lucky to have the opportunity to practise,” says Moore.
Venetian glassblowing centres on the use of finely patterned twisted glass rods, often just referred to as “canes”.
“I spend probably as much time making the rods as I do making the objects.”
To create them, coloured glass is embedded in molten clear glass. This is then expertly stretched out across the workshop until it is thin and metres long.
“They look like they must be made by a machine, but actually it’s a technique which can be learned by a person. And I still find it amazing that I can make these rods.”
“They seem too perfect for me to be able to have made,” says Moore, describing the canes. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
To make a sculpture, Moore chops the rods to the requisite length, and wraps them around a blowpipe to essentially “blow” a glass bubble imbued with the patterning.
“Or I can wrap them around a blob of glass to make a solid [object].”
He also uses sections of cane to make creature-like details, like eyes, wings, boots or hands.
“I work out the drawing, do all the planning, make all the parts, and it’s almost like a paint-by-numbers set after that. Like Meccano or Lego, it’s like a kit, which I take back to the furnace, heat everything up, then I make the body and stick it all on there.”
All Moore’s works are highly planned. He explores different character compositions before assembling them together in the glass workshop. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
Dandy Lion and friends — the prize-winning work
Moore spent more than 100 hours over two months creating his 2024 FUSE Glass Prize-winning work.
His series of five “mischievous ornaments” is titled Dandy Lion among the Antipodes.
Among the elaborate glass characters is an “intricately patterned, slightly surprised, somewhat charming” yellow lion called Dandy Lion.
“People have said to me they think that’s the best thing I ever made,” Moore says. “There’s a really nice symmetry and asymmetry and the decorative cane techniques are pretty sweet.”
Dandy Lion, 2023. Moore was very happy with this “yellow lion thing”, describing it as “just really sort of magnificent”. (Supplied: Tom Moore)
Moore consciously refers to the history of glassblowing in his designs, honouring the long legacy of making animal forms from glass.
“I think [an artwork] should be surprising, but it also should be having a conversation with the history of the material as well. So I think it needs to be new and old at the same time.”
And he likes to make his sculptures look “spontaneous”.
Since glass objects can often be very precise and exact, Moore thrives on adding unexpected wobbly lines and asymmetry to his artworks.
“I think it’s quite an unusual thing to see glass which isn’t perfect because most glass that people come across is machine-made or made in a factory in a mould.
“So making things a bit wonky is really very satisfying.”
Moore compares a sketch with the final object, at home in his studio. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
An environmental message
Moore isn’t afraid to call his creations “cute”, and wants to inspire joy in people who look at them.
“They are a celebration of life in some of its many wondrous forms.”
But spend a while with his art and you will also spot artifice — a wide-eyed face has a bonfire on its head, a car is wrecked with trees growing out of it, and birds lie on their backs.
Massive Hooligans, 2007. (Photo: Grant Hancock )
“The works inhabit a fantasy realm [but] there is trouble in that paradise too.”
“There are some of these objects which are really not very cute and which are more responding to my discomfort at the state of the world, and which are more overtly addressing that nature is being severely impacted by human activity.”
Moore doesn’t want his work to just speak to the history of glass but also the implications of its future, acknowledging that his beloved glass is also a really energy-intensive medium.
The high heat furnaces run at makes it more energy-efficient to leave them on 24 hours a day than turn them off — hence groups of glass-blowers work together in shared facilities.
Much of Moore’s work is imbued with environmental messages. Here a koala is severed in half, and becomes whole when looked at in reflection. (ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss)
“I have thought seriously about not blowing glass anymore because I am complicit in a very big problem, but I’ve been doing it for so long that I think I’m actually able to communicate my discomfort effectively [in the artwork] and maybe make something which is meaningful at this moment and that responds to my kind of dread.
“My intention in making them is to be upfront about my conflicted position as somebody who is enamoured by nature, but who is using a very resource-intensive process to communicate that.”
*This article is clearly marked as being for sharing. However, some of the graphics have not been treated in that way. Please go to the original to see these, and any that are missing once this blog is published.
The 2024 FUSE Glass Prize is at the Australian Design Centre, Sydney from October 3 — November 13 2024.
Tortworth Manor
This two-night stay was one of my finds on Secret Escapes. It has proved to be everything that was advertised: a Tudor inspired mansion with gracious and extensive grounds, a comfortable large room and, although mixed, some good food and service It was interesting to find that one of the previous owners was Australian. The manor has been refurbished but retains many of the original features. The exterior of the building is magnificent, and the interiors (below, the dining room and library) very grand.
The grounds are beautiful, and we went on several walks, some of which were sunny.
Some Tortworth quirky items – dog paw wash, wellie dry, an absent cat given a reference by a dog…
Tortworth meals
Meals were served in the atrium and the dining room. The breakfast was part of the package and was a generous display of continental and cooked items. The atrium meals were served by experienced staff, were delicious, and most available throughout the day and evening. Splendid sandwiches were a lunch time special.
The dinner included a reduction in price as part of the package. The staff in the dining room were young and enthusiastic but needed more training. Nevertheless, the deconstructed goats cheese pie with salad and ‘posh’ prawn cocktail, were pleasant entrees, and the chicken and duck dishes were generous. The bread variety was excellent. We had a pleasant evening. However, the prawns served in the atrium were my favourite!
Napoli Airport
Our Italian trip began at Napoli Airport, where we waited to join the tour group. Unfortunately, the sunny seating at one cafe lured us to eat there. We have found plenty of sun since, but not such awful food. The mozzarella sandwich was passible, but the stuffed courgette flowers, aubergine and cheese balls was a bad choice – not a courgette flower to be seen, and the aubergine slices were miniscule and heavily battered. Go inside or wait to eat!
Bus rides between Bomerano, Agerola in the Campania region, and Amalfi
First coffee in Bomerano
Accommodation Bomerano
This is a three-star hotel at the mountain peak. We have a generously sized room, with a balcony, and in village style I am using it to dry some clothes. Roosters wake us in the morning, there is a resident dog, and the food is generous and good. The cooking exhibitions – pasta and tiramisu and on another night, pizza have been interesting and delicious eating after the event.
Jane Loeb Rubin Threadbare, A Gilded City Series, Level Best Books Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Members’ Titles, May 2024.
Thank you, Net Galley , for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Jane Loeb Rubin has taken the incomplete information she has about her great-grandmother and, together with meticulous and sensitive research, has written a captivating story with a heroine who earns affection and admiration. Tillie Isaacson’s story is told in four parts: October 1879 to August 1882; October 1882 to February 1883; January 1890 to August 1890; September 1890 to February 1892. Over this period she accompanies her mother to hospital, Bellevue, rather than Mount Sinai, the latter being for those who could afford it; grows to maturity and marries; accomplishes a creative and productive business; cares for a family while conducting her business; succeeds through the depression as well as thwarting unprincipled business associates; survives ill health; and sees her younger sister into the beginnings of a profession. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Further material: Bob McMullan, American politics; Agatha Christie, Mousetrap story; The Duchess of Malfi; Cindy Lou eats in London.
Bob McMullan – American Politics
US election review at 6th October
The election is now less than a month away. Elections often begin to take shape at about this stage. At the moment no such shape or pattern is clearly evident.
However, unless you believe that Donald Trump will again overperform the polls it is fair to say that you would rather be in Kamala Harris’ position than Trump’s.
Will Trump overperform the polling trends? This, of course, is ultimately unknowable until after the event. However, there are some indicators. First and foremost, the history of the 2016 and 2020 elections illustrate that such an outcome is possible. In 2016 Trump took everyone, including himself by surprise by winning states such as Wisconsin which prior polling had suggested was extremely unlikely.
A similar trend was evident in 2020. Although Biden still won his margin in the key industrial states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was less than predicted.
Most analysts argue that in 2016 the pollsters underrepresented white males without a college degree, in their samples. This was not seen as important before the event because the divergence in vote patterns based on educational qualifications had not previously been a major factor.
In 2020 attempts were made to remedy this effect but it seems they were only partially effective.
Elections between 2020 and now paint a different picture. If anything, Republicans have underperformed against expectations. The much predicted Republican wave in the mid-term congressional elections never appeared. It is also interesting that on several occasions, such as the Kansas abortion referendum, it is the progressive side of politics which has overperformed when compared to the forecasts.
Some on the Democratic side of politics allege that pro-Republican polling is “flooding the zone” with polls of dubious quality in an attempt to influence the narrative about the election in key states.
There is some evidence for this, but I regard it as a dangerous theory. It is never wise to only believe the polls which say what you want.
On this basis I come back to the view that no decisive pattern in the likely electoral college outcome has yet emerged. Although there is little doubt that Kamala Harris will win the national vote there is no prize for this. Nate Silver and most of the others attempting to assess the probabilities of success in the electoral college have Harris ahead with 55-58% probability of winning the electoral college. This is much too close for comfort.
There has been considerable speculation about the likely impact of the vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz on the election outcome. I think there will be little or no effect as the debate was seen as a virtual draw and opinions are too firmly established to be changed much by a debate between two men who are not the leaders of their respective tickets.
The best overall description of the current situation was a CNN summary which said in spite of wars, hurricanes and shipping strikes the electoral situation seems impervious.
However, one possibly worrying early trend is a slight improvement in support for Trump in a number of the battleground states. So far, it has not been sufficient to change the status of the four in which Harris is leading, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which would be enough for a 276-262 victory in the electoral college). If it should be sustained rather than a one-off that would be a concern. Only time will tell.
A follow up story to my having at long last seen The Mousetrap in London recently (story in post, ).
Boy whose Mousetrap show at school led to legal threat joins West End cast
Alasdair Buchan, who directed his version aged 11 in 1997, will play mysterious stranger in long-running whodunnit
As the curtain falls on every performance of The Mousetrap, the world’s longest-running play, applauding audience members are famously urged not to go on to reveal the secret solution to the murder mystery.
This autumn, however, a fresh element of intrigue has been added to the plot of Agatha Christie’s enduring hit, which first opened in 1952 at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal.
The new twist was seeded back in 1997, when an eager 11-year-old schoolboy decided to stage his own production in his school hall in Windsor. And only now is the final act being played out.
“I’d suddenly got into reading Agatha Christie and I was already obsessed with the theatre, so I bought a collection of her plays and copied pages of the script,” said Alasdair Buchan, now 37. “I really wanted to do it, but I don’t think my teachers at the small choir school that’s attached to the castle’s St George’s Chapel were hugely keen.”
The show went on regardless, for one night only, with a cast of 11-year-old boys, including Buchan, who also directed.
Buchan and the cast also travelled up to the capital to watch the real professional production a few days before their own performance. After the London show, they met the stars at the stage door. Each boy got an autograph and they promised to send them the programme they had made.
History does not record how the school play went down in Windsor, but a few weeks later the headteacher received an unexpected and stern “cease and desist” letter from the lawyers of the London producers. It threatened future action over the pupils’ recent staging.
Alasdair Buchan, far left, and friends perform The Mousetrap in 1997.
“I was called in to see the headmaster and was terribly worried,” said Buchan.
“Back then my school managed to smooth things over and, thankfully, I was not blacklisted by the producers.”
In fact, Buchan will now join the West End cast of The Mousetrap at St Martin’s Theatre in the role of Mr Paravicini, the mysterious foreign stranger.
Buchan will take to the stage for nine shows a week over six months. “Funnily enough, when I read the script through before the audition, I remembered the lines I’d once had. Also, because I’d directed it, whole passages of dialogue came back and I was amazed how much of the structure I still knew.”
In Buchan’s school production, the eight boys played all the characters. “It was a co-ed school, but we boarders were boys. So my brother played the character of Miss Casewell.”
Alasdair Buchan with his copy of The Mousetrap, at his home in London. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
The schoolboys had been accompanied up to see the West End show by Buchan’s mother. “My own experience of stage doors now is that there’s usually no one there, unless you have a particular celebrity in the cast. It was manic, for example, when I was in Richard II with Martin Freeman, but most of the time it’s fairly dead.
“So I imagine the actors in 1997 were rather surprised to find eight pre-teen boys holding out our messy, A4 scripts to be signed.”
Some jobsworth clearly saw our programme and a legal letter went out, demanding royalties and asking what money we made
Alasdair Buchan
Buchan later sent in the colourful programme he had made for his show. “Some jobsworth then clearly saw it and a serious legal letter went out, demanding royalties and asking what money we had made.”
By Christie’s death in 1976, The Mousetrap had made more than £3m. But she had earlier given the copyright to her nine-year-old grandson, Mathew Prichard, as a birthday present. He later set up the Colwinston Charitable Trust in 1995 to use the royalties to support arts charities, chiefly in Wales. The show is now run by Mousetrap Productions.
Buchan, who co-founded the online theatre initiative “ReadThrough” during the pandemic lockdown of 2021, recalls often being bored at school, believing he wasn’t as musical as other pupils. For him, mounting The Mousetrap was an escape. “When I think back to it, I am amazed at the enormous amount of work we all did on it,” he said.
“And it was a success, in as far as we got from the beginning to the end. There [were] certainly boys who did not know their lines and we lost the plot a little bit at the end.
“I remember standing in the wings and trying to improve the acting by shouting at my brother, ‘Cry! Cry!’ I was quite a nice brother otherwise.”
This time I went to see The Duchess of Malfi at The Trafalgar Playhouse, just around the corner from where I am staying. This was a modern adaptation of the play, which I felt missed foreshadowing the tragic consequences of Giovanna’s brothers’ misogyny in favour of comedy. On reflection, was the emphasis on comedy a reference to the worn phrase, ‘it’s only a joke’? or, a reminder that what might be recognised as cruelty if enacted for long enough and accepted for long enough becomes accepted as normal? ‘I am still a Duchess’, proclaimed by Giovanna in her rags and having been imprisoned for several years, might also be a statement about class and gender – being a Duchess did not help her escape the sexist behaviour of her brothers. I remain convinced that there needed to be stronger foreshadowing, as the only instance of impending tragedy was when Ferdinand carried the twins in his arms, eventually going to the window with one of them. Jodie Whittaker was a great Duchess, in both acts – as a lover and comic actor, and as tragic heroine.
Cindy Lou eats casually in London
Firstly, a large flat white is available at Black Sheep Coffee, unlike at most London venues. They serve only one size – small, while Black Sheep Coffee has three sizes, similarly to their other coffees. Costa can make a large flat white and we found one at cafe Concerto.
Wahaca Covent Garden
We enjoyed the food at Wahaca Paddington, so this was a natural choice when we came upon Wahaca in Covent Garden. The dishes are to share, are delicious, and of a grand variety.
Caffe Concerto Trafalgar Square
Low on charm and service, but very good food, including one of the rare large flat whites in London. The garden breakfast was very good, and the range of pastries and cakes sublime.
Foyle’s Bookshop
Foyle’s Bookshop has a delightful cafe, with a large range of drinks and food. I enjoyed the pink lemonade but shall have to return to try more items on the menu.
Bakers + Baristas, Canterbury
Really friendly service, so much so that I forgave the immensely long wait for my soup. The bowl was almost overflowing, so another tick for generosity! The cake and pastry range is magnificent, and the various sandwiches and baguettes looked terrific.
Fumo Covent Garden
Fumo had a lunch special of four dishes for a set price for two. The service was friendly and helpful, fairly speedy, and very helpful. The seating is comfortable, and the environment pleasant, with enough space between the tables. This was a really positive experience, including the gracious way in which the uneaten Pasta Norma was packaged for our consumption later – yes, the dishes were very generous. Our dishes were meatballs with pasta, calamari, pasta Norma and a salad. By the time I took the photos the salad had been served, so its generous portion is not on view. I forgot to take a photo of the meatballs, but they were large and succulent, although not so plentiful as those in a Spanish tapas. The calamari was very good indeed.
We enjoyed the Pasta Norma on our last night in the Club Quarters, Trafalgar Square. Our room came with a refrigerator and microwave – excellent in this city where food prices have increased so much since our holiday here in 2023.
December 5, 2024 Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose
Left: French National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet announces approval of no-confidence vote against the French government on Wednesday in Paris. Right: Protests erupt outside South Korea’s National Assembly in Seoul after opposition parties submitted a motion to impeach the president. (CCTV+ via Reuters)
President Joe Biden made the preservation of global democracy a top goal of his White House term.
![[IMAGE] A painted self-portrait where the face and neck appear to float on a dark background. The face is distorted with a swirl of movement rushing through the shades of light pink and blue.](https://robrjo6.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/adkq_nbe3p-uxkdzstanc5wvc5r8bqgqf61_wltsqqhdpheuf__ef5n_ua_iyd4zkyt5yppgrfqzemsmp_niclf9jncjemkxx5s5zbxdeelz7x_sbcnsdd1c7mi2eakxedfgurv2ixhogc2c9wkiiagjipqqhjbis5jp11uacxgndk4mpjespu8vss.jpg)
Robin's Room 