Left Jabs

  It was basically the Oprah Winfrey Show, with special guest Kamala Harris. And we happened to be there. Through a series of happy circumstances, we were in the audience for last Thursday’s Unite for America livestream. There were 400 of us, and we were surrounded by what appeared to be thousands of people on screens, watching virtually. We’d been told on Wednesday where to report, to a hotel parking lot half-an-hour from our house. From there we were shuttled to an “undisclosed location,” where we were met by metal detectors, body wands, handbag searches, the whole Secret Service thing. Which was just fine with us. I have a vivid imagination when it comes to high-value terrorism targets, and this was, after all, Michigan, militia heaven. So while we never thought twice about being there, it was good to see the assault weapons on our side for a change. The event was very much an Oprah production. Slick design, precocious video technology, it was as made-...

  Remember that whole big controversy before the debate? The one about whether the microphone should be on or off when the other person is speaking? History records that the Harris team lost that one. I’m not so sure. Trump’s handlers wanted the mics off, presumably to keep their guy from haranguing Harris and alienating the audience. Harris’s people fought to keep the mics on, for essentially the same reason, or so it’s said. The theory was that Trump’s inability to keep from interrupting would expose his boorish assholery, which would most likely work to her advantage. That theory always seemed counterintuitive to me — I couldn’t see any downside to keeping Trump quiet, or upside to letting him talk under his breath. So I suspected the Harris team might be playing rope-a-dope. Indeed, I think they faked the Trump side into keeping the mics off, which is what they wanted the whole time. Because what they knew — and we didn’t — was that Harris had a whole re...

  It was 2018, and Sen. Kamala Harris was sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioning Brett Kavanaugh about the Mueller Report. It was his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and it wasn’t going well at all. We remember that hearing, mostly for the sexual assault allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, but also for the FBI’s refusal to investigate those allegations, and for Kavanaugh’s insistence that beer was a major food group. But Harris was less interested in Kavanaugh’s creepy youth than in his furtive sidestepping of a question she undoubtedly knew the answer to. Specifically, she wanted to know if he’d ever discussed the Mueller Report with anyone from Trump’s personal law firm. It was a yes-or-no question, and Kavanaugh took great pains to avoid answering it. If he said yes, he’d be confessing to a major ethical breach. If he said no, he’d be lying to Congress, and Harris would have the receipts to prove it. But it wasn’t the substance of ...

  He was there to patch a crack in our foundation. It was a tricky job that had, over the course of a year, vexed several other repair guys who were supposed to know what they were doing. The foundation was still under warranty, so we didn’t much care how many tries it took, as long it got fixed. But our builder, who was ultimately responsible for the warranty, wanted to get this off his plate, so he finally splurged and sent in Bill, the foundation whisperer. Every trade has one, the go-to guy, the hotshot who’s more expensive, but worth it. As Bill was happy to tell us himself. Fifty-something, loud and gregarious, oozing self-confidence, he looked over the crack, turned up his nose at the previous repairs, then told us he’d have it fixed in an hour and a half. Which he proceeded to do, and apparently quite well, though we haven’t yet had enough rain to really test the repair. All of which would have added up to a reasonably satisfying experience if we c...