4.30 Jerry Seinfeld on In Depth with Graham: “We wanted to do what we wanted to do. I always thought we would be a very obscure. . .be like Spy magazine, just a small, weird thing for a very particular audience.”
4.30 On $1 Hot Dog Night at Citi Field, the 22,880 fans at the Cubs-Mets game purchased 44,269 hot dogs. On average, fans at Mets games consume 4100 hot dogs.
4.30 Former Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer in NYRB: “To insist upon a static, unchanging reading of legal texts can only make more difficult the task of fitting law to human life. To rely on text to the exclusion of purpose, practice, consequences, and workability will fail to account for the variety and complexity of the human experience. Truly difficult interpretive questions may have better or worse answers, but just as often there is ambiguity and indeterminacy. Trying to find “the true answer” through textualist methods, to the exclusion of all else, is a hopeless task.”
4.30 TIME: Mr. President, in our last conversation you said you weren’t worried about political violence in connection with the November election. You said, “I think we’re going to win and there won’t be violence.” What if you don’t win, sir? TRUMP: Well, I do think we’re gonna win. We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.
4.30 Paul Auster dies at 77.
4.28 The Rangers sweep the Capitals in the opening round of the playoffs.
4.28 Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, by Nicholas Shakespeare. A well written, deeply researched biography of a very interesting man.
4.27 Biden at the White House correspondents’ dinner: “The 2024 election’s in full swing and yes, age is an issue. I’m a grown man running against a 6-year-old.”
4.26 In her memoir No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem discusses killing Cricket, a rambunctious, “untrainable” 14 month-old dog that had killed some chickens belonging to a neighbor. “I hated that dog,” Noem writes. “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.” She continues: “It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.” So she killed a goat.
4.25 Colson Whitehead, in Crook Manifesto: “A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches. Are nothing.”
4.25 In a 4-to-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges. The Court held that the trial judge made a critical error when he let prosecutors call as witnesses several women who testified that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, even though none of those allegations had led to charges.
4.24 In Arizona, Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis and 15 other Trump allies were indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
4.24 Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: “As we approach the summer of 2024, the economy is growing, migration to the border has declined at least temporarily owing to. . . a new crackdown by Mexican authorities, and in many major cities, crime is returning to historic lows, leaving protests as the most suitable target for demagoguery. The Biden administration’s support for Israel divides Democrats and unites Republicans, so the longer the issue remains salient, the better it is for the GOP. More broadly, the politics of “American carnage” do not work as well in the absence of carnage. Far-right politics operate best when there is a public perception of disorder and chaos, an atmosphere in which the only solution such politicians ever offer can sound appealing to desperate voters. Social-media bubbles can suffice to maintain this sense of siege among the extremely online, but cultivating this perception among most voters demands constant reinforcement. This is why the Republican Party is constantly seeking to play up chaos at the border and an epidemic of crime, no matter what the reality of the situation might actually be. Cotton and Hawley are demanding that Biden use force against the protesters not just because they consistently advocate for state violence against those who support causes they oppose as a matter of principle, but also because any escalation in chaos would redound to their political benefit. They don’t want to solve any problems; they want to make them worse so that the public will warm to “solutions” that will continue to make them worse. They don’t want order, or safety, or peace. What they want is carnage.”
4.24 Trump on Truth Social: “Wow! Former A.G. Bill Barr … has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’ … Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you Bill.”
4.23 The Chicago White Sox lose to Cleveland to fall to 3-19 on the year. That’s a winning percentage of .136, which extrapolates out to a 22-140 final record. The 1962 New York Mets recorded the worst season in MLB history at 40-120.
4.23 Washington Post: The trial has barely begun. One wonders how Trump will hold up. The time and energy expended in the courtroom, the humiliating lectures and the recapitulation of his misdeeds have already taken their toll. Whether he wigs out when witnesses such as Michael Cohen take the stand or keeps running afoul of the gag order (both strong possibilities), Trump’s temper tantrums only underscore his dilemma. Unable to mask his emotions in the midst of a narcissist’s worst nightmare, Trump has never looked so small, so weary and so feeble.
4.22 Tim O’Brien on Bloomberg, at the Trump trial: “Trump is veering from rage to petulance, and from slumber to intimidation, in the courtroom because he’s the star of a lurid Manhattan reality show he isn’t producing or directing. He doesn’t control the narrative and others are writing the scripts. And some of the scripts say nasty things about him, his sex life, his bookkeeping and his attempts to bury stories that might have derailed his 2016 presidential campaign. The setting, by Trump’s standards, is all wrong, too. Few courtrooms are more endowed with raw “Bonfire of the Vanities” mojo than those populating New York State Supreme Court, where Trump’s trial is being held. It’s a beaten-up, old-school nexus for judges, cops, reporters and a steady stream of Manhattan legal dramas. Trump, as a younger man, used to deploy lawyers there to try to secure tax abatements and other goodies for projects he was developing. He also eagerly gobbled up tabloid coverage of celebrated clashes litigated there. The State Supreme Court building is imposing and stolid. It isn’t glamorous and it’s about as far away from Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago as Trump could get. It’s home to disappointments and comeuppances. It’s a place where justice is meted out, for better or for worse. ”
4.20 The House passes a series of separate bills to send funds to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. Marjorie Taylor Greene vows to remove Mike Johnson from the speakership. Republican strategist Rob Stutzman: “The House of Representatives this weekend achieved great bipartisan success and demonstrated it can govern. A few malcontent GOP arsonists might object, but I think for the vast majority of the members, they are relieved.” Johnson: “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.”
4.20 The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. A cartoon.
4.17 After blowing the lead in a loss to the Angels, Rays reliever Pete Fairbanks was asked if he could identify something about his performance that needed correction. His reply: “No I thought it generally sucked. I didn’t think it was a specific suck, I thought it was like an all-encompassing type of suck.”
4.16 Whitey Herzog dies at 92.
4.15 The Rangers beat Ottawa 4-0, and win the President’s Trophy.
4.15 John Sterling retires. Sterling was a broadcaster for 64 years. He called 5,420 regular season Yankees games, and 211 Yankees playoff games. Between 1989 and 2019, he called 5060 consecutive games.
4.15 On the first day of Trump’s first criminal trial, he appeared to fall asleep.
4.13 Donald Trump, in Schnecksville PA: “Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg, what an unbelievable… I mean it was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways—it represented such a 
big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow—I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor—did you ever notice it? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill. He said, ‘Wow, that was a big mistake.’ He lost his big general. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’ but it was too late.”
4.13 In response to a deadly Israeli strike on one of its compounds in Syria earlier this month, Iran fires more than 300 drones and missiles into Israel. U.S. forces and other allies, including the U.K. and France, helped Israel repel 99% of them. While the two countries have been at odds for decades, this marks the first time Iran has directly attacked Israel from Iranian territory. Despite a warning from the White House not to escalate the situation, Israel has vowed to “exact a price.”
4.13 The Cushing Tour visits the Green Mountain Civil War Roundtable in White River Junction VT.
4.13 A New York Times/Siena College poll asked voters how much they think Trump respects women: a lot, some, not much or not at all? A majority of men — 54 percent — said that Trump respects women either “a lot” or “some.” Just 31 percent of women saw things that way.
4.13 Brook Sample in Bloomberg: “Donald Trump, a 77-year-old Bible salesman from Palm Beach, has emerged as the nation’s most prominent Christian leader. Trump is running for president as a divinely chosen champion of White Christians, promising to sanctify their grievances, destroy their perceived enemies, bolster their social status, and grant them the power to impose an anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, White-centric Christian nationalism from coast to coast. That Trump doesn’t attend church and has obviously never read the book that he hawks for $59.99 seems of interest exclusively to his opponents. . . . [But] Trump’s ostentatious embrace of White Christian militantism coincides with a precipitous decline in religious affiliation. According to the Public Religion Research Institute . . . . from 2013 to 2023, the percentage of Americans saying that religion is the most important thing, or among the most important things, in 
their life fell to 53% from 72%. In effect, militant Christian conservatism, now tightly wrapped in the gaudy corruption of Trumpism, has produced a backlash.”
4.12 We visit Cathy and Tim.
4.11 Susan, Greg and Jo come to visit. We have dinner at the Albany War Room. Here we are with Chef Yasuo Saso and Hilary Clinton.
4.11 OJ Simpson dies at 76. Eugene Robinson in the Post: “O.J. Simpson died a free man. He zigged and zagged all his life — and never quite got caught.”