On these pipe bombs

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew C. McCarthy has this to say on the reportage about the apparent pipe bombs sent to various Democrats and CNN:

At this point, there is no evidence whatsoever that provocative words from the president had anything to do with the sending of bombs. Indeed, there is as yet no known evidence of who is behind these possible attacks. And speaking of “attacks,” why, in light of the context of a possible bombing spree, is the Times asserting that Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Mr. Soros have “figured prominently in conservative political attacks”? They have not been subjected to “attacks” in the sense conveyed by this report; they have been on the receiving end of mere political criticism, not the subjects of attempted political assassinations.

There is plenty of media commentary at the moment about incivility, in the form of incendiary rhetoric and actions. This is entirely appropriate. But I’m at a loss to understand how the climate is improved by spicing up reports with thinly veiled suggestions that President Trump may have triggered a series of potentially murderous attacks on political opponents. When Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson opened fire on the Republicans he targeted and nearly killed Representative Steve Scalise, I don’t recall much Times speculation about whether he could have been set him off by Democrats urging their supporters to get aggressive — “get in their face”; “if they bring a knife, we bring a gun” — when dealing with political adversaries.

The press is very happy about this story. The timing could hardly be better. It appears to contain many elements they consider very helpful: attempted violence against Democrats (including themselves) that doesn’t succeed and which can be blamed (rightly or wrongly) on the right and particularly on Trump. The logic of that—and the fact that the MSM fails to do anything of the sort when the roles are reversed, and the violence or threatened violence is against the right—doesn’t matter. If they can sell it and they think it will help the left and hurt the right, it doesn’t have to be correct and it certainly doesn’t have to be evenhanded; au contraire.

As none other than Donald Trump Jr. points out here:

And speaking of what’s “correct” or not, much of the speculation on the right has to do with the composition of these pipe bombs and whether they were ever intended to go off or not. That is speculation at this point, in no small part because the MSM is unreliable and much of what is printed about things like this is later discovered to have been false.

But I present this as an example of what’s out there:

Photos of the device show a cylindrical object, about six inches long, wrapped in black electrical tape and with wires emerging from either end.

The wires — one red and one black — lead to a digital clock or timer taped to the middle of the tube.

A senior law-enforcement official told The New York Times that it resembled the others, saying, “Same package. Same device.”

The FBI described the devices as “potentially destructive,” and law-enforcement sources told The Post that the first one discovered — in a mailbox outside the Katonah home of billionaire George Soros Monday — had black powder on it.

But a source briefed on that device and the one sent to CNN told The Post on Wednesday that they couldn’t actually have blown up because neither was equipped with a blasting cap or other means of detonating explosive material.

“There was nothing to ignite it,” the source said. “There was nothing there.”

The source also said an envelope of unidentified powder contained in the CNN package was too small to create a radiological or biological “dirty bomb.”

The fact that none of the bombs blew up suggests they were built by an amateur, former FBI Agent Steve Gomez told ABC News.

Or by someone who didn’t want them to blow up.

Take your pick.

It’s less than two weeks to the election. I very much doubt whether we’ll know who did this and why until after the election. Maybe not even then.

[NOTE: The MSM is also positing a false equivalence between words that actually incite violence and words that criticize the press. Pointing out the flaws of the press and the fact that some of their stories are fake or wrong is not even remotely equivalent to telling people to send them bombs or hurt them. But the MSM would like you to make that connection, and keep themselves safe from all criticism as a result.]

You want speed? I’ll give you speed—“Theme and Variations”

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written about the wonderful Balanchine ballet “Theme and “Variations” before, here. But this time I want to concentrate on a different aspect of it: speed. Here’s a short solo portion from 1978 in which the ballerina’s part emphasizes that quality. I’ve noticed that, in recent years, the ability to dance extremely fast has become less valued and that dancers now have more and more trouble with it.

Of course, dancing ballet really fast was never easy, and some people were much better at it than others. This video is an example of someone—Gelsey Kirkland—who was one of the champs of speed (in more ways than one; she ended up having quite a drug problem).

This clip features Kirkland and Barishnikov in their heyday (1978). I saw them do it live—not this particular performance, but another similar one. This video shows the actual speed of the performance. It’s blurry but well worth watching. You can see the whole thing if you click on the “YouTube” logo, but I’ve cued it up here for Kirkland’s solo lasting less than a minute—about forty seconds, actually. But boy, there are a lot of steps in that forty seconds!:

This is the New York City Ballet with Merrill Ashley, I would estimate during the late 1980s. Like Kirkland, Ashley was known for speed and her sharp, precise technique. Ashley is tall, Kirkland small. A tall dancer often finds allegro work more difficult because it’s harder to pull the body together quickly. You’ll see that although she’s very fast and quite sharp, she’s not as fast and sharp as Kirkland:

There are a couple of other videos on YouTube of the same passage with different companies and dancers, but they’re not in the same league.

Some questions about the caravan

The New Neo Posted on by

Who organized the caravan?

Who is helping these people along the way?

What will happen when they reach the border?

I could give you links to articles purporting to answer the first two questions, but I think that none of them are worth the paper they’re printed on (which is no paper at all). You can find a lot of links to them in this roundup at Ace’s, however, if you’re interested in seeing some.

I think it’s clear, however, that the caravan is not a group of people that arose spontaneously and organically, and are foraging for food along the way. Someone is helping them.

The Trump administration has said that they will not be allowed into this country:

“You will not be successful in getting into the United States illegally, no matter what,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday. “I repeat: The caravan will not cross our border into our southern states under any circumstances.”

Pompeo has been working with the Mexican government and the United Nations agency responsible for refugees to arrange for the migrants to be stopped before they reach the Rio Grande. He challenged criticism that the Trump administration has taken a harsh line with refugees by lowering the number of annual admissions, but also defended a zero-tolerance policy for the current caravan.

“We are determined that illegal entry into the United States from this caravan will not be possible,” he said.

The all-important “how?” question has not been answered, however.

As I’ve said before, it seems quite likely that the timing of this is connected with the coming election. However, I’m not at all sure it will come to a head before that.

Political violence, left and right

The New Neo Posted on by

In recent days the left has increasingly been promoting the idea that violence in the service of politics is perfectly okay, even recommended.

When a leftist tried to assassinate a bunch of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field about a year and a half ago, and came very close to succeeding, it was only covered relatively briefly considering the incident’s severity, and the political motivations of the perp were sometimes minimized or denied.

Now there has been a series of what looks like pipe bombs delivered to the homes of various people on the left, mostly in the New York area. We know nothing about the perp or perps, but one can assume it’s someone on the right.

Fortunately, authorities have intercepted the packages and no harm has been done to anyone. They were sent to the homes (or mailboxes) of Soros, Clinton, Obama, as well as the CNN offices. Except for the latter, as far as I know these addresses are rather difficult to come by. It’s a bit puzzling how they were obtained, although no doubt it can be done by a determined person. Also, since I think most people would assume that all the targets have lots of security, it was always highly likely that such devices would not pass security.

Which is exactly what happened:

“The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,” the Secret Service said in a statement.

Well, maybe the perp is sort-of-smart (smart enough to get the addresses) and yet sort-of-stupid (stupid enough to think the bombs would actually get to their targets). Or maybe the perp was just trying to frighten people. Maybe—although I doubt it—it’s even a false flag operation, like so many of the racist incidents on college campuses that turn out to be hoaxes.

We don’t know. The timing—two weeks prior to the election—indicates a desire to influence it, but that doesn’t tell us who did this.

At some point, I fear someone is going to get hurt. It could be someone on the left. It could be someone on the right. But there’s a contagion effect that goes on and is very worrisome.

Sad announcement from Sandra Day O’Connor

The New Neo Posted on by

At 88, she writes that she has been diagnosed with dementia, probably Alzheimer’s.

“I will continue living in Phoenix, Arizona surrounded by dear friends and family,” she wrote and added, “While the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings of my life.”

A dementia diagnosis is one of the most difficult possibilities in later life. I think everyone “of a certain age” is frightened by the prospect. Every time we forget something or do something absent-minded the specter rises. And for someone like O’Connor, whose intellect was a very big part of her nature, the future losses may loom especially hard.

On the other hand, as she says, she is surrounded by family and has lived a rich, full life. This has to help somewhat, although not enough. I wish O’Connor and her family well in dealing with this terribly trying period of her life.

In doing some research on O’Connor, I also came across a website for an organization she founded. The goal is the teaching of civics to young people. I have no idea whether it’s politically neutral or not, but at first glance (and I didn’t spend much time there) the aim appears to be to teach about how government functions without getting into specifically partisan messages.

I happened to see something on the news last night that quoted a survey which found that only about a third of Americans can name the three branches of government. That’s how low the teaching of civics in this country has sunk. Shameful.

World Series tonight

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the Red Sox vs. the Dodgers, and it’s scheduled to start at 8:09 PM. But there may be a rain delay.

The Sox won the Series in 1918 and then didn’t win it again till 2004. People who weren’t Sox fans for those frustrating lean years can hardly imagine how it was for those of us who were. I started being a sometime fan in the late 60s and an intense fan in the 80s, and the years between that and 2004 were enough leanness for me.

Well, Cubs fans probably understand, I suppose—they had quite a bit of a dry spell themselves between 1908 and 2016, although I don’t think they were quite as “creative” about their losses as the Sox.

After 2004 and the Sox’s Series win, which was a fabulous high that didn’t dissipate for months, I discovered to my surprise that I was now satisfied. I stopped watching the Sox’s regular season cold turkey, although I always tuned in when they were in contention in the playoffs.

So here I am, paying attention again.

[NOTE: Please see this post for the story of how I became an intense baseball fan—and why.]

Dershowitz may WalkAway…

The New Neo Posted on by

[CORRECTION: OOPS! I apologize for not checking the date of the article. I was assuming it was new because I just heard about it, but it’s actually quite old (February, 2017). So the original body of this post is old news.

However, interestingly, it turns out that Ellison was made Deputy Chair rather than Chair in the results of that election. I guess that was okay with Dershowitz, although it seems like it was a compromise that avoided the real issue—which is that he ascended that high in the Democratic Party at all, considering his history. In fact, it turns out that the “Deputy” position was newly-revived in 2017, just for him:

The Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee is a position within the United States Democratic Party that was re-established by Tom Perez in February 2017 after the 2017 DNC Chair race, won by Perez.

After a close victory over Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, Perez appointed Ellison as Deputy Chair in an attempt to lessen the divide in the Democratic Party after the contentious 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, which saw conflicts between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.[1] Perez was seen as being more in line with the Clinton wing, while Ellison was more in line with the Sanders wing.

So back then (and I obviously missed the news at the time, although I knew that Ellison had not been elected Chair) it was an attempt to welcome the leftist wing of the party into the fold at the highest levels and appease it. Fascinating. We know how much “progress” has been made since then.

Dershowitz may not have officially WalkedAway after that, but he’s certainly alienated a great many of his fellow Democrats since then.]

…if Keith Ellison is elected the Democrats’ chairman:

My loyalty to my country and my principles and my heritage exceeds any loyalty to my party. I will urge other like-minded people — centrist liberals — to follow my lead and quit the Democratic Party if Ellison is elected chairman. We will not be leaving the Democratic Party we have long supported. The Democratic Party will be leaving us!

The reasons Dershowitz gives are Ellison’s alliance with the anti-Semitic Farrakhan and Ellison’s own expressed anti-Semitism and anti-Israel votes. Dershowitz adds:

The DNC has a momentous choice this weekend. It can move the party in the direction of Jeremy Corbyn’s labor party in England, in the hope of attracting Jill Stein Green Party voters and millennials who stayed home. In doing so they would be giving up on any attempt to recapture the working class and rust-belt voters in the mid-western states that turned the Electoral College over to Donald Trump.

Jeremy Corbyn today could not get elected dog catcher in Great Britain. I do not want to see the Democratic Party relegated to permanent minority status as a hard-left fringe.

I certainly agree with the danger of the Democrats’ hard-left turn. Then again, I think Dershowitz is fooling himself to think that this turn didn’t happen long ago, and was merely somewhat hidden with dissembling rhetoric.

Dershowitz has been expressing views outside the Democratic party line for quite some time now, and I think it’s cost him a lot (I’m written many times on this blog about him). But he is not yet ready to really leave. He adds something that takes away from his declaration:

If [Ellison] is elected, I will quit the [Democratic] party after 60 years of loyal association and voting. I will become an independent, continuing to vote for the best candidates, most of whom, I assume, will still be Democrats. But I will not contribute to the DNC or support it as an institution.

He assumes they will still be Democrats? Why on earth would he assume that? It’s an example of what I have previously called “the birthmark” of political identity:

…[T]he groups to which we belong–social, ethnic, religious, racial, class, professional, recreational, familial, political–all are pieces in the puzzle that creates our sense of identity. The majority of people are probably most comfortable when they perceive the elements within them as cohesive, and are uncomfortable when they see them as clashing with each other. But all sides–Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, “progressives” and anarchists and libertarians–take on an affiliation which becomes a basic part of personal identity and is consequently often very difficult to give up.

An excellent illustration of this phenomenon is Democrat Zell Miller, who gave a speech nominating G.W. Bush at last year’s Republican convention. This earned him the enmity of most of his fellow Democrats, who considered him a traitor to the party.

Many people wondered aloud why Zell Miller had not switched parties in light of his strong alignment with the Republicans and his staunch opposition to the Democrats. A “conservative Democrat” seemed to be a sort of oxymoron.

Miller’s answer? That he was born into the Democratic Party and considers his party label to be “like a birthmark”–innate, and difficult to eradicate.

I am virtually certain something similar is part of Dershowitz’s makeup. He is profoundly torn between his own identity as a Democrat—which to him is identified with “the good”—and what he cannot help but see with his own eyes. I don’t make light of the conflict. It is why a mind can be a difficult thing to change, and a party affiliation as well.

I also don’t think the Democratic Party cares what happens to Alan Dershowitz. Whether he supports them or not won’t change a thing for them, and his threats will have no effect on them. I don’t know whether they’ll elect Ellison or not—he has other baggage at the moment—but I do feel very strongly that if they don’t it won’t be because of any threats by Dershowitz.

[Hat tip: commenter “Julie near Chicago.”]

Trump, the unlikely populist (redux)

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I watched about ten minutes of Trump’s latest rally speech. It struck me that he hasn’t changed all that much from the last (and first) time I watched one, over three years ago (can it really be that long?) If anything, he’s both more relaxed and more strident, but he was already relaxed and strident back then, too.

When I wrote that post I just linked, the one from three years ago, I hadn’t yet seen much of Trump. I’d never watched his TV show or paid much attention to him prior to his entry into politics. But I’ve certainly made up for lost time since then, haven’t I?

I think most of what I wrote on viewing that first speech still holds, and it strikes me that the things I mentioned are among Trump’s great political gifts and contribute significantly to what makes him unique as an American politician (at least, compared to others I’ve observed in my lifetime), and are a goodly part of what so confounds Trump’s opponents and enemies and ties them into furious impotent knots.

So I’m going to reproduce the gist of that post of mine from August of 2015, with some recent additions in brackets. Here it is:

Trump giving a political speech is not like anyone else giving a political speech. He’s in his element in front of a crowd. And even in Alabama [or Texas, or anywhere], the New York shtick that you would think wouldn’t play so well there seems to be something they love when Trump does it. People are really really really sick of feeling impotent as Obama has thumbed his nose at them and lied to them, as the GOP has either disappointed or outright betrayed them [something which has somewhat changed lately for a lot of people, as the GOP has shown more spine], and as PC thought has taken over our values, education, the press, some churches, and many novels and movies [this aspect has, if anything, worsened].

Trump seems immune from PC considerations and also from the ubiquitous need to be beholden to conventional donors. He has the advantage of his familiarity to the public and his relaxation in front of the camera gained from years of being a showman and a TV personality. Trump has a populist appeal—you could see it very clearly during his speech—but he’s a rich-as-Croesus populist who doesn’t trash the rich as so many populists do; au contraire. Nor does he apologize for being mega-rich himself; he brags [bragging about his riches has now been mostly replaced by bragging about his record as president].

Trump has mastered not just the “art of the deal” but the art of giving a speech that sounds like ad-libbing stream-of-consciousness but is not. As he went along it occurred to me that what he is doing is cheerleading for America, reiterating over and over what he would do [and now, he adds what he already has done] for America and what he would do for the people he is speaking to, and fitting his words to their desire that America be what it once was. It’s the flip side of Obama’s hope and change: they hope that he can change things back to a time when America was great, and that’s his explicit message and the slogan on the very flyover-country-looking hats he wears and sells. This is a guy who knows marketing, and it’s no accident that the slogan is also pretty much what Reagan used in 1980 (Reagan put the word “let’s” at the beginning of the phrase, but otherwise it was exactly the same).

Trump is a happy warrior, or at least talks like one. “I will rebuild the military so it’s so strong and so powerful that we’ll never have to use it. No one will ever mess with us” is a typical utterance. He lists stuff—trade, health care, women’s health issues—and says “we’re gonna fix it.” And I guess people believe him, or at least believe he’s sincere about trying. How he’ll get around the impediments that stand in the way is unclear, but people don’t want clarity. They like his style. They like his spirit. [And now, of course, he has his record of political accomplishment to point to, so we know more about the “how.”]

“We have a great lack of spirit,” said Trump, and he’s right; and he’s out to provide it, and he does. He says he had thought Obama would be “a great cheerleader,” (hmmm, I thought; I just perceived him as a cheerleader a moment ago, and now he’s using the word). Instead, Obama is “a great divider.” But Trump? “I am going to make this country bigger and stronger and better and you’re gonna love it, and you’re gonna love your president…and you’re gonna be so proud.”

…[Trump] makes all other politicians look boring and stilted (hey, many of them are boring and stilted). He makes it all sound so simple—just as Obama did, but in a completely different direction and with a completely, and I mean completely, different style. Populist appeal is a neat trick in a man who’s a multi-billionaire and who grew up in enormous wealth and graduated from Wharton. But he’s got it, and although I’m sure he carefully nurtures it he manages to make it look natural.

That was towards the end of the post, but I ended it by saying I didn’t understand the people who didn’t take Trump’s candidacy seriously. Even in August of 2015 I took it very seriously indeed, and thought all the other Republican candidates and the Democrats as well should be scared by his entry into the race, because someone with those skills could win both the nomination and the presidency. It wasn’t that I necessarily thought either would occur, but it was clear to me that they might occur and that the chances were not minuscule.

Well, history has told us it happened, and here we are. And Trump is still giving those relaxed and strident speeches demonstrating his political skills, and still drawing absolutely enormous crowds. Now, as I said, he has a track record to go with his braggadocio. This gives him added confidence and lends credence to what he says.

Trump said in that speech from three years ago that he wanted to be a uniter. The country is more bitterly divided than ever, but I don’t see that as primarily his fault. The Resistance was fully in place even before he took office, and they are determined to divide and conquer, to undermine everything he does, and to make it so that half the country doesn’t even really listen to him or hears a distorted version of what he is saying.

Trump is still drawing mammoth crowds. There are no doubt many reasons for that, but one thing about attending a Trump speech is that it’s fun. Of how many politicians can you say that?

The caravan moves on—and on

The New Neo Posted on by

“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in,” Trump said in one tweet.

“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic). Must change laws!”

Activists say the journey through of at least 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) through Mexico to the US border could take a month.

The timing is interesting. Our elections are only about two weeks from now, so the caravan should still be in transit at that point. Does the left—which helped organize the entire thing—think that’s good timing for them? In the tweet I quoted above, Trump seems to think the timing helps the GOP, at least potentially: “Must change laws!” Of course, Congress has been talking about that for decades without coming up with anything workable.

“We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Seems to me that this could cut either way. The caravan energizes the right, for obvious reasons—including the lawlessness and defiance and yes, the sense of entitlement expressed by many of the quoted caravaners in the news. But there are a lot of people on the left who feel it helps them, by playing on the sympathy of those who think the US needs to take everyone who tries to get here.

Of course, those who think the US needs to take everyone who tries to get here are probably already voting Democrat.

And speaking of mobs—are we allowed to use the word for caravan? A mob in transit?

Prognostications on the House in November 2018

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve said before that I’m worried about the makeup of the next House of Representatives. The specter of Pelosi or someone politically similar as Speaker, the rise of the hard left, the end of ongoing investigations that I think are important, the impeachment plans—all those things are not happy prospects.

In addition, it’s profoundly depressing to think that so many voters seem to find those same prospects consummations devoutly to be wished. And that includes a lot of my friends and family.

But that’s not what this post is about. That’s just the intro.

The real subject of this post is the prediction of the House elections. Blue tsunami, blue trickle, red wave surprise—predictions vary, but it’s a mystery. Not only have I lost whatever lingering faith I ever had in the polls, but House races are notorious for being difficult to poll and difficult to predict—which doesn’t stop prognosticators from doing so, over and over and over again. You can hardly open a paper (or click on a website, which is the way I get my news) or visit a blog without seeing a prediction, usually of a blue wave. And yet, I don’t think anyone really knows. I think we’re all just guessing in the dark.

Why are House races especially difficult to predict? They require more delicate and precise sampling, because the districts are so often complicated by the dictates of gerrymandering. There are so many House elections—every single member of the House is up for re-election every two years, and quite a few races are hotly contested and seemingly close—that polling is expensive and often not done, or not done all that often. Also, unless you do an up-to-the-minute poll shortly before the election itself the polls can be quite meaningless, because the situation can change so rapidly. In addition, because it’s a midyear election with no presidential race, turnout is especially important because fewer people vote, and yet turnout is particularly hard to predict. For all these reasons I think most House polls and predictions are garbage-in/garbage-out, even more so than in a presidential year.

I find myself wanting to turn away from the news in general, but in particular wanting to turn away from any article about what will happen in the House come November 6, 2018. And you?

To all leftists and “Resistance” members

The New Neo Posted on by

Take it from one who knows:

As a straight, white, Christian, right-wing, middle class male of European extraction I get told to shut up a lot. As you can imagine, this does not at all stop me from speaking out…

But if lived experience is indeed the be-all-end-all that the identarian left considers it to be, there is one area where my lived experience without a doubt shit all over the lived experience of the woke folk. Unlike all those among them who have been born and/or raised in the West and have zero or almost zero experience of living under anything other than a liberal democratic government (which is 99 per cent of them at least), I have lived the first 15 years of my life under the Soviet block-style communism, or “real socialism” as the Party used to call it…

So to all the women dressing up in costumes from “Handmaid’s Tale” who think they’re on the brink of living in a misogynist theocracy,

To all those calling themselves “The Resistance”, as if they were the French Maquis or the Polish Home Army shooting collaborators and derailing trains after their country has been brutally occupied by a totalitarian foreign power,

To those who think that America is currently in a grip of fascism and are calling on the military to stage a coup to remove the President…

To all those who have compared Trump to Hitler…

you really have no idea, and I mean it with the greatest possible respect. Actually, I don’t. Most of you are supposedly mature, rational adults but you seem to have at best the most superficial knowledge of history and a complete lack of self-awareness, any sense of perspective, and an ability to contextualise. Having spent your lives relatively free of hardship, deprivation and persecution on any remotely comparable scale to people in other, less fortunate corners of the world, you probably get some frisson from believing yourself to be big actors at a critical time in history, the last line of separating civilisation from the descent into new dark ages. You’re free to engage in whatever ideological cosplay you want, but don’t expect others to take you seriously.

You can pick up any of the thousands of books written about life under a dictatorship and read all about it, or you can watch a doco or listen to a podcast, but clearly you couldn’t be bothered to do so thus far in your life, so I’m going to give you potted version of how a real tyranny (it does not particularly matter whether communist or fascist as they are quite similar in practice, which is of course another thing you don’t want to hear, but that’s tough – they certainly have far more in common with each other than with a free society) works and what the world in which I was growing up looked like…

He proceeds to tell them what that world looked like.

The whole thing is well worth reading.