Math is hard

 My hometown newspaper, the Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin, has an alarming headline:

Some. What's going on in Wisconsin? The article reports:

Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times' list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest. 

La Crosse is number one on the New York Times' list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively. 

With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus. 

Appleton, in the crosshairs, even without a UW campus! And then we get the numbers:

According to the New York Times' analysis, comparing the number of cases from a week ago to now, adjusting for population, the following Wisconsin metro areas have seen an increase of:

La Crosse: 436 new cases per 100,000 people

Whitewater: 228 new cases per 100,000 people 

Oshkosh-Neenah: 157 new cases per 100,000 people 

Stevens Point: 106 new cases per 100,000 people

Appleton: 105 new cases per 100,000 people 

Platteville: 101 new cases per 100,000 people 

Madison: 98.4 new cases per 100,000 people 

Green Bay: 97.9 new cases per 100,000 people

105 cases per 100,000 people! But let's do the math -- that's 1/10th of 1%. That means 1 out of 1000. This is a crisis?

The Post Crescent used to be an interesting newspaper, but like most daily newspapers in Wisconsin it is now a Gannett property. Those are the same simps who run USA Today. And the dumbed-down version of journalism they've been pumping for 40 years is now what you get in my hometown. This is not progress.

Just a reminder

The MSM always has yer kabuki right here, pal:

The people who earn (so to speak) their living informing America are lying to you. But you know that.

Philosophy majors in the news

You don't have to be intelligent to be on television. Consider the example of Katy Tur, who has been a fairly constant presence on the MSNBC airwaves for years now. She said this (emphasis in the original):

Tur brought on Post political reporter Philip Bump to continue to promote the piece: “Alright, so impeachment is an example of this. The 48 senators – I mean, 12 million more voters, that’s a lot.” Bump replied in part that “you had the 69 million who actually supported senators who wanted to see him removed from office.”

It’s unclear how Bump divined that people voted those senators into office with the express desire that they overturn the results of the 2016 election.

Minutes later, Tur wondered what could be done to prevent Republicans from winning statewide elections for U.S. Senate seats across the country: “So what’s the resolution to that? Is gerrymandering something that would help improve the situation? Is – how does that sort of divide promote consensus in the Senate or even in the House?”

Bump was forced to awkwardly correct her and explain the obvious: “Well, I mean, the only resolution – gerrymandering is not going to do anything because in the Senate we’re talking about states, right? You can’t gerrymander states.” He then delivered more tough news: “The only solution is for Democrats to appeal to voters in those states.”

A few observations:

• Lefties hate gerrymandering, except when they can do it.
• The Senate is designed to slow things down and to prevent big states from steamrolling small states. That's kinda the point.
• A good way for Democrats to appeal to voters in "those states" would be to listen to their concerns and offer solutions. That's too much work, though.
• Tur and her lefty pals assume they'll always be in the majority. If they were to think things through, they'd realize that may not be a permanent state of affairs. But again, thinking things through is a lot of work.
• And on the matter of thinking things through, Tur's undergraduate degree is in philosophy. No, really.

Tur is an attractive woman, no doubt:

Philosophical construct

I wouldn't argue that Tur's looks are the only reason she has a job with MSNBC, but it doesn't hurt her cause. The larger issue with Tur and others similarly situated is the unspoken assumption, the central conceit they share with lefties everywhere -- they are smarter than their opponents. Yeah, keep making that argument, kids.

Showtime?

It's on:

Winter may be coming but it's already Springtime for Lawyers in Washington, D.C.  The list of people lawyering up these days would probably fill this page and lap over onto the next. It's just been announced that the John Durham investigation into the provenance of the Russia probe has turned into a criminal investigation. 

Subpoenas and grand juries are coming, real ones, not the Star Chamber counterfeits being orchestrated by the panicked Democrats and their junior league Southern California Torquemada.

The whole point of the phony impeachment inquiry was to muddy the waters. By getting out ahead of Durham, the Dems and their MSM buddies will now claim the inquiry is partisan revenge and therefore illegitimate. As always, you get more projection out of the Democrats than you see at a 20-screen multiplex theater.

The real question -- will Durham really do what he needs to do? Or will he bury it, like all the other scandals before? I would like to believe, but speaking of projection -- we've seen this movie before.

Now showing across the internet

A very old song

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 
But still I'd look to find a reason to believe

-- "Reason to Believe," Tim Hardin, 1966

A very old song, indeed:

The national outrage that simmered after actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by people shouting racial and anti-gay slurs was fueled in part by celebrities who spoke out loud and strong on social media.

But the outrage has now been replaced by surprise, doubt and bafflement as the singers, actors and politicians who came out in support of the “Empire” star struggle to digest the strange twists the case has taken. Some conservative pundits, meanwhile, have gleefully seized on the moment.

The narrative that just a week ago seemed cut-and-dry has become messy and divisive — and it’s all playing out again on social media.

Seizing, or pouncing? I can never be sure. But c'mon, it was so believable:

Smollett, who is black and gay, said he was physically attacked last month by two masked men shouting racial and anti-gay slurs and “This is MAGA country!”— a reference to the Make America Great Again slogan used in President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Smollett said the attackers looped a rope around his neck before running away as he was out getting food at a Subway restaurant.

I lived in Chicago for five years. I remember things like this happening all the time. Well, at least the racial slurs, but the noose is a little edgy. But there's a pattern to the reportage:

But still I'd look to find a reason to believe:

In a statement on Saturday, the Indigenous Peoples Movement identified the man in the videos as Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, a veteran and the former director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group that works to ensure that traditional culture and spiritual ways are upheld for future generations. Mr. Phillips also holds an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, the group said.

Mr. Phillips could not be reached for comment on Saturday. He told The Washington Post that he noticed the teenagers taunting participants at the Indigenous Peoples March.

“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’” Mr. Phillips told The Post. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true:

The Texas restaurant company which banned a customer after an employee’s story of a receipt scrawled with a racial epithet went viral said that it had parted ways with the employee and learned that the story was made up.

“We have learned that our employee fabricated the entire story,” Terry Turney, the chief operating officer of Saltgrass steakhouses, said in a statement. “Racism of any form is intolerable, and we will always act swiftly should it occur in any of our establishments. Falsely accusing someone of racism is equally disturbing.”

The incident unfolded earlier this month when Khalil Cavil, a 20-year-old waiter at a Saltgrass outpost in Odessa, Texas, posted an image to Facebook that showed a $108 bill with zero on the tip line, and “We don’t tip terrorist,” written in ink at the top.

But still I look to find a reason to believe:

The morning of December 9, 2017, launched one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to have “independently confirmed” this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC videos here).

There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email wrong.

Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 

[Lara] Logan said that many journalists have abandoned consistent standards in reporting when it comes to the Trump administration.

“Standards are out the window, I mean you read one story after another or hear it and it’s all based on one anonymous administration official, former administration official,” she said. “That’s not journalism, that’s horses**t.”

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” she argued. “We bear some responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.” 

The MSM is a faith-based initiative. Christians look for evidence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit for the MSM is confirmation bias.

Paragraph of the day/il miglior fabbro

Ann Althouse makes a smart observation:

Or did something else happen that drove the [Northam] story out of the news? Was it just big news — Trump's "emergency"? Or something that specifically offset the Northam story — maybe the Jussie Smollett  story: Maybe some people don't want to think about why Northam made himself into a fake black man if we're worried that Jussie Smollett made up some fake white men.

Stand up or give up.

Memo to local media

Ahem.

Yes, it was news last week when Amy Klobuchar announced she was running for president.

No, it's not news that she's visiting other states. All the candidates do that. We don't need wall-to-wall coverage of her visits to Eau Claire.

Thank you.

Elder

One can be an elder and still be other things. As we learn more about Nathan Phillips, the man who presented himself as a victim of evil Cincinnati-area teenagers, we discover a few things that might be worth consideration.

First, he's not a "recon ranger," whatever that was supposed to mean:

Discharged, but not never promoted

He was actually a guy who repaired refrigerators, and he never left the United States while he was a Marine:

Cold hard truth

Nothing wrong with that, but the records show he not a guy who ever saw combat, even though he hinted he served in Vietnam. And yes, he did hint that:

Phillips: When I was there and I was standing there and I seen that group of people in front of me and I seen the angry faces and all of that, I realized I had put myself in a really dangerous situation. Here’s a group of people who were angry at somebody else and I put myself in front of that, and all of a sudden, I’m the one whose all that anger and all that wanting to have the freedom to just rip me apart, that was scary. And I’m a Vietnam veteran and I know that mentality of “There’s enough of us. We can do this.” (Emphasis added.)

As has been well established, Phillips wasn't surrounded; in fact, he instigated the incident. And he wasn't done:

While chanting and playing ceremonial drums, a group of Native American rights activists reportedly led by Nathan Phillips attempted Jan. 19 to enter Washington, D.C.’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during a Saturday evening Mass.

The group of 20 demonstrators was stopped by shrine security as it tried to enter the church during its 5:15 pm Vigil Mass, according to a shrine security guard on duty during the Mass.

“It was really upsetting,” the guard told CNA.

The kids from Covington Catholic, including the kid with the apparently radioactive smirk, did not enter the day intending to be the target of invective. It's quite likely these kids are sinners. We all are. But it simply won't do to say these kids were victimizing a tribal elder. They weren't.

I don't know, but I've been told

Have you ever wondered if anything you read is true? Take yesterday, for example:

“The president stomped out of the meeting when he said to me, ‘Will you support a wall?’ and I said no. Now they’re trying to mischaracterize what he actually said,” Pelosi said of GOP leaders. “It was a petulant president of the United States.”

Was it? Do you trust Nancy Pelosi's account of the matter. Or do you have to pass the meeting to see what's in it? There's more:

Trump made clear to Democrats that “there will be no deal without a wall,” said Vice President Mike Pence. It was the third such bipartisan meeting in a week, all of which were unproductive. But this was the shortest, clocking in at about 30 minutes.

Did some one have a watch? Read on:

In the bipartisan meeting, Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Trump, Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did almost all the talking, according to a person briefed on it.

A person briefed on it? Who is the person? Who did the briefing? In a court of law, this would be called hearsay. Based on previous observation, although from afar, it's easy enough to believe that Pelosi and Schumer were doing a lot of talking. Schumer in particular loves the sound of his own droning voice.

We can believe that these individuals were in the same room, but do we really know what happened in the room? Do we trust any of the participants are telling the truth? Based on what assumptions?

You can go a long way into the weeds with epistemological discussions, but as you attempt to observe the sausage being made, especially from over 1000 miles away, it's never a good idea to assume you're being told the truth.

The nub of it

Ann Althouse identifies why it's becoming just about impossible to blog in the age of Bad Orange Man:

I can barely read the news these days (and I absolutely cannot watch it on TV). The negativity toward Trump is so relentless, cluttering up everything. It's crying wolf times a thousand. If anything is worth taking seriously, I'm afraid I won't be able to notice.

That's it. If we're in mortal peril 24/7 and nothing actually happens, why the hell should we take any of the caterwauling seriously? In his always-entertaining year in review opus, Dave Barry notices the same thing:

So when 2018 finally dawned, we were desperately hoping for change. It was a new year, a chance for the nation to break out of the endless, pointless barrage of charges and countercharges, to move past the vicious, hate-filled hyperpartisan spew of name-calling and petty point-scoring, to end the 24/7 cycle of media hysteria, to look forward and begin to tackle the many critical issues facing the nation, the most important of which turned out to be…

…the 2016 election.

Yes. We could not escape it. We were like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except that when our clock-radio went off, instead of Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You Babe,” we awoke to still MORE talk of Russians and emails; MORE childish semiliterate presidential tweets about FAKE NEWS and Crooked Hillary; MORE freakouts by cable-TV panelists predicting that — forget about the previous 300 times they made the same prediction — THIS time impeachment was IMMINENT, PEOPLE. IMMINENT!!

Meet the new year: same as the old year.

I can't take 99% of what I read in the MSM seriously. It means nothing.

You keep using that word

Dan Crenshaw makes a suggestion (h/t Brad):

Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw pushed back Sunday morning in a CBS News roundtable on the idea that President Trump is undermining democracy and attacking the free press.

Rep.-elect Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), one of three Democrats facing off with Crenshaw, argued on "Face the Nation" that Trump is "literally" attacking the press with his inflammatory rhetoric.

“I would argue that our president is consistently disruptive…and I would argue that he treats [the press] with disrespect,” she said.

Crenshaw (R-Texas), a former Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in a 2012 IED attack, quickly refuted Houlahan's remark.

"I've literally been attacked. Let's chose our words carefully," Crenshaw replied.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. I also assume, eventually that Crenshaw's sensible observation will be dismissed as "mansplaining." One thing I would gently suggest to my better, Cong.-elect Houlahan; consistent disruption and disrespect is in order, especially where the press is concerned. The scribes always demand a place of honor and they usually have some Pharisee pals to help them get it. Houlahan is a Pharisee, you see. The scribes and the Pharisees always work together and the Beltway is full of 'em. And it's full of other things, too. 

Speaking of annoying blowhards. . .

Jim Acosta, CNN's bien pensant apostle of self regard, thinks he's entitled to White House press pass, mostly because he has Important Questions to Ask Bad Orange Man. The redoubtable Mollie Hemingway states what should be obvious:

Pay attention to MEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The First Amendment ensures a right to speak. It does not mean anyone who speaks is guaranteed an audience, or even a platform. CNN is filled with people who would ask Bad Orange Man nasty and tendentious questions. Many of them also have White House press passes. Jim Acosta's presence is not required.

Still thinking

What It All Means? You know, the Grand Sweeping Conclusions?

Don't have any. But a few more thoughts are in order:

• Is the job of an Attorney General to be the president's wingman? Eric Holder thought so, as did Loretta Lynch and Janet Reno, and they all acted accordingly. That was okay then. Apparently things have changed.
• Eric Holder, you might remember, routinely ignored Congressional subpoenas. And apparently, that was okay, too. I'll be curious to see how that tactic goes over if the new Attorney General follows the same game plan next year.
• The single biggest thing the next AG should do is make sure that the Janus decision is actually implemented. Someone I know exceptionally well is in AFSCME and, as a result, I see a fair amount of AFSCME materials. At least in Minnesota, AFSCME wiped its butt with the Janus decision. That has to change.
• Generally speaking, Republicans in Minnesota have volunteers. The DFL has mercenaries. It's never going to be a fair fight under the current conditions.
• If self-regard were hard currency, Jim Acosta would be wealthiest man in the world. If the White House were to freeze out CNN entirely from asking questions, that would be an issue. But I don't have a problem if they put Acosta in time-out. Sam Donaldson used to be obnoxious, but he never got physical with White House staffers.
• Tony Evers is going to be a thoroughgoing train wreck. The key for Wisconsin Republicans will be to let him.

Why should I care. . . why should I care

That's the musical question that begins the song "5:15" by the Who, which also include this stanza:

Tightly undone
They know what they're showing
Sadly ecstatic
That their heroes are news

I've been wondering why certain things are in the news for a long time now. Wondering isn't the right thing to do, though, Kurt Schlichter suggests. He has a different idea:

I don’t care about the [Jamal]  Khashoggi caper because I see no reason to join in the faux shock that foreigners are terrible, or that the Saudis are so especially terrible that we must abandon a crucial ally against Iran, which hangs more gays from a single crane every day than the Saudis have ever chopped up in their consulates.

Weird, but the elite was totally mad about Donald Trump pulling out of the “We’ll pay you mullahs to get nukes slightly slower” deal and these same people are now demanding we ditch our primary Arab ally against Tehran. I mean, if I were cynical, I’d say this whole imbroglio was a steaming wheelbarrow of crap.

But I’m not cynical. Their motive for trying to destroy the US-Israeli-Saudi alliance against the mullahs is totally that they care about this sketchy dude who none of us ever heard of before last week. And Chet agrees.  

Chet’s my unicorn.

Because Khashoggi, a political operative who was lately donning the vestments of a "journalist," was killed, it's an international crisis. Or it isn't. It's okay not to care that much. The Saudi royal family and their retainers are horrible people. By some accounts, Khashoggi wasn't a great dude, either. I would strongly prefer that governments not murder their own citizens, but it's been a practice from time immemorial. It's also why I oppose the death penalty in the United States. But I'm not convinced cutting ties with the Saudis, loathsome as they are, is in our interests, either. Back to Schlichter:

I don’t care. And if you think that makes me a bad person, good. Then you won’t try to hang around me.

See, I reserve the right to decide what I care about. My caring, my choice. And I think I’ll care about things that matter to me, not things that liberal snobs care about.

I care about the interests of the United States of America more than the interests of foreign countries.

I care about Americans not being murdered here more than foreigners being murdered somewhere else.

I don’t care about the media’s peeves and whining. It brought all its misfortune upon itself with its bias, incompetence, and general scuzziness.

For now, we have the right not to care. We ought to guard that right with eternal vigilance.

It's not an angry mob, they shrieked

Oh, don't call it a mob:

Just don't.

Pant-Lodestar

(Apologies in advance for the profanity, but sometimes a blue term is le mot juste.) I'm not going to give the New York Times a link for their chickenshit op-ed yesterday. You can get to it by clicking on this Ann Althouse link if you choose, but the Old Gray Lady's perfidy ought not get any clicks or rewards. Althouse sums the argument well enough, anyway:

Unsung heroes? This person is singing about his own heroism. We just don't know his/her name, because he/she has got to stay hidden to continue sabotaging the work of the President the deplorables elected.

Self-regard is always a growth stock inside the Beltway, so that's the least surprising part of this nonsense. I'm guessing this will be at least the 174,274th time this point has been made, but so it goes: if the Metternich who wrote this piece really feels this way, he/she/it ought to resign and make a public, on the record, statement detailing specific examples of the president's incompetence. I'd also bet dollars to donuts that this individual is one of the anonymous sources for Bob Woodward's new book. We call this "cross-promotion" in the industry.

Much has been made about the use of the word "lodestar" in the piece. It's a word Mike Pence is fond of using. I sincerely doubt Pence wrote the piece, though. Pence is a good soldier. I'm guessing the actual writer isn't as senior as the Times would have you believe. I'm also guessing the actual writer will be discovered, fired, and will have no trouble making up for lost income because there's a lot of money to be made in Trump-bashing. Man, it's tiresome, though. And I continue to believe that Trump is about to turn the tables on these clowns.

The Herd of Independent Editorialists

Harold Rosenberg, from 1948, and every word is still true 70 years on:

The mass-culture maker, who takes his start from the experience of others, is essentially a reflector of myths, and is without experience to communicate. To him man is an object seen from the outside. Indeed it could be demonstrated that the modern mass-culture élite, even when it trots around the globe in search of historical hotspots where every six months the destiny of man is decided, actually has less experience than the rest of humanity, less even than the consumers of its products. To the professional of mass culture, knowledge is the knowledge of what is going on in other people; he alone trades his experience for the experience of experience. Everyone has met those culture-conscious “responsibles” who think a book or movie or magazine wonderful not because it illuminates or pleases them but because it tells “the people” what they “ought to know.”

We're still all about telling the people what they "ought to know":

More than 100 publications across the US will publish editorials rejecting Donald Trump's repeated attacks on the press.

The move is part of a coordinated effort by the Boston Globe's editorial board to denounce the president's claim that the media "is the enemy of the American people". Each newspaper involved in the campaign will publish their own unique editorial refuting such criticisms, to arrive on newsstands Thursday, 16 August.

In a statement calling on other newspapers to join the effort, the Boston Globe wrote, "We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration's assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date".

Put another way, in a stellar example of how Twitter can illuminate:

Blinded by the light

Of course, Trump didn't say the media in its entirety is the enemy of the people. Trump's own tweet calls out some organizations, but certainly not all:

He left out the Star Tribune, much to its disappointment

Never mind that.

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." I'm certain Sunday's newspapers will be nothing short of legendary.

She seems nice

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

For what it's worth, I don't watch Battlestar Galactica either

That's some of the collected wisdom and deep thoughts of Sarah Jeong, freshly minted member of the New York Times editorial board. Let's cut to the chase, shall we?

• I don't have any say over who joins the editorial board of the Gray Lady.
• If this is the sort of person the Times thinks ought to help guide their efforts, that's their business.
• I do think they ought to own the decision, though.
• Apologies in advance for being just another dog pissing on a fire hydrant, but my opinion about the Times in general and Ms. Jeong in particular? To hell with them.

Althouse cuts to the quick

Why do people love Trump? Or at least some people? As Ann Althouse suggests, maybe it's not who he is, but rather who he isn't. More to the point, he's not Richard Cohen, whose WaPo column Althouse eviscerates: This is one of the better takedowns of smug liberalism that you'll see:

Cohen has exactly one sentence that tries to say why people like Trump, and it's incredibly weak:

My guess is that it’s a low-boil rage against a vague and threatening liberalism — urbane, educated, affluent, secular, diverse and sexually tolerant. 

Yes, yes, I know. You're so sure you and your friends are the good people. Your unshakeable love for yourself and your friends is glaringly evident, as usual. By the way, if the Trumpsters are raging against the sexually tolerant, why are they they tolerating Trump's sexual behavior?

It's that "unshakeable love for yourself" that gets liberals in trouble. Self-regard is never attractive and while Trump himself is a vast sea of self-regard, he finds ways to give people a wink that shows he knows it's a game. Consider this tweet, which sent one of my lefty college friends into a paroxysm of sputtering rage :

Everybody's favorite!

 "Your favorite President" is a wink to his audience. Trump knows full well that millions of Americans, like my college friend, go ballistic at such rhetorical tropes. Not in My Name, you orange-y Hitler! Back to Althouse:

A more accurate headline would be a question, "Why do people like Trump?," not what looks like a promise to answer that question. Elite media people like Cohen should finally come around to asking the question humbly, confessing to their abject failure even to admit that they've needed to ask it and rejecting their imperious concentration on telling people what they should think. Look at all these reasons to loathe Trump. Come on, you idiots, you're embarrassing yourselves by not loathing him yet. It hasn't worked, and yet you continue to do it.

And because they continue to do it, they are Bourbons, forgetting nothing and learning nothing.