Happy that the most interesting to me podcast Johanna listed has a transcript! I’m not a podcast listener because I find listening to stuff to be too time consuming. I made it through the first Sold A Story episode in about 7 minutes with the transcript . ( I know you can speed up podcasts but I’d still rather read something). Such an interesting topic. I’m a big believer in phonics though neither of my kids learned to read that way. I have TV closed captioning ( and born with it predisposition to “get” it ) to thank for that. Because both my children read well before kindergarten I have no idea the methods used in our local school then or if it’s changed.
Great post. Many of the year's best tweets made me laugh out loud.
Just one (sad) comment about a prediction question. Ask not "Which party will win the White House in November?" Ask "Will Trump ignore the results of the election and declare himself winner, starting a civil war because that's what Paymaster Putin wants?". True, this question assumes Trump is alive in Election Day.
See. I'm wondering if my crystal ball is as gloomy - if also realistic - as other people's.
Your crystal ball is not realistic if it is showing you a Biden victory on Election Day; Biden is on track to lose this election, and lose it handily. Since the Democrats are obviously going to keep their heads buried in the sand about this, Biden needs to save the country again by withdrawing from the race so that his party will be forced to nominate a candidate who will not lose to Trump, something that they will not do of their own volition.
Thinking about some the items on the Forecast list, this is from this morning’s AP wire:
“Trump says he didn’t know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler. That’s part of a broader pattern. Donald Trump’s claiming of ignorance, particularly when it comes to people who espouse racist or antisemitic rhetoric, is a tactic he has repeatedly used while trying to distance himself from uncomfortable storylines.”
One observes that he has not been caught inadvertently quoting Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
Since I'm convinced Trump has dementia, I believe him when he says he's ignorant or doesn't remember. I'm guessing Stephen Miller aka the American Goebbels, is responsible for Trump's rhetoric, at least until his dying brain goes off script.
There is certainly no shortage of very valid criticism about Trump the man and Trump as President. But dementia does not appear to be one of them.
In 2018, Trump took the highly regarded Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and scored a perfect 30 out of 30. President Biden however has to date refused to have any kind of cognitive assessment examination with public results. It would certainly be highly politically advantageous for him to do so to dispel conjecture about his age and abilities... unless he feared the results.
You may certainly use the term crazy to describe Trump's statements or actions, but President Biden by comparison is the one who is highly suspect of cognitive decline.
2018 was five years ago. Trump has recently said that Biden would start World War II, has claimed on numerous occasions that he (Trump) defeated Obama for the Presidency, has claimed that whales are being killed by windmills, etc. Near the end of Trump’s term, members of his own cabinet discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.
Great attack piece on Robert Reich a hard left Democrat. I could attach a plethora a video clips of Biden not only misspeaking, but often speaking gibberish, and often seemingly losing his train of thought and simply stopping. Now, everyone misspeaks on occasion, but there are a plethora of videos of Biden at public events wandering around until someone directs him which way to go, and of course the infamous incident at the luncheon in Europe where he went to the restroom and was wandering around the restaurant until his wife came over and took him by the hand to lead him back to the table. Trump may be very intemperate, rude and offensive, but he does appear to be able to express himself cogently as well as navigating stairs without frequent falls. And he would stand up and take questions from the media at press conferences on a regular basis as opposed to Biden who does this very rarely and just now canceled the traditional year-end press conference.
I would be very happy with a challenge from the media to all presidential candidates to take a cognitive test. Would you also agree to support this? I would bet heavily that Trump would do so without hesitation but that Biden would never agree to it.
Trump is not only in serious cognitive decline; he is mentally ill and utterly out of touch with reality. He routinely says Joe Biden is a Marxist and a communist. I mean, say what you will about Joe Biden, but he hasn’t spoken in favor of expropriating to the government the means of production. And the stock market is at an all time high. Biden is a conservative Democrat. Trump says his political opponents are “evil,” and that he will lock them up if he is elected. Trump is acting like a paranoid megalomaniac. Do you remember when there were Republican leaders like John McCain? Do you remember what McCain said to one of his supporters who called Obama an Arab? McCain said to her, “No ma'am, he's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about.” I mean, Trump went off the rails some time ago, calling his opponents evil, vermin, Marxists and communists, and it saddens and scares me that almost half of the populace seems to have gone off the rails with him. But it’s happened before. The Nazis came to power in Germany because they got more votes than any other party.
Yes Joanie, Trump oftentimes act crazy and says crazy things. But I don't believe he is in cognitive decline. And, despite all his craziness, he is leading Biden in every national poll - how do you explain that? I would strongly prefer a different GOP candidate, but if it is Trump versus Biden it looks at this point like Trump will win. And I still think both candidates should take a cognitive assessment.
Everything that you say Joanie, is true, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the public’s perception of Biden’s frailties, which are only, I suspect, going to become augmented over the next ten months. However unjust you may think it to be, the plain fact of the matter is that Biden is wildly unpopular, and he is going to give us Trump 2 if he does not step aside. The Democrats can all but assure themselves of victory by nominating Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, JB Pritzker, Andrew Cuomo (scoff at that one all you like, but he would beat Trump), or any number of other candidates who are cognizant and not octogenarians, but I honestly think that there are a lot of people in the party who really don’t mind if Trump gets elected again, if only so that they can continue to prattle on about how fascistic half of the country is.
My sib and I got a chuckle out of Trump's score. My parent's doctor insisted that we bring them in for the test because their mental state was so poor. They scored as well as Trump, and the doctor threw us under the bus, so they were furious. The rages, the obsessions with and constant repetition of certain subjects e.g. the inauguration crowd, the poor diet, are like deja vu all over again. 5 years later, that parent was in a memory care facility which is where Trump should be. He is being propped up by the likes of Stephen Miller.
Interesting, that you think sociopathy makes a good president.
Hi Lynne - I'm sorry to hear about your parent and also that you had to go through that, it can be a very difficult life chapter.
As regards Trump, he is distinctly not my preferred GOP candidate, but I do believe the policies in a Trump presidency would be better for our country and all of us then in another Biden term of office. National polls appear to reflect that the majority of Americans agree with that at this point.
The only true thing Trump has said in years is "I have never read Hitler." We know that because anyone who had ever read a book would have a more extensive vocabulary. His resembles that of a dim 8-year old bully.
I've read all but "Passage" and "Lord of the Rings." I didn't read "Catcher" and "Mockingbird" until I was in my 40s, and found them "meh." Best book I have read in a long time, "The Trees" by Percival Everett. Runner up: "Tokyo Ueno Station" by Yu Miri. Best book in 2023: "Hunting the Falcon" by John Guy and Julia Fox (helps to be a Tudor history obsessive)
Ah, the old phonics controversy. As a sight reader, I suffered through phonics, so have no love for it. When I did learn to read ( and I was no preschool, kindergarten prodigy) I found it completely magical, and still do. If we can instill that feeling, the world would be a better place.
I've actually read all 10 of those novels. Loved 2, 3, 7, and 9. Loathed 4. 1, 5, 6, 8, and 10 were okay.
It's actually a list of "top 10 novels people claim to have read", because if it included non-fiction, Stephen Hawkins "A Brief History of Time" would be on it. And also, where's "Ulysses"?
Best books read this year (with the caveat that the year isn't over yet):
Fiction: Tie: "The Bookbinder", by Pip Williams, and Bertrand Russell's "Satan in the Suburbs and other stories"
Non-fiction: Also a tie: Blair Kamin's "Who is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago", and Kate Strasdin's "The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe".
How will a Presidential Pardon from Daddy affect the Hunter Biden prediction options? Will a guilty plea/finding of guilt still count for those answering “yes” if it disappears through such an action?
I read about half of those books as a high schooler, and in retrospect, none of them made much difference in my life, except to better understand some metaphors like “Big Brother is watching you!” Thank goodness my English teacher handed out a crib sheet of all the characters in “Crime and Punishment” listing all the names by which each of them was called by various other characters. Thank you Miss Kovitz!
Thanks to Johanna for the memorable podcasts. My wife gives a big thumbs up to “Wiser than Me, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus”. For Saturday Night Live fans I would recommend "Fly on the Wall" with Dana Carvey and David Spade. Lots of great stories about how the sausage gets made at SNL.
I've read all but "A Passage to India". "To Kill a Mockingbird" changed the high school freshman that I was. LOTR was extremely interesting to my high school sophomore self - and was even able to take a college English class on "The Hobbit" and LOTR. Loved "Pride and Prejudice" as an adult (the Kiera Knightley/Matthew McFadden movie version is the best). "Jane Eyre" I found tiresome (but much better than "Tess of the d'Urbavilles" - which I found dopey). I didn't read (listen to) "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment" until I started devouring recorded books due to a lengthy commute. I had decided to use my commutes to read all the books you were supposed to have read in high school and college, and got through a bunch of them. I also took in Joyce's "Ulysses" - which still escapes me - And "Last of the Mohicans" by Cooper. As an avid reader, the latter was the only book in jr. high, high school, or college, for which I did not read the entire book and relied on Cliff Notes. I couldn't stand it back then. After listening to it as an adult, I still couldn't stand it - and I read plenty of dense historical stuff. I felt vindicated about Mohicans when I read Mark Twain's savage takedown of Cooper - from more than 100 years ago. Moby Dick is not on the list. I liked it a great deal - but then I've read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey -Maturin canon multiple times (and there's 20 books in the series)!
Ali Kelly's Barn Door Bathroom piece is a scream! Thanks for drawing attention to it.
I am thrilled that phonics is coming back - hated when my (now-adult) kids were taught "whole language" reading in school. We taught them phonics at home.
Happy that the most interesting to me podcast Johanna listed has a transcript! I’m not a podcast listener because I find listening to stuff to be too time consuming. I made it through the first Sold A Story episode in about 7 minutes with the transcript . ( I know you can speed up podcasts but I’d still rather read something). Such an interesting topic. I’m a big believer in phonics though neither of my kids learned to read that way. I have TV closed captioning ( and born with it predisposition to “get” it ) to thank for that. Because both my children read well before kindergarten I have no idea the methods used in our local school then or if it’s changed.
Winning tweet?
"I’m so old I remember when New Year’s came we sang “Lang Syne.” — @GianDoh"
Since "lang syne" is Scots for "long since" this does not really work. "Old long since" and "long since" are the same thing.
See the tweet about the guy at the psychiatrist who has trouble making friends.
Touche.
Very nice.
A lesson in how to be gracious.
amen - civil discourse
Great post. Many of the year's best tweets made me laugh out loud.
Just one (sad) comment about a prediction question. Ask not "Which party will win the White House in November?" Ask "Will Trump ignore the results of the election and declare himself winner, starting a civil war because that's what Paymaster Putin wants?". True, this question assumes Trump is alive in Election Day.
See. I'm wondering if my crystal ball is as gloomy - if also realistic - as other people's.
It also assumes that he won't actually win. Which, frighteningly, is a distinct probability.
Your crystal ball is not realistic if it is showing you a Biden victory on Election Day; Biden is on track to lose this election, and lose it handily. Since the Democrats are obviously going to keep their heads buried in the sand about this, Biden needs to save the country again by withdrawing from the race so that his party will be forced to nominate a candidate who will not lose to Trump, something that they will not do of their own volition.
Running “Danielle” at 2X makes it a lot more tolerable to watch without losing much of the gradual transition.
Thinking about some the items on the Forecast list, this is from this morning’s AP wire:
“Trump says he didn’t know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler. That’s part of a broader pattern. Donald Trump’s claiming of ignorance, particularly when it comes to people who espouse racist or antisemitic rhetoric, is a tactic he has repeatedly used while trying to distance himself from uncomfortable storylines.”
One observes that he has not been caught inadvertently quoting Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
Since I'm convinced Trump has dementia, I believe him when he says he's ignorant or doesn't remember. I'm guessing Stephen Miller aka the American Goebbels, is responsible for Trump's rhetoric, at least until his dying brain goes off script.
There is certainly no shortage of very valid criticism about Trump the man and Trump as President. But dementia does not appear to be one of them.
In 2018, Trump took the highly regarded Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and scored a perfect 30 out of 30. President Biden however has to date refused to have any kind of cognitive assessment examination with public results. It would certainly be highly politically advantageous for him to do so to dispel conjecture about his age and abilities... unless he feared the results.
You may certainly use the term crazy to describe Trump's statements or actions, but President Biden by comparison is the one who is highly suspect of cognitive decline.
2018 was five years ago. Trump has recently said that Biden would start World War II, has claimed on numerous occasions that he (Trump) defeated Obama for the Presidency, has claimed that whales are being killed by windmills, etc. Near the end of Trump’s term, members of his own cabinet discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/donald-trump-mental-state
Great attack piece on Robert Reich a hard left Democrat. I could attach a plethora a video clips of Biden not only misspeaking, but often speaking gibberish, and often seemingly losing his train of thought and simply stopping. Now, everyone misspeaks on occasion, but there are a plethora of videos of Biden at public events wandering around until someone directs him which way to go, and of course the infamous incident at the luncheon in Europe where he went to the restroom and was wandering around the restaurant until his wife came over and took him by the hand to lead him back to the table. Trump may be very intemperate, rude and offensive, but he does appear to be able to express himself cogently as well as navigating stairs without frequent falls. And he would stand up and take questions from the media at press conferences on a regular basis as opposed to Biden who does this very rarely and just now canceled the traditional year-end press conference.
I would be very happy with a challenge from the media to all presidential candidates to take a cognitive test. Would you also agree to support this? I would bet heavily that Trump would do so without hesitation but that Biden would never agree to it.
Trump is not only in serious cognitive decline; he is mentally ill and utterly out of touch with reality. He routinely says Joe Biden is a Marxist and a communist. I mean, say what you will about Joe Biden, but he hasn’t spoken in favor of expropriating to the government the means of production. And the stock market is at an all time high. Biden is a conservative Democrat. Trump says his political opponents are “evil,” and that he will lock them up if he is elected. Trump is acting like a paranoid megalomaniac. Do you remember when there were Republican leaders like John McCain? Do you remember what McCain said to one of his supporters who called Obama an Arab? McCain said to her, “No ma'am, he's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about.” I mean, Trump went off the rails some time ago, calling his opponents evil, vermin, Marxists and communists, and it saddens and scares me that almost half of the populace seems to have gone off the rails with him. But it’s happened before. The Nazis came to power in Germany because they got more votes than any other party.
Yes Joanie, Trump oftentimes act crazy and says crazy things. But I don't believe he is in cognitive decline. And, despite all his craziness, he is leading Biden in every national poll - how do you explain that? I would strongly prefer a different GOP candidate, but if it is Trump versus Biden it looks at this point like Trump will win. And I still think both candidates should take a cognitive assessment.
Everything that you say Joanie, is true, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the public’s perception of Biden’s frailties, which are only, I suspect, going to become augmented over the next ten months. However unjust you may think it to be, the plain fact of the matter is that Biden is wildly unpopular, and he is going to give us Trump 2 if he does not step aside. The Democrats can all but assure themselves of victory by nominating Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, JB Pritzker, Andrew Cuomo (scoff at that one all you like, but he would beat Trump), or any number of other candidates who are cognizant and not octogenarians, but I honestly think that there are a lot of people in the party who really don’t mind if Trump gets elected again, if only so that they can continue to prattle on about how fascistic half of the country is.
My sib and I got a chuckle out of Trump's score. My parent's doctor insisted that we bring them in for the test because their mental state was so poor. They scored as well as Trump, and the doctor threw us under the bus, so they were furious. The rages, the obsessions with and constant repetition of certain subjects e.g. the inauguration crowd, the poor diet, are like deja vu all over again. 5 years later, that parent was in a memory care facility which is where Trump should be. He is being propped up by the likes of Stephen Miller.
Interesting, that you think sociopathy makes a good president.
Hi Lynne - I'm sorry to hear about your parent and also that you had to go through that, it can be a very difficult life chapter.
As regards Trump, he is distinctly not my preferred GOP candidate, but I do believe the policies in a Trump presidency would be better for our country and all of us then in another Biden term of office. National polls appear to reflect that the majority of Americans agree with that at this point.
Have a great day!
What are Trump’s “policies” that you favor?
A typical response by #45 would be “no one knew that it was a Hitler phrase”. Anything he doesn’t know becomes no one knows.
You’d think he could figure out that *someone* knew, since he got called on it.
The only true thing Trump has said in years is "I have never read Hitler." We know that because anyone who had ever read a book would have a more extensive vocabulary. His resembles that of a dim 8-year old bully.
You had to soldier through "Great Expectations"?? I thought I knew you. 🤣
I've read all but "Passage" and "Lord of the Rings." I didn't read "Catcher" and "Mockingbird" until I was in my 40s, and found them "meh." Best book I have read in a long time, "The Trees" by Percival Everett. Runner up: "Tokyo Ueno Station" by Yu Miri. Best book in 2023: "Hunting the Falcon" by John Guy and Julia Fox (helps to be a Tudor history obsessive)
Ah, the old phonics controversy. As a sight reader, I suffered through phonics, so have no love for it. When I did learn to read ( and I was no preschool, kindergarten prodigy) I found it completely magical, and still do. If we can instill that feeling, the world would be a better place.
I've actually read all 10 of those novels. Loved 2, 3, 7, and 9. Loathed 4. 1, 5, 6, 8, and 10 were okay.
It's actually a list of "top 10 novels people claim to have read", because if it included non-fiction, Stephen Hawkins "A Brief History of Time" would be on it. And also, where's "Ulysses"?
Best books read this year (with the caveat that the year isn't over yet):
Fiction: Tie: "The Bookbinder", by Pip Williams, and Bertrand Russell's "Satan in the Suburbs and other stories"
Non-fiction: Also a tie: Blair Kamin's "Who is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago", and Kate Strasdin's "The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe".
I had to read 1,3,4,7 and 9 for various English classes. I am surprised at how low the percentages were.
Trust by Herman Diaz was my favorite 2023 read.
How will a Presidential Pardon from Daddy affect the Hunter Biden prediction options? Will a guilty plea/finding of guilt still count for those answering “yes” if it disappears through such an action?
I read about half of those books as a high schooler, and in retrospect, none of them made much difference in my life, except to better understand some metaphors like “Big Brother is watching you!” Thank goodness my English teacher handed out a crib sheet of all the characters in “Crime and Punishment” listing all the names by which each of them was called by various other characters. Thank you Miss Kovitz!
Thanks to Johanna for the memorable podcasts. My wife gives a big thumbs up to “Wiser than Me, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus”. For Saturday Night Live fans I would recommend "Fly on the Wall" with Dana Carvey and David Spade. Lots of great stories about how the sausage gets made at SNL.
I’ve been a zombies fan since I was 7 or 8 and heard Time of the Season.
Foucault’s Pendulum and Satanic Verses were on that list 30 years ago.
I've read all but "A Passage to India". "To Kill a Mockingbird" changed the high school freshman that I was. LOTR was extremely interesting to my high school sophomore self - and was even able to take a college English class on "The Hobbit" and LOTR. Loved "Pride and Prejudice" as an adult (the Kiera Knightley/Matthew McFadden movie version is the best). "Jane Eyre" I found tiresome (but much better than "Tess of the d'Urbavilles" - which I found dopey). I didn't read (listen to) "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment" until I started devouring recorded books due to a lengthy commute. I had decided to use my commutes to read all the books you were supposed to have read in high school and college, and got through a bunch of them. I also took in Joyce's "Ulysses" - which still escapes me - And "Last of the Mohicans" by Cooper. As an avid reader, the latter was the only book in jr. high, high school, or college, for which I did not read the entire book and relied on Cliff Notes. I couldn't stand it back then. After listening to it as an adult, I still couldn't stand it - and I read plenty of dense historical stuff. I felt vindicated about Mohicans when I read Mark Twain's savage takedown of Cooper - from more than 100 years ago. Moby Dick is not on the list. I liked it a great deal - but then I've read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey -Maturin canon multiple times (and there's 20 books in the series)!
Ali Kelly's Barn Door Bathroom piece is a scream! Thanks for drawing attention to it.
I am thrilled that phonics is coming back - hated when my (now-adult) kids were taught "whole language" reading in school. We taught them phonics at home.
Didn't chuckle at any of this week's tweets. Not much to pick from this week, EZ?