10.30 For the first time in franchise history, the New York Rangers sweep a road trip consisting of at least five games.
10.28 Ivy visits.
10.28 Matthew Perry dies at 54
10.27 Bloomberg: “The population of the Land of the Rising Sun is sinking rapidly and, by the turn of the next century, will shrink to about 75 million people from the current 121 million. China has already lost the title of most populous nation to India and will decline from 1.46 billion now to 780 million by 2100. South Korea? It’s now a little over 50 million people; in 77 years, the projections have the country at under 20 million. (In contrast, its bellicose rival North Korea will roughly maintain its population and have 2 million more people than the South by 2100). . . .Hong Kong . . . . will decline precipitously from more than 8 million to 1.3 million in 2100. . . . .[On the other hand]. The population of the Philippines is projected to practically double by 2100.’’
10.25 A gunman kills 18 people and injured 13 others during a shooting spree at two locations in Lewiston, Maine.
10.25 With 220 votes, Rep. Mike Johnson, a relatively unknown Republican from Louisiana, is elected the 56th speaker of the U.S. House. It took Republicans over three weeks, hours of closed-door negotiations and three other nominees to get to this point. Johnson: “I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She’s not here, we couldn’t get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly. “She’s spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord. And, um, she’s a little worn out. We all are.” The New York Times called Johnson “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections. 
. . .On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without 
supporting the outlandish claims of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case.’’
10.22 Matt, Shawn, Connor and I see the Giants beat Washington 14-7. Ad odd game–if Washington made two more plays, they would have won 17-14, and if the Giants had made three more plays, they would have won 24-0.
10.21 Matt visits. We have sushi at The War Room.
10.19 Mark Danner in The New York Review of Books: “If Trump has a genius, it is his ability to shape, often out of his own self-made follies and recklessness and crimes, a narrative that relentlessly reaffirms his grim story of an us-versus-them America.’’
10.18 In a bold move, Biden goes to Israel
10.17 White squirrel at Moe.
10.16 Suzanne Somers dies at 78
10.13 I finished MD’s book. It’s a strange book. Not insightful, not introspective, not particularly revelatory. You don’t learn much about the Gov—it’s like he’s a guy who worked in the same office. You gain no insights about his motivations, secrets, unconscious. MD comes across as a partisan, someone whose beliefs justify a range of behaviors. A polished henchwoman. Not much reflwction on her confrontational, aggressive style, or on Mean Girls. Dismisses/denies critics. No grasp that there is a big gap between the image of powerful leadership team and the vulnerable group that was taken down by Tish James and LB. MD makes a big effort to appear vulnerable, but her deficiencies as a story teller prevents an actual connection with the reader from being made. Again, her strengths (hardworking, loyal) are clear, but none others stand out. She talks about crying eight times!
10.8 John Hendricksen on Lou Reed in The Atlantic: “How do you fully explain the psychic space that Reed and the Velvets occupy among fans? It’s not like the communal carnival of the Grateful Dead. Nor did Reed have Bruce Springsteen’s everyman appeal, or the second-coming-of-Jesus thing that haunts Dylan, or, to use a more recent example, the frenetic decoding of clues among obsessive Swifties. Reed doesn’t exactly come off as a warm friend the way other songwriters do—perhaps an obvious statement. Rather, he shows you the complete 
spectrum of life, including the ugly parts. The Velvets offer an escape into a world that seems thrilling and dangerous, simultaneously welcoming and off-limits. They are poppy and avant-garde, uptown and downtown, New York City and the roads that lead you there.’’
10.8 Visit to Cape Cod
10.7 War breaks out between Hamas and Israel. Hamas launches thousands of rockets toward Israeli cities and sends militants into Israeli territory overland and via paragliders and speedboats. Gunmen seize control of pockets of southern Israel, taking hostages and leaving bodies of civilians in the streets. Israel fully mobilizes and launches airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip. Hundreds on each side are dead. The New York Times: “With meticulous planning and extraordinary awareness of Israel’s secrets and weaknesses, Hamas and its allies overwhelmed the length of Israel’s front with Gaza shortly after dawn, shocking a nation that has long taken the superiority of its military as an article of faith. Using drones, Hamas destroyed key surveillance and communications towers along the border with Gaza, imposing vast blind spots on the Israeli military. With explosives and tractors, Hamas blew open gaps in the border barricades, allowing 200 attackers to pour through in the first wave and another 1,800 later that day, officials say. On motorcycles and in pickup trucks, the assailants surged into Israel, overwhelming at least eight military bases and waging terrorist attacks against civilians in more than 15 villages and cities.’’
10.6 Simone Biles won a record-tying sixth all-around world title Friday night at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp. ,The win moved Biles into sole possession of the record, 34, for medals at the Olympics and world championships combined. It was her 21st world gold medal, extending an existing record.
10.16 Nagres Mohammadi, the Iranian womens; right activist who is serving a ten year sentence in Tehran, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her fight against the oppression of women.”
10.6 James Parker in The Atlantic: “Donald Trump, the stand-up at the gates of hell, is obviously a massive problem for comedy. Clinically humorless, destitute of jokes, too strange to be hacky, and with the comic precision of a broken bicycle chain, he still—as the comedians say—destroys. He kills, night after night. He gives people, by God, that comedy feeling, or his version of it: gaseous, loopy, sneering, idolatrous, incipiently violent. Fascist levity. He’s almost a prop comic, but his prop is human weakness. Is he, in his dark-side-of-the-moon way, teaching us something about comedy? What if the breakthrough comedy event of the past five years was not Nanette or Rothaniel but the Trump rally where he said, “I can be more presidential than any candidate that ever ran, than any president, other than maybe Abraham Lincoln when he is wearing his hat”?’’
10.5 Greg Gutfeld on Take Five: “We had a war over slavery. We knew slavery was inhumane and immoral, but somehow we couldn’t solve slavery peacefully. It was an evil, but one side refused to acknowledge it was evil because it was too big of an admission for them to make. Doesn’t that feel that way now? This defiant refusal to reverse the decline argues against the survival of a country. What does that leave you with? It leaves you with you need to make war to bring peace because you have a side that cannot change.’’
10.5 Dick Butkus dies at 80.
10.5 Greg Sargent in the Washington Post on why House Republicans are angry that Democrats didn’t support McCarthy. “Republicans essentially want Democrats to stand by while they indulge MAGA in all kinds of sordid ways and then rush in to provide votes when MAGA’s demands grow so problematic for Republicans that the GOP conference can’t hold together any longer. Democrats can’t play along with that. It would allow Republicans to get away with all they’ve done to nurture MAGA’s pathologies and permit the GOP’s more vulnerable members to achieve distance from those indulgences. That would make it harder to extract the price from Republicans that they should justly pay: losing control of the House. “House Republicans have done nothing but feed Trump derangement and MAGA extremism three meals a day,” Jamie Raskin said. “When the monster turns around to attack them, why do we suddenly have to become their babysitter?”
10.4 John Hendrickson in The Atlantic: Most of us grew up with the phrase main character as a synonym for a story’s protagonist—the person we root for. In recent years, this concept has been inverted. Main-character syndrome, the defining personality trait of our time, is not a compliment. Consider the people who snap flirty selfies at somber locations such as Auschwitz. Or those TikTok “day in the life” videos, where something as simple as traveling to a sales conference and hitting the hotel breakfast bar is portrayed with the cinematic gravitas of the restaurant scene in Goodfellas. In 2023, a main character is often clueless and narcissistic, someone who views the world around them as a backdrop while they waltz through life. Politics has long been full of these kinds of main characters, but the Trump era brought them into the mainstream. Representative Lauren Boebert recently flouting theater norms (understatement of the year) during a Beetlejuice performance? Main character. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene doing well, anything? Main character. Main-character syndrome (also referred to as “main-character energy”) has spilled over into scores of congressional proceedings. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is clearly the main character this week. Gaetz’s successful demolition of Speaker Kevin McCarthy was part of his larger demolition of the House of Representatives, which itself was part of … what, exactly? Why did this whole mess actually happen?
10.4 Zeeshan Aleem on MSNBC:“When people talk about the difference between the haves and the have-nots, they’re typically thinking about wealth. But in America there’s another metric that divides the two: longevity. As Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton show in their new research, the gulf in life expectancy between people with and without a college degree has widened dramatically since the 1990s. As of the end of 2021, there was a shocking 8.5-year age gap between the two cohorts, with the life span of Americans without a college degree trending sharply downward in recent years.’’
10.3 Kevin McCarthy ousted.
10.2 Newt Gingrich in the Post: “Gaetz’s motion to remove McCarthy should have been swiftly defeated, but it wasn’t; he should still be expelled from the House Republican Conference.’’
10.2 Kevin McCarthy on X: “Bring it on.”
10.2 Matt Gaetz introduces a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy from Speakership.