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Thursday, August 21st, 2025 06:01 pm

Posted by Greg Ross

“Thou jestedst when thou swor’st that thou betrothedst
The wench thou boastedst that thou lustedst for!
Thou thwartedst those thou saidst thou never loathedst,
But laudedst those that thou distrustedst more!
Ah, if thou manifestedst all thou insistedst,
Nor coaxedst those that thou convincedst not,
Nor vex’dst the ear thou wish’dst that thou enlistedst …”

“Thou’dst spit upon me less, thou sibilant sot!”

— R.A. Piddington

Thursday, August 21st, 2025 06:33 pm

Posted by Paul Campos

My favorite vignette from this whole “controversy” is some right wing influencer (not looking it up) who posted that you had to excuse him for not believing the DC crime statistics because he got off the train and saw some “youths” if you know what I mean and I think you do doing wheelies on ATVs out on the street.

President Donald Trump said he will patrol D.C. streets on Thursday night alongside the Metropolitan Police Department and National Guard troops, as his Administration continues its effort to crack down on crime and exert control over the nation’s capital.

“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. So we’re going to do a job,” Trump said in an interview with conservative talk show host Todd Starnes. “The National Guard is great. They’ve done a fantastic job.”

A White House official told TIME that details of the evening were still being worked out. It wasn’t immediately clear how the Secret Service would manage the President riding around with law enforcement.

The move comes more than a week after Trump took control of the city’s police department and deployed hundreds of National Guard troops across the city to crack down on what he referred to as unacceptable levels of crime, despite statistics showing violent crime has declined in the city. The Trump Administration has claimed that crime statistics reported by the city do not accurately reflect the state of crime in the nation’s capital.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that 630 total arrests have been made in Washington since federal officers were deployed around the city on Aug. 7. Of those, 251 were arrests of immigrants in the country illegally.

Washington Post-Schar School poll published Wednesday found roughly 80% of D.C. residents opposed Trump’s executive order to federalize the city’s police department, and 65% do not think Trump’s actions will make the city safer.

On Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller met with National Guard troops on duty at Union Station, the city’s main train station, to thank them for their work. Protesters booed and shouted as the officials handed out burgers to the troops.

“We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” Miller said in response to the protesters. “And we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.”

To be fair, the first sentence of the Miller quote is something he stole verbatim from a Loomis LGM post.

My fondest hope here is that Trump is issued a firearm, to maximize both the cinema verite, and the odds of a really hilarious accident.

The post Performing fascism appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Thursday, August 21st, 2025 06:30 pm
I'm only barely exaggerating.





She isn't just some random "proud conservative," but an active movement member, vocally opposing everything good except, it seems, Medicaid for her son and maybe some people just like her and her son.

There is a point, perhaps, to publishing something like this in explicitly conservative outlets. What is the point of putting it in the NYT? Well maybe I answered that.
Thursday, August 21st, 2025 05:30 pm
Thursday, August 21st, 2025 06:05 pm

Posted by Maya C. Miller and Jeanne Kuang

Lawmakers sit and talk on the California Assembly floor, with desks lined with small American flags and green curtains hanging behind tall white columns.

In summary

Many California Democrats are reluctant to give up the state’s independently drawn congressional districts, but they say it’s a necessary step to counter gerrymanders in Republican states.

California lawmakers today are expected to greenlight Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to ask voters to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts, solidifying the governor’s response to President Donald Trump’s effort to get more GOP seats out of Texas a day after that state passed its own new maps

The constitutional amendment that voters will see on their Nov. 4 ballots passed the Assembly and awaits a vote in the Senate. It asks voters to suspend the state’s existing congressional districts, which were drawn by an independent commission, and replace them with a map intended to favor Democrats.

The Assembly passed the measure 57 to 20, and lawmakers on the floor erupted in applause even before they closed the vote.

“We will not let our political system be hijacked by authoritarianism. And today, we give every California the power to say no,” said Speaker Robert Rivas, Democrat of Hollister, on the Assembly floor shortly before the vote. “To say no to Donald Trump’s power grab and yes to our people, to our state and to our democracy.”

California voters in a 2010 ballot measure backed independent redistricting, a process meant to cultivate fair, competitive elections. Democrats say they’re reluctant to give up that system, even temporarily, but believe they have to in order to counter Trump’s bid to retain control of Congress after 2026. 

“If unaddressed, Texas’ actions – which occur without the vote of the populace – will disenfranchise California,” said Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat whose father had pushed for nonpartisan redistricting as a state lawmaker and Congressman.

“It’s imperative that Californians have a voice in selecting the political party that controls Congress in 2026,” said Lowenthal in an emotional speech from the floor before the vote. “So today, I proudly join with my father, the architect of this commission, in urging its temporary suspension.”

Republicans before the vote pleaded with their colleagues to resist following Texas in the race to the gerrymandering bottom.

“There’s really only one way to stop – someone has to refrain from striking back, and show a better way,” said Assemblymember James Gallagher, Republican of Chico and the minority leader. 

Lawmakers still need to approve two additional bills that will facilitate and fund the special election, as well as a bill containing the new congressional map voters will be asked to approve. Those measures are set to pass before the Legislature adjourns for the week, and Newsom is expected to sign them today.

The change is intended to be temporary; the measure that will go before voters requires the state to return to nonpartisan map-drawing after the 2030 Census. 

Newsom kicked off the special election scramble after Trump declared that he was “entitled” to five more GOP congressional seats in Texas. He demanded that Lone Star State lawmakers shore up Republicans’ razor thin, three-seat House majority by redrawing their congressional maps mid-decade. When Gov. Greg Abbott indicated Texas would redistrict, Newsom said California would retaliate. 

Democrats today hold 43 of the state’s 52 congressional seats. The Newsom-backed maps transform five Republican seats into districts that heavily favor Democrats. By ousting those incumbents, Newsom would effectively essentially cancel out Trump’s effort in Texas. The maps also strengthen Democrats’ hold on three other competitive California districts, making it harder for the GOP to flip them next year.

A lawmaker in a blue suit speaks into a microphone while holding papers during a floor session at the California Assembly. Other legislators and staff sit and stand nearby as a photographer records the moment.
Republican Assemblymember James Gallagher addresses fellow lawmakers on the Assembly floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 21, 2025. Lawmakers are expected to vote on a redistricting plan intended to counter a similar move by the Texas Legislature. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

California Republican lawmakers spent the week throwing up a variety of procedural blocks to try to stop the bills’ fast-tracked progress through the legislature, including by asking the California Supreme Court to weigh in on their challenge to the short time between the legislation’s public release on Monday and their final vote on the Assembly and Senate floors on Thursday. 

They demanded an end to the redistricting arms race nationwide, with some willing to condemn Texas and other red states that Trump has urged to redraw their maps. 

But their efforts ran up against both political numbers and longtime legislative practice in California. 

Polling shows most Democratic voters want the party to do more to fight the Trump administration. In the past few weeks, Democratic lawmakers, who command a nearly three-quarters supermajority in both chambers, have overwhelmingly fallen in line behind Newsom on the redistricting effort.  

Every year, lawmakers regularly reveal last-minute deals that they fast-track for passage 72 hours later, in a way that nominally complies with state constitutional requirements. 

The timing of the votes may be litigated, but California Republicans have already lost in court once. The state Supreme Court on Wednesday night declined to take up the GOP’s timing-based challenge to the map-drawing effort. 

GOP lawmakers acknowledged they’ll likely have to fight the issue at the polls. 

“We will defeat this, if it’s not here in the Capitol, it will be in a courtroom or it will be at the ballot box,” Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo said this week. 

Thursday, August 21st, 2025 05:49 pm

Posted by Victor Mair

(Since we have previously had lively discussions on subjects related to today's topic, I will publish this essay as is, but with the admonition that it is for advanced Siniticists, though naturally all Language Log readers are welcome to partake.)

[This is a guest post by Kirinputra]

I was (routinely) digging into the etymology of Taioanese U-LÓNG, which, like UDON, comes from Japanese うどん, and it turns out that うどん is cognate to WONTON, Cantonese 雲吞 (of c.), & Mandarin 馄饨.

The 廣韻 has 餛飩; so does Cikoski, with the gloss K[IND OF] DUMPLING. So the word is pretty ancient. 集韻 has it written 䐊肫, apparently. Using that as a search term, I found an article on your blog, but the commenters were generally unaware that 餛飩 had this alternate form in the medieval book language. (Of c., the person that wrote 䐊肫湯 may not have known either.)

I broadened my search. One depressing takeaway (once again) is that "Chinese" etymology is in this kind of arrested infancy. Even among linguists, broadly speaking, it's like etyma have no time dimension; only sinographs (if even) do.

What strikes me about the etymology of UDON is that a dumpling word became a mein word at some point.

Besides U-LÓNG, there is no 餛飩 cognate in Taioanese. Mainstream Hokkien & Teochew also don't have 餛飩 cognates AFAIK, although my guess is some dialects might've borrowed Cantonese 雲吞 or (in Quemoy) Taioanese U-LÓNG. The general Hokkien-Taioanese word for WONTON is PIÁN-SI̍T 扁食 — PÁN-SI̍T in some dialects, incl. in the late-antique (1500s-1800) Maritime Chiangchew 漳州 dialect that super-spread culture words throughout the tropics up to Rangoon. So the Philippine word PANSIT (PANCIT) is from PÁN-SI̍T. However, while PÁN-SI̍T is a dumpling word, PANSIT (PANCIT) is mostly a mein word. The exception is PANCIT MOLO, a specialty of the Iloilo borough of Molo, which is dumpling soup w/o noodles, which threw me the first time I ordered it. Standard PANSIT is equivalent to chow mein.

My guess is that PANSIT (the etymon) transitioned after a critical period where wontons were always sold with noodles in the streets — still the tendency in many ports, or places. At some point, the masses took the word PANSIT to mean the noodles. I wonder if UDON evolved the same way.

A few links from the 台字田:
 
 
 

 

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