I saw Yogi Berra on a late-night talk show years ago. I forget who the host was; maybe Johnny Carson. Of course, the topic soon turned to Yogi’s famous sayings. And Yogi had a confession to make right off the bat. He made it with a great Yogi-ism. “I never said a lot of the things I said.”

Trump’s a lot like Yogi in that way, don’t you think? About a week ago he clearly stated on camera that he had no problem releasing the video of the boat murders. Yesterday, when Rachel Scott of ABC News stated that as a prelude to a question, he stopped her and said: “Who said that? I never said that.” Just like Yogi! He never said what he said.

Then he ripped into Scott with a vicious personal attack. “You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious– a terrible reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you.” 

It’s not clear why he didn’t call her a pig. Could it be because she’s Black? It’s reverse racism!

Here’s Rachel. I concede that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but that’s an impressive-looking cover, if you ask me.

Rachel’s 32 and has a degree in journalism from USC. In June 2021, she received media attention for asking Putin: “The list of your political opponents who are dead, imprisoned or jailed is long … what are you so afraid of?” A year later she was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Emerging Journalist, the first year the category was introduced.

On July 31, 2024, Trump appeared before an interview panel of the National Ass’n of Black Journalists (NABJ), where Scott was a panelist. She began by repeating Trump’s statements about Black and other women-of-color leaders, his support of January 6 rioters, and his criticism of DEI initiatives. Trump called it “a very rude introduction,” and claimed Scott arrived 35 minutes late to the interview. In fact, the start time was delayed because Trump was demanding that NABJ not do a live fact-check of his answers. Can’t blame him.

Rachel married Elliott Smith last year. She met him at a brewery. (Burp!) She doesn’t drink beer. Smith heard her ordering wine at the bar and gently upbraided her for doing so at a brewery. They hit it off. He’s a program administrator at Yale’s Divinity School and he thought she was divine. Ba da boom.

Hey Smith – your wife was just personally insulted on national TV by an asshole of epic proportions. And how about the rest of the WH press corps? Your colleague was just crudely dissed for doing her job brilliantly. You all just letting it go? At least issue some sort of public statement.

Mr. Trump,

By virtue of your position, you have the unique opportunity to serve as a role model for American children. And what are you doing? Issuing degrading personal insults in a public forum to professional women who are just doing their jobs. Incredibly, you called a woman a pig to her face in front of her peers and the nation. What the f*ck is wrong with you? If we had a son who behaved as boorishly as you, he’d be grounded till hell froze over.

Or something along those lines. I’m too disgusted to go on. C’mon guys, especially you, Elliot. Your new wife! Don’t just let it go.

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This poem is called “Great Depression Story.” It’s by Claudia Emerson and was in yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s making me hungry, but what doesn’t?

Sometimes the season changed in the telling,
sometimes the state, but it was always during

the Depression, and he was alone in the boxcar,
the train stalled beneath a sky wider

than any he’d seen so far, the fields of grass
wider than the sky. He’d been curious

to see if things were as bad somewhere else
as they were at home. They were—and worse,

he said, places with no trees, no water.
He hadn’t eaten all day, all week, his hunger

hard-fixed, doubled, gleaming as the rails. A lone
house broke the sharp horizon, the train dreaming

beneath him, so he climbed down, walked out,
the grass parting at his knees. The windows

were open, curtainless, and the screendoor,
unlatched, moved to open, too, when he knocked.

He could see in all the way through to the kitchen—
and he smelled before he saw the lidded

pot on the stove, the steam escaping. Her clothes
moved on the line for all reply, the sheets,

a slip, one dress, washed thin, worn to translucence;
through it he could see what he mistook for fields

of roses until a crow flew in with the wind—
sudden, fleeting seam. By the time he got back to the train,

he’d guessed already what he’d taken—pot
and all—a hen, an old one that had quit

laying, he was sure or she wouldn’t have killed it.
The train began to move then, her house falling

away from him. The story ended with the meat
not quite done, but, believe him, he ate it

all, white and dark, back, breast, legs, and thighs,
strewing the still-warm bones behind him for miles.

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Get it? Took me a minute. It’s John Paul McKnight of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), who posted: After explaining what my new t-shirt means to my non-engineering family members, they now think I may be even duller than I previously was.

Roy Whittaker: Are you Wire Wound or Metal Film….? Feel free to resist answering.

John Scotland: If you didn’t have a separate organiser box for your resistors, they’d have no ohms to go to…

Shaun Gisby: Watt?

Paul Huang: Took me half a mho!

[OC note: The mho is an historical unit used in electrical engineering to quantify a material’s ability to allow the flow of electric current. You knew that, right?]

Matt McLaughlin: But surely not if bypassed as the image depicts?

Derek Rose: The resistor is for all intents shorted and of no use in this circuit. However….the wire can (and will have some) resistance however minimal and the result of 2 resistors in parallel is always less than the individual value of each resistor.

Avi Liveson: Fell off the truck there.

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Separately, on another dull topic (meat pies), Andy Spragg shared what he billed as “the world’s best anchovy joke.” Brace yourselves.

Three lads go for a meal at a new pizza restaurant, whose pitch is that you can totally personalise your pizza: you just have to choose any three ingredients from a huge list, and voila: made to measure pizza.

So the first guy who is a total carnivore opts for a venison, kangaroo, and biltong pizza. The second guy who is an out-and-out veggie opts for an artichoke heart, salsify, and banana blossom pizza. The third guy, who just loves anchovies, doesn’t want anything outlandish to distract from the anchovial loveliness, so he opts for anchovy, onion, and tomato.

Appetites duly whetted, they sit back to await events. After a bit, three pizzas get delivered, and the first two guys are raving about theirs and how generous all the portions are of their chosen toppings. Meanwhile, the third guy is looking at his pizza and wondering what went wrong. He calls the waiter back. “My two mates are raving about their pizzas, no complaints there. And mine … well, no complaints about tomato and onion, but they were just supposed to be a foil for the anchovies. Where are they all? There seem to be only three of them!”

And the waiter, looking a bit dumbfounded, replies …

…

(spoiler alert)

…

…

“But sir, most people don’t like anchovies.”

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I sent that joke to Brookline Carl who sent this one back to me:

A guy goes for his annual physical.  Everything is going well and the doctor says “We have one last thing: Your prostate. Go over to the exam table, lean on it, drop your shorts, and spread your legs wide.  And don’t get an erection, Steve.”

The guy says, “Doc!  My name is Daniel, not Steve!”  The Doc says, “I know. My name is Steve.”

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In the puzzle today, at 47D the answer was THEA. And it’s a Tuesday but the constructor, Kaye Hawkins, did not take the easy way out by cluing it with “The A Train.” Instead, to her credit, the clue was “‘Edie & ___: A Very Long Engagement’ (2009 documentary).” It’s about a lesbian couple from NY. How one cared for the other when she was stricken with MS and their marriage in Canada when gay marriage was still barred in the U.S.

One of the central “tools” of estate tax planning is the marital deduction which excludes from taxation property of the decedent’s that goes to the surviving spouse. This was not available to Edie and Thea at Thea’s passing because their marriage was not recognized in the U.S. So Edie was hit with an estate tax bill over $350,000. Do you like happy endings? Edie’s case went up to the pre-Trumpian Supreme Court and it held that DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) was unconstitutional.

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Can you think of a better way to close than with pretty girls singing a bluegrass song? We can’t either. (Actually picked this up from Paul Krugman!) See you tomorrow!

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