Saturday roundup

Khizr Khan's powerful speech and Trump's unconscionable response.

In a mostly decent op-ed, this is an unbelievably meaningless statement:

“The West, meanwhile, should use its alliance with Saudi Arabia and the new opening with Iran to caution against measures that threaten regional security.”

I should go work at a think tank and get paid for platitudes. 

There will always be trade-offs between security and civil liberties and they'll always need to be debated.

Brazil's water is worst than anyone imagined. But be inspired about this Syrian refugee, who will be competing.

People are in denial (or willful ignorance) about the environmental cost of meat.

For skeptics of the idea that the government could ever help, look no further than the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, doing its job and protecting people from predators.

Nobody should be celebrating the DNC hack, but no one should be surprised.

Joyce Beatty wore the dress Melania did, better.

It's official: there is no level of success a woman can achieve and not be told to smile.

I'm old enough to remember the WalMart t-shirt controversy and to know how far we've come.

This poem about rising from the ashes is everything. So is this column on preparing to end a relationship. And so is Ask Polly's column on bravado:

Did we assume that men are the ones who fly around and bloviate, and women are the ones who silently get shit done behind the scenes, hidden from view?  Sometimes I think that if I could stand in the doorway between my office and the office of a very fast typist who was paid to listen to me trying hard to remember things, I would be much more successful or world-renowned or at least a little bit more comfortable with my own arrogance. I would proceed with direction and purpose, guided by the certainty that this world is mine as much as anyone else's. 

See also: Polly on first-world problems (excerpt not continuous):

...I’d like to tackle the first-world problem of first-world people criticizing other first-world people for trying to solve their first-world problems... I want to defend the people who write to me, to defend their right to consider and solve their problems using all the resources available to them… We live in a world where we are constantly, actively seduced by things we don’t have and can’t afford, while we’re simultaneously chided for wanting more than what we have, either more material wealth or more happiness or more love or more job satisfaction. This cultural paradox leads to all kinds of dimwitted confusion, including privileged people calling other privileged people privileged for merely acknowledging their own troubles.

So let’s reexamine this widely held sentiment that if you're basically warm and fed and reasonably healthy, any problems you have are automatically trivial... The presumption here is that longing for more when you have a lot is somehow a crime.

I agree about a truce between users and non-users of makeup (actually, I believe in minding one's own f*ing business and staying out of other people's choices). I've been asked (by my mother) "what's that thing on your forehead?" and by WMF "what's that thing on your cheek?" and neither time--though I'm sure the latter was to make a point about makeup--was I inspired to wear it.

I'm a confessed cruciverbalist.