"'Insatiable' Is Lazy And Dull, But At Least It's Insulting"

If you love that headline (and I do), you'll enjoy the review (and I did).

“The election of Obama in 2008 had felt like a cleansing moment for America, a proof point that our present was better than our past. People wanted so desperately to believe that we lived in a country that could elect an African American, and when that came to fruition, people wanted to believe that America had crossed the Rubicon and left our less than glorious past behind. There was some real truth in these hopes and dreams, but Obama’s historic election and successful presidency also roused some sleeping demons and brought them from the fringes into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

“It’s possible the Republican Party was headed down this path anyway as their voters got older and whiter while the rest of the country was getting younger and more diverse. But there is no question that the election of a young African American president with the middle name Hussein catalyzed the craziness.

“If you want to understand how and why the Republican Party stands by the daily moral and political outrages of Donald Trump, it begins with their response to the election of Barack Obama."

-- Dan Pfeiffer, Yes We (Still) Can.

"National media misperceptions to the contrary, this will not look like a far-left reinvention of Tea Partiers or a continuation of Bernie 2016. It will look like retired librarians rolling their eyes at the present state of affairs, and then taking charge. And it will happen first and foremost in the suburbs, those middle-class, Middle-American spaces that grew up alongside a generation—the Baby Boomers—whose last act of generational transformation may just have arrived."

-- “Middle America Reboots Democracy” by Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpal

“Mules were worse. Mules were like horses who could plan."

-- Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher. It’s an absolutely delightful book, btw. 

"There is a Chinese curse which says 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."

-- From RFK's "Day of Affirmation" speech. 

(I would, of course, include women in the sequel...)

"And I’m not ashamed to stand here, in front of six hundred people in this room, and millions more online, and proudly say that I live with mental illness, and that’s okay. I say “with” because even though my mental illness tries its best, it doesn’t control me, it doesn’t define me, and I refuse to be stigmatized by it."

-- Wil Wheaton. You should read the whole thing, especially the bit about the difference between existing and living. 

And in case you didn't know: My name is Adrienne Martini. I live with chronic depression and I am not ashamed.

"Like a bloated, portly fake billionaire rolling off a hooker after a hot 45 seconds of passionate sex, Donald Trump’s ardor for Rudy Giuliani seems to have cooled."

-- If nothing else, this era has brought us Rick Wilson's Daily Beast columns. That is not a bad thing.

"Mr. Trump has definitely, positively never, ever, ever had gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, chlamydia, the French, Spanish, or English pox, crabs, genital lice, crotch-crickets, Bulgarian junk-rot, the Weeping Cobra, the Gift that Keeps On Giving, Studio 54 Stall Surprise, or Bangkok Fire-Dick. Mr. Trump’s noted fidelity to his wives should put to rest all of these scurrilous rumors. In fact, our laboratory research shows that contact with Mr. Trump’s magnificent body kills all forms of STDs, and also cures scrofula, vertigo, blindness, sleep apnea, and the Jimmy Leg."

-- "BREAKING From Trump’s ‘Doctors’: Most Remarkable Physical Specimen of All Time!" by Rick Wilson. You really need to read the whole thing. It is magnificent.

It also appears that not everyone in the royal family has shared the queen’s enthusiasm for her fleet of corgis. In a television interview in 2012, Prince William, the queen’s grandson and the second in line to the British throne, expressed some issues with the dogs.

“They’re barking all the time,” he said. “I don’t know how she copes with it.”

Prince Harry, his brother, has also registered a noise complaint. “I’ve spent the last 33 years being barked at,” he told the BBC in 2017.

-- From the New York Times, after news that the Queen's last corgi had died.  I'm relieved because my corgi can't possibly be misbehaving if the Queen's corgs did the exact same thing.

"So why not quit? Because long-distance runners live for the story. We love you thinking we are just crazy enough to run 26.2 miles in driving rain and freezing temperatures. It’s rebellious, almost countercultural, or at least it was in the pre-running boom days, and that spirit still lies at the center of what is now a truly mainstream endeavor."

-- Matthew Futterman, “What It Was Like to Run the Boston Marathon in a Freezing Deluge."