What Was Behind Tiger Woods's Surprise Visit to the White House?

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

There always was something of a hermit about Justice David Souter. His presence on the bench existed mainly in the decisions, and concurrences and dissents he wrote. In many ways, he existed only on paper. When he stepped down in 2009, it was something of a surprise. But he left one lasting legacy on the institution. He may have been the last nominee who confounded the vetting process by being truly independent once he got the gig. He was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and, during his tenure, his clarity of thought and independence of mind were such a thorn in the side of conservatism that "No More Souters!" became a kind of rallying cry for people who subsequently made sure all subsequent GOP nominees were safely in the bag. There is a gulf between David Souter and, say, Brett Kavanaugh into which most of American politics has fallen and disappeared without a trace. David Souter passed away at his New Hampshire home on Thursday. He was eighty-five.

This is a swerve in pop culture that I seriously did not anticipate. From Golf Monthly:

Nobody has seen much of Tiger Woods recently as he recovers from his latest surgery, but he has been spotted at the White House of all places. Woods played in the debut season of the TGL, but then a torn Achilles tendon required surgery to curtail his latest PGA Tour comeback. The 15-time Major champion made the surprise appearance at the home of US President Donald Trump in one of his first sightings since his relationship with Trump's former daughter-in-law Vanessa went public.

This comes just a couple of months or so after Woods joined the president for a Black History Month reception back in February. I gave up whatever credentials I had as a Tiger Whisperer years ago. But his turning up on the arm of Sluggo's ex-wife and visiting her ex-father-in-law makes sense in the context of Florida high society, I guess. Especially Florida as high society run through the MAGA class-o-meter. From the Bulwark:

So it was natural, perhaps, that Morell and Republican activist Alysia McMillan wanted to put on a party of their own. The two planned to host what they described on the event’s now-deleted website as “the official celebration of President Trump’s first 100 days” at the newly Trumpified Kennedy Center. Tickets for the white-tie event cost between $100 and $2,500. Invitations promised an “unforgettable evening” where “luxury meets excitement.” The event’s website said Trump and numerous other members of Congress had been invited, and could make appearances.

The grift thereupon suffered a unanticipated explosive disassembly. They lost the Kennedy center. The organizers started buttonholing people to help them supply the alcohol. And the party, to put it plainly, blew goats.

Video of the event showed a sparsely attended dancefloor, with a puppeteer lying down and breakdancing with a pink pussyhat-wearing puppet. Hurtt’s Arlington GOP posted the video online, describing it as a “textbook grifter operation.” In an interview, Hurtt added that Morell represented an “archetypal goober.” For her part, McMillan liked the puppet-breakdancing video. “For it to be posted as an attack is quite baffling,” McMillan said. “I’m seeing people dancing around, smiling, having fun.”

I'm seeing a frat party at the most boring house on the row.

Sometimes, I wonder what looking glass I fell through.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Ain't No Yachts In The Ghetto" (Theryl Houseman Declouet): Yeah. I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathé Archives: Here, from 1957, is Ivy Wiggins, who smashed up boats and barges for a living. Ivy is accepted as "one of the lads." Smash, Ivy, Smash! History is so cool.

The We Invented New Money crowd seems to have been whipped so badly in the Senate that the political viability of the entire industry is now in doubt. From Politico:

The upper chamber voted 48-49 not to proceed on the crypto bill, squashing the effort following a chaotic week of negotiations in which the GOP backers of the legislation sought to win over a group of key Democratic holdouts. All Democrats and three Republicans — including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri — voted against the effort, which required 60 votes to advance. Democratic negotiators pushed to delay the vote until next week to give them more time to circulate potential changes with members, but GOP leaders plowed ahead.

I really wish there were no Democrats pushing this almost as much as I'd rather not be on the same side of an issue with people like Hawley and Aqua Buddha. However, the real hammer behind the effort to kill this bill was Senator Professor Warren, so there's that.

The vote is a victory for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been against the GOP-led stablecoin effort. “The only version of this bill that we have seen is one that the Republicans put out, and it has four major areas that are problems,” Warren told reporters ahead of the vote Thursday. She said it would “supercharge Donald Trump’s corruption,” put “national security at risk,” undercut consumer protection and run “a substantial risk of eventually blowing up the U.S. economy.”

And, of course, the greedy First Spalpeens were no help

Trump’s sons launched a crypto venture last year that issues a digital token known as a stablecoin that is pegged to the value of the dollar and could benefit directly from the legislation that was on the floor Thursday. The bill, led by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), would create the first-ever U.S. regulatory framework for stablecoins — a longtime lobbying goal for U.S. issuers of the tokens that hope it could help legitimize the asset as a mainstream financial product. Two days before his inauguration, Trump also issued his own memecoin and recently invited the top investors in it to a dinner and White House tour. “The Trump crypto coin scam is the biggest corruption in the history of the White House,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “If we’re going to be in the business of regulating the crypto industry, we should be prioritizing cleaning up this corruption.”

Good luck with that.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Livescience:

Paul Gould, a new detectorist with the Ninth Region Metal Detecting Group, hit on a flat metal object toward the end of a long day of detecting on Jan. 8. He thought the gold band, inlaid with triangular garnets and studded with tiny beads of gold, was an Anglo-Saxon ring. But as fellow detectorist Chris Phillips searched nearby, he hit on something even more extraordinary: a decorated raven's head...The raven's head, also believed to be Anglo-Saxon and date to the seventh century, included a stunning garnet eye and tiny gold spheres outlining the garnet-flecked "feathers." Phillips estimated it weighed about 2 ounces (57 grams)..."The finds will go through the treasure process now, which will take a while," Phillips told Live Science in an email. According to the U.K.'s Treasure Act, artifacts crafted from precious metals that are at least 300 years old can qualify as treasure.

I am willing to submit to The Treasure Process any time it is convenient.

Hey, Natural History Museum, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

While fossils of Tyrannosaurus rex are exclusively found in the USA and Canada, new research suggests its ancestors spread to the continent via a now-lost connection to Siberia...By combining information on the fossils and evolutionary trees of tyrannosaurs and their close relatives the megaraptors, an international team of researchers has come down in favour of an Asian origin for T. rex’s ancestors.

“Our modelling suggests the ‘grandparents’ of T. rex likely came to North America from Asia, crossing the Bering Strait between what is now Siberia and Alaska,” Cassius explains. “This is in line with past research finding that the T. rex was more closely related to its Asian cousins than to North American relatives such as Daspletosaurus. Our findings indicate that, while dozens of T. rex fossils have been unearthed in North America, the fossils of its direct ancestor may lie undiscovered still in Asia.”

Open Borders is how they lived then to make us happy now.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for everyone touched by the earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Los Angeles, and for all the folks in Ukraine, who stubbornly fight on, and all the folks in Gaza, and all the people in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska. And the folks caught in "historic floods" in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. (Hang in there, Pedro.) And all the folks we regularly cited here in the year gone by, and especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve.