"I have a lot of humility about having only moved to Michigan a few years ago. Although, of course, I did grow up in the neighborhood."

Said Pete Buttigieg, quoted in "Buttigieg Says Maybe, Whitmer Says No Way to Michigan Senate Race/The suddenly open seat in a top-tier battleground has several Michigan politicians taking a serious look" (NYT).

"In the neighborhood" = Indiana. But his husband, Chasten, was born in Traverse City and raised in its suburbs.

"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election."

 "We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates. As our Editorial Board wrote in 1960: 'The Washington Post has not "endorsed" either candidate in the presidential campaign. That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections. The unusual circumstances of the 1952 election led us to make an exception when we endorsed General Eisenhower prior to the nominating conventions and reiterated our endorsement during the campaign. In the light of hindsight we retain the view that the arguments for his nomination and election were compelling. But hindsight also has convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation's Capital to have avoided formal endorsement.'" 

That's "A note from the publisher," William Lewis, of The Washington Post, "On political endorsement."

Great! I prefer this policy, especially if it is based on a real commitment to professional, high-level journalism. There's a crazy amount of bias, which drives me away from whatever they are hoping to push. My sympathy for Donald Trump, the target of so much unfairness, is a bit absurd. I'm supposed to hate him? You idiots have made me love him. But somehow now you are drawing the line. What game is this?

Both VP nominees are now participating in the old tradition of responding to questions written on an orange that a reporter has rolled up the aisle of the campaign plane.

ABC reports.

Walz did it first, responding to the question "Dream dinner guest?" His answer (written on the orange and rolled back (more than a day later)): Bruce Springsteen.

(I struggle to resist re-telling the story of My Dinner With Bruce Springsteen.)

Vance's reporters wanted in on this orange action and rolled him the question "Fave Song." Under the circumstances, I would have chosen "Let Me Roll It"...

But Vance rolled back — immediately — "10 Years Gone":

Thank God something light-hearted is happening on this overwrought campaign.

Rivers always reach the sea/Flying skies of fortune, each a separate way/On the wings of maybe....

Why did it take Walz over a day to think up Bruce Springsteen? If you were going to workshop the most politically opportune answer, assuming you'd pick a pop star, wouldn't you pick a pop star affiliated with a battleground state? 

I see that Kamala Harris, on Steve Colbert's show last night — see "The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert" (Guardian)— chose Miller High Life as the beer for the little exercise in relatability" and...

Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”

Walz could have said Bob Seger! What're his politics?  

Vance answered quickly, and his choice is a bit idiosyncratic, but that doesn't free him of any suspicion of answering what he thought was politically advantageous. He's a quick thinker, and he knows the assignment. But he's chosen British pop stars, and "Ten Years Gone" is not near the top of obvious Led Zeppelin songs.  It's #40 on Vulture's "All 74 Led Zeppelin Songs, Ranked." So there's a good chance it really is his favorite Led Zeppelin song.

Is Led Zeppelin his favorite band? The name appears 4 times in "Hillbilly Elegy." Here are 2::

"Democrats need a dad?"

Says Meade, when I read this headline out loud "Is Tim Walz the Midwestern Dad Democrats Need?" (NYT).

It's an episode of "The Ezra Klein Show." From the transcript, here's the "dad" part:

KLEIN: Let me ask you about political geography. There’s a sense of, particularly, the Midwest as “That’s where people are normal. Then they get weirder on the coast.” You’re a former Army guy, right? You’re a former football coach. You’ve got real good Midwestern dad vibes. And so you can talk about the weirdness of Trump and Vance in a way that I think a lot of Democrats would not feel they could and also in a way that they’re like, “Oh, right, maybe we’re not the weird ones.” But I always think this is a very unhealthy dimension of our politics, a sense that there are sort of “real” Americans here, not “real” Americans there, beyond the coast. I’m curious how you think about this, both from the perspective of what it’s allowed you to say — maybe that would not have landed coming from others — and also just, like, what you do about it.

The emphasis there is on the geography, the "Midwestern" part of "Midwestern dad." I wanted the "dad" part, but I'll soldier on: 

"[M]y notes weren’t always as illuminating as I’d expected them to be. 'What does ‘Alt’ mean?' I asked Hugh over dinner one night."

"He looked down at the page. 'It’s not "Alt,"' he said. 'It’s "A.L.T."' Then I remembered. We’d been out early that morning, observing a short parade of ostriches. It was misty, and I pointed to a vague shape on the horizon. 'What’s that?' I asked Dalton. He followed my finger and told me it was likely an A.L.T. 'Animal-looking thing,' he explained."

I'm so glad to see a new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker, "Notes on a Last-Minute Safari/We saw every animal that was in 'The Lion King' and then some. They were just there, like ants at a picnic, except that they were elephants and giraffes and zebras."

I liked seeing the first syllable of my last name in a new context, but more important was the opportunity to find out David Sedaris's opinion of going on "safari," because I had quite recently asserted, to a complete stranger, that going on safari was really basically the same thing as going to the zoo. These things are packaged. It's not as though you're exploring the authentic natural habitat of elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

"The Natural Law Party was founded in 1992 on a platform that included promotion of transcendental meditation, responsible gun use, flat taxes and organic farming...."

"For 22 years, [Doug] Dern, a bankruptcy lawyer with a small practice outside Detroit, has almost single-handedly kept the Natural Law Party on Michigan’s ballot."Each cycle, the party runs a handful of candidates in obscure state races to meet Michigan’s minimum polling requirements for minor parties. 'Keep that ballot access,' Mr. Dern, 62, said in an interview on Friday. 'Because someday, a candidate is going to come along who’s going to be perfect for it. Someday, the third parties are going to be hot.'... "

I'm reading "How R.F.K. Jr. Got on the Michigan Ballot, With Only Two Votes/The independent candidate persuaded a tiny party to give him its line on the ballot in a key 2024 battleground state, sparing him a costly, arduous organizing effort" (NYT).

"Mr. Kennedy was formally nominated at a brief convention held Wednesday morning in Mr. Dern’s law office. The only two attendees were Mr. Dern and the party’s secretary.... Mr. Dern... has worked as a stage magician and also has a law practice for drunken-driving arrests.... 'I’ve just been plugging away, year after year, making sure there are people on the ballot,' he said."

Nothing goes together like transcendental meditation, drunk driving, and magic.

Thanks to Doug Dern for keeping the Natural Law fire burning, lending a hand to Bobby, and throwing a monkey wrench into the 2-party system.

"This is a resounding victory for our country’s pro-Palestinian, antiwar movement."

Said Abbas Alawieh, a spokesperson for Listen to Michigan, a group that advocated voting for "uncommitted" in Michigan primary.

Quoted in "Michigan Primary: Biden Confronts Protest Votes as He and Trump Win Easily/President Biden faced his most significant challenge in Michigan from those opposed to his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Republican infighting in the state did not involve Donald J. Trump, who coasted to victory" (NYT).

But what percentage of the Democratic vote did "uncommitted" need to seriously wound President Biden? The NYT article downplays the percentage. I'm still looking for it! I am seeing discussion of the number of votes:

"[A] homegrown campaign to persuade Michiganders to vote 'uncommitted' will measure the resistance [Biden] faces among Arab Americans, young voters, progressives and other Democrats over his stance on the war in Gaza."

"A high number of 'uncommitted' votes would send a warning to his campaign nationally and set off alarms in Michigan, which he won in 2020 but where polls show weakness against former President Donald J. Trump. A low number, by contrast, would give Mr. Biden and his Democratic allies renewed faith that he can weather the tensions and focus on campaign priorities like the economy and abortion rights.... The leaders of the movement insist they do not want to hurt Mr. Biden in the general election, but hope to persuade him that his position on Israel will hurt him politically in time for him to correct himself...."

From "Biden Faces 'Uncommitted' Vote in Michigan’s Primary. Here’s What to Watch. A protest vote against President Biden’s policies on Israel will show the extent of Democratic divisions, while Donald Trump is favored to win again as Nikki Haley presses on" (NYT).

Trump is way ahead of Biden in Georgia and Michigan... according to CNN.

"CNN Polls: Trump leads Biden in Michigan and Georgia as broad majorities hold negative views of the current president."

Isn't impossible to visualize an Electoral College win for Biden if he loses those states? Here's an interactive Electoral College map.

"When it gets hot enough, as it has across the South in recent weeks, barefoot toddlers suffer second-degree burns from stepping onto concrete."

"People who fall on the blistering pavement wind up with skin grafts. Kids stay inside all day, 'trying to survive.' Windshield wipers glue themselves in place, and the ocean transfers heat back into your body. One electric blackout could bake thousands to death inside their homes. You would think people would flee such a hellscape expeditiously. But as record-breaking heat fries the Sun Belt, the region’s popularity only grows. The numbers, laid out recently in The Economist, are striking: 12 of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. are in the Sun Belt."

I'm reading an Atlantic article that purports to answer the question I've been asking: "Why People Won’t Stop Moving to the Sun Belt."

But does this article really know why people do what they do? The author gives us 3 reasons: 1. cheap housing, 2. "a 'business-friendly' environment," and 3. warm winters. That is, on point 3, the weather is still a reason to go there, not a reason to escape. Ah, well, the fear of the cold is deep-seated. 

Here I am, lying on a nearly empty beach on the shore of Lake Superior, on August 14th, wearing 2 layers of long-sleeved shirt, experiencing what to me is the perfect temperature — 62°:

Why isn't everyone here? Ah, well, I like the emptiness. The sand was very fine and soft, the water perfectly clear... and swimmable if you're hale and exuberant. 

"Mrs. Space, 68… weighs just over 80 pounds, making it difficult for her to get warm."

"She and her husband, Thomas, watched as the thermometer in their home dipped into the low 60s. When Ms. Space started having headaches and shortness of breath, the two decided it was time to leave.... The Spaces tried to call hotels in the area, but many were sold out and available rooms were too expensive. Mr. Space found the American Red Cross shelter in Kalamazoo, so the couple packed what they needed from their home and spent the night there on Friday evening. 'It was almost a blessing, just to be able to walk in here and be given a cot,' she said."

From "'Frustrating and Upsetting': Residents in Michigan Endure Fourth Day Without Power/After an ice storm caused power failures across the state, 400,000 customers were still without electricity on Saturday. For some, it’s the second blackout in months" (NYT).

Here are 9 TikToks, carefully curated for you. Some people love them.

1. Réttir — sorting out the sheep in Iceland.

2. The woonerf — a type of street.

3. The Finnish way to live through winter — on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

4. If Arabic were English.

5. Choosing the boring life.

6. Overnight evolution.

7. White friend training.

8. Talking to the salad.

9. Hello, darkness, my old friend....

A view from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Marquette, Michigan.

Sunrise over Lake Superior.

This morning at 7:34, 7:37, and 7:45 — Eastern Time. We were in Marquette, Michigan:

Here's what the surface we were walking on looked like — very striated from long-ago glaciers:

We hiked in the dark to get to this location, in Presque Isle Park.

We didn't see the Northern Lights...

... but here's proof we tried:

And we did have the cool adventure of hiking through the woods 2 and a half hours before dawn to get to the hidden beach on the shore of Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan (2 nights ago).

I didn't think about taking photographs, so I didn't have a tripod, just my iPhone. The hump you see is not an elephant inside a boa constrictor but a small island, which, I've heard, people swim to and hike around on. How to swim and then hike? Barefoot? Swim in sandals? Float hiking shoes alongside you as you swim? I don't know. I was only doing one thing at a time and getting to that island wasn't on the agenda.

ADDED: The beach is called Granite Point, and the island is Little Presque Isle.

I think it's valuable to read the transcript and judge Trump's words on their merit, not just to remember how you felt as you heard this...

... (if you listened to the whole thing live) and what it seemed as though he was saying. This speech was, I presume, intended to cause intense emotion, and I think it did. I got the feeling he was making wild accusations and that he ought instead to stay very closely connected to the evidence. 

From the transcript of Donald Trump's press conference yesterday:

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other key states are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you’ve written about. And for a long time, you’ve been writing about the corrupt Democrat machine. I went to school there and I know a lot about it. It hasn’t changed since a long time ago and hasn’t changed. It has gotten worse. 

In Pennsylvania, partisan Democrats have allowed ballots in the state to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that, and they’re counting those without even postmarks or any identification whatsoever. So you don’t have postmarks, you don’t have identification. 

There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation. 

"About 10,000 people in Mid-Michigan have been asked to evacuate their homes after multiple dams were breached, causing a major flooding emergency."

"The National Weather Service on Tuesday evening urged anyone near the Tittabawassee River and connected lakes in Midland County to seek higher ground following 'catastrophic dam failures' at the Edenville Dam, about 140 miles north of Detroit, and the Sanford Dam, about seven miles downriver.... Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency in Midland County late Tuesday night, urging residents to see higher ground as water levels were rapidly rising. Gov. Whitmer said Downtown Midland, a city of 42,000 about 8 miles downstream from the Sanford Dam, faced an especially serious flooding threat. Dow Chemical Co.'s main plant sits on the city’s riverbank."

Click on Detroit reports.

"Armed members of the Michigan Home Guard stood outside Karl Manke's barbershop, ready to blockade the door if police arrived."

"They were determined to help Manke, 77, reopen his shop Monday, in defiance of state orders, and dozens joined them, wearing Trump sweatshirts and Trump cowboy hats and waving Trump flags. They gathered not because they desperately needed haircuts but to rail against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s approach to fighting the coronavirus outbreak in Michigan, one of the nation’s worst hot spots. They were channeling President Trump’s support of such protests, but some also were taking aim at the state’s Republicans, who they say have not done enough to 'liberate' the state from safety measures that have ground life to a halt.... The protest and others like it — including two last month that included demonstrators with swastikas, Confederate flags and some with long guns inside the capitol — have alarmed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But after Trump appeared to urge the militia members on, tweeting that they are 'very good people' who 'want their lives back again,' they have forced Michigan’s Republican lawmakers to strike a delicate balance, managing a deadly virus while also being careful not to contradict Trump or alienate their conservative supporters.... Protesters in Michigan have sought a radical turnabout in the state’s response to the pandemic, with some demanding that Whitmer lift all restrictions. Many come from fringe movements and harbor deep suspicion of health officials.... While Trump won the state by 10,700 votes in 2016, there are signs Michigan is shifting to the left as it again stands to be a major battleground in 2020.... Now, some see signs that Trump’s attacks on Whitmer — and his support of hard-line protesters — could further endanger his prospects...."

From "Armed militia helped a Michigan barbershop open, a coronavirus defiance that puts Republican lawmakers in a bind" (WaPo).

You can see the slant of the article, even as it gives you so many reasons to doubt it. Is Trump doing well in Michigan? Will this protest movement help him or hurt him? WaPo wants to assure us that the state is moving left and Whitmer represents the future, and it wants to pressure Republican legislators to stick with Whitmer's approach and to steel themselves against the rowdy freedom freaks. But there's Trump, giving those protesters reason to love him, even though he doesn't give them that much. He just says they're good people who want their lives back. That's not saying they're going about it exactly the right way, just that he loves them. Meanwhile, the elite media and politicians find them stupid and toxic — deplorable. But Trump is "endanger[ing] his prospects" we're told. Who can believe that? Only the willfully blind. And why not go for willful blindness if you hate Trump? Your alternative is to root for the disease to flare back up and kill the freedom freaks you deplore. You don't want to say that, but isn't it what you think?

"Last week, the share of people staying home was 36.1 percent, on average, or about 119 million people."

"That’s a drop of 7.7 percentage points from the average during the peak period for sheltering in place.... The share of people staying home remained far higher than the U.S. average before the outbreak, which consistently hovered around 20.7 percent of the population, or about 68 million people.... No state saw a larger drop in the share of people staying home last week than Michigan, even though its stay-at-home order remained in place. While half of the state’s residents stayed home on average during the preceding six weeks, that number declined by nearly 11 percentage points last week, as approximately one million people there started moving around again...."

The NYT knows where you've been and who's been bad or good. Michigan tops the list of bad — the moving-around flouters. Wisconsin holds 4th place among the bad. And the NYT doesn't mention this, but it's a sign that Trump will be reelected... unless everything starts going to hell. Again.

Go to the link to see the county-by-county map — "Where people started leaving home again/Percentage point change in the share of people staying home." How does the NYT know this? It uses data from Cuebiq, which takes "a representative sample of about 15 million smartphone users nationwide who have agreed to share their location data with certain apps." It's not snooping on you. You agreed! With certain apps.

Quite aside from that invasion of our privacy — by our lax acceptance of the demands of apps — there's the insinuation that we're violating our state governments' orders if we do not stay home. But where are we required to stay home? Not here in Wisconsin. We're free to leave the house. It really irritates me to hear mainstream news and commentary speaking of a requirement to stay home. The requirement is social distancing! Maybe in New York City, you need to stay home to avoid violating the strictures of social distancing, but that's not true in most of the country. If people are leaving home to take walks or go food shopping, they're not disregarding orders.

Whether people are thinking for themselves and following their own ideas about how much social distancing they want or need instead of following orders — that's another matter entirely. And I don't think the certain apps are measuring that.

This headline makes me laugh: "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?"

If you were genuinely worried about climate change — as opposed to fake worried or trying-to-look-like-a-good-person worried — you would go through with it. And I'm saying this as someone who was genuinely worried about global warming in 1984 when I chose to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I believed what I read and that included the idea that the southern United States was going to be unbearable in 10 years. I thought I was getting the jump on the inevitable migration. And now here I am, old and still observing the climate from my remote northern outpost, reading, "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?" at FiveThirtyEight.

Excerpt:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that the “Yooper” is a place you should move now....

The Yooper is a place?! To call the U.P. "The Yooper" just underscores your aversion to going anywhere near there. (A "Yooper" is a person who lives in the place they call the U.P.)

But despite the occasional trend story about coastal millennials moving to places that seem better positioned to ride out the ravages of climate change, there’s no real evidence that the Upper Peninsula is attracting new residents due to its climate prospects.....

That’s partly because real estate investing works at a different pace than climate change does.... The maps that show the Upper Peninsula winning against other parts of the country are forecasts of the year 2100. “But why does it matter that [the value of the land] will go up in 100 years?” [said a professor of economics]....

When people talk about the best place to move to avoid climate risks, he thinks they’re usually thinking about places that are currently too cold becoming, well, more like California and other parts of the country in which Americans are willing to take economic losses in order to enjoy today....

Live for today. Isn't that why we're having this climate change in the first place? These people who are "worried about climate change" are really basically just worried about today, and worrying about climate change is something that is done to try to look good today. And you'll be looking your best looking good looking worried in someplace that's warm today.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight has fixed its "Yooper" gaffe. The passage quoted above is replaced by:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that it is a place you should move now....

They haven't hidden the gaffe, so I give them credit for taking the hit openly:

CORRECTION (Sept. 20, 2019, 11:00 a.m.): A previous version of this article used the word “Yooper” to refer to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was an incorrect use of the word. The U.P. is the place. The Yoopers are the people.