Just in time for Mothers’ Day, our little school extruded a group of now-former-students into the toilet bowl of modern life. I hadn’t laid out a grand for a cap, gown, and cowl for the procession, so I stayed quietly in the audience. Mercifully, the speeches were kept quite short including the official commencement speaker, a prominent liberal economist. A few platitudes, then collected his check and flew off on a private jet. No student protests, no I HATE JEWS banners, it was actually a well-managed event with well-mannered students. So of course will be roundly ignored by the news media. All for the good.
Also good? Birthdays, and today’s include a guy who was totally organic; a guy name-checked by the Beatles; a woman who inspired one of my favorite movies; a guy who opposed Wilson but was wrong about everything else; the actress with the best attitude and legs (see Pat and Mike) in American cinematic history; the inventor of pink cars; a guy who really did deserve execution; the most quoted and falsely attributed person in history (Lincoln and Einstein notwithstanding); a guy who didn’t know enough to come in from the rain; the wrong answer to my favorite baseball trivia question; Dan Ayckroyd did this guy better than he did himself; a complex minimalist; a guy who was funny until he decided that he was an Intellectual; the white male version of Karine; maybe the most multitalented musician this side of Paul McCartney; a guy you don’t want anywhere near your car; the least interesting person on Better Call Saul; a shaved sasquatch with great hands; and a worse version of Boris Johnson.
And nothing’s worse than Links, amirite?
Hard to imagine, but when you are publicly vocal about wanting Jews dead, people notice.
The passing of a legend who had no illusions about Hollywood.
Look, let’s admit it: It’s Jew laser satellites doing this.
“So our new branding means only 95% of your paycheck.”
Pointless waste of money, but at least it keeps them off the streets and out of trouble.
And here’s a birthday boy kicking ass on my favorite Traffic song. The Old Guy is grateful for YouTube preserving these great performances.
Happy Birthday, Sam Clemens! 😃🥳
(Also, “guy who opposed Wilson” link is a duplicate of prior link.)
Oops, fixed.
Thank you! I can’t hear of him or any of his extended family without being reminded of this pithy bit of verse.
I couldn’t sleep until very late….finally get up and drag my ass here to check in.
Right out of the gate, with a first no less, GT takes the words right out of my mouth.
Perhaps I should go back to bed.
😁
Going back to bed is rarely a mistake, but why don’tcha stick around a while? Hope it’s as beautiful a morning where you are as it is here at Tranquility Base!
Florence Nightingale opposed Wilson? And was a guy? Who knew…
Maybe that was Flip Wilson.
Florenz Nightingale.
I assume the movie in question is Carry on Nurse.
By intrepid WaPo reporter Pearl Clutcher. (Thanks again for archiving the paywalled WaPo and NYT articles for those of us averse to giving them money or our personal info!)
‘we’re actively persecuting someone for political reasons… Can you believe he said a bad word about us? The nerve of some people.”
“Trump Is More Ahead Than Ever, Everything We’re Throwing At Him Is Not Working, Not Sticking”
Your link isn’t sticking either. May lack sugar.
Weird. Anyway: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/10/carville_everything_were_throwing_at_trump_is_not_working_not_sticking.html
Proves why I hate that piece of shit, though. Add link breaking to the long list of evil…
“We have made it clear that we are lying pieces of shit with no honor or integrity whatsoever, no respect for civil society and are openly waging war on the most moral, successful culture in the history of mankind and people are turning away from us towards a guy who claims to want to preserve that culture.
What the hell is going on?”
In the spirit of the birthdays: “America is the worst country, except for all of the others.” – Samuel Clemens
Wilson link oops, presumably TR.
Also good? Birthdays, and today’s include a guy who was totally organic;
Happy birthday Dieterich Buxtehude?
A fine choice. Perfect for a sunny Sunday morning.
Corman was amusing on Dinner for Five, if anyone remembers that show.
a guy you don’t want anywhere near your car;
Happy birthday Ralph Nader?
*opera applause *
Unfortunately, Nader won that battle long ago.
This one almost made me physically ill.
It’s fucking 1930 all over again.
I think I want to start believing in Hell again so I can believe in a special place there for those who terrorize children. 😒
Woodstock isn’t upstate, either.
I think this is the protest referred to in the article. I’m sure everyone here will be rolling their eyes at the woman quoted in the article.
It is so odd watching a mass hysteria form in real time.
“She said the issue was the Israeli colonization of Israel 76 years ago.” Gem.
Justice for the Cannanites!!!
I thought upstate meant, not (metro) NYC.
Depends where in New York you are. People in NYC would argue Yonkers is upstate. Ellenville, in southern Ulster County (same county as Woodstock) used to be home to the Downstate Correctional Facility.
People in western New York would also argue they weren’t really upstate as places like western NY and the Southern Tier (where Rhywun is now) are different from Upstate. The North Country would of course also argue they weren’t part of Upstate either.
The Albany TV market doesn’t really cover Ulster County, and certainly not Dutchess on the other side of the Hudson since the major part of Dutchess is really Poughkeepsie, much further south. And even though the cable systems here in Ulster County tend to care the NYC local channels, they sure as hell don’t cover any news from up here. We’re the Hudson Valley and/or the Catskills, and more or less orphaned in terms of culture and news.
I’d argue Upstate begins with the 518 area code.
Upstate is anything outside the cultural milieu of NYC and Albany.
Rochester calls itself Upstate. Buffalo is Upstate as is the Southern Tier and the North Country but they have more specific titles so they use them instead of Upstate.
I hate, hate, hate, Hallmark holidays. I tell my son not to call me on Fathers Day (he still does, damn him) and for years I have refused to call my mother, whom I have a contentious relationship with, on this day. But, she is 80 now, and I should give her this little treat.
Damn it.
Be glad there aren’t many left? Be glad this wasn’t your mother?
https://www.thecut.com/article/mom-healthy-person-assisted-suicide-dying-pegasos.html
Damn. That article is a gut punch.
Couple of observations. It wasn’t money. She moved from SF to NYC 5th Ave. She wasn’t buying anything there without multiple millions and good six figure income to afford annual fees.
I’m trying reconcile an anthropology degree with libertarianism. OTH, the Japanese I may be forced to accept…
Yeah, some details in there about moneyed grandparents and the mother’s abandonment in toddlerhood. A grimmer Eloise (though the premises of that are sad too).
Well, she is as healthy as a horse, and loves RVing around the world, so I don’t think that is an option. Not that I would even remotely wish that. Contentious, not open hatred.
Obligatory?
https://allpoetry.com/This-Be-The-Verse
My sisters and I took that advice. 😐👍
Not me, I wanted my kids to have a reason for their shortcomings…
Gad, haven’t read Larkin in a while. And I hate that there needs to be a warning for Fuck.
My mother will tell us in Switzerland that, in the hospital, my grandmother was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Later, one of my half-sisters will mention that when I was a toddler, my mother told her, outraged, that her doctor had suggested my mother, too, had BPD.
I knew it!
I saw a lot of what I thought were rack jobbers at Podunkville’s only grocery store, pulling merchandise off the shelf. As a monopolistic store in a one horse tourist town they have a lot of slow times and I’ve wondered for years how they could keep the doors open.
Maybe reduce the inventory/hours open and employee costs to try to keep the lights on, I don’t know. We don’t buy much there and apparently no one else does either. Wait and see…
It’s fucking 1983 all over again.
I thought getting old meant I wouldn’t have to relive all the shittiest moments of the last hundred years.
Likewise.
Minus the yarmulkes, those blue glows were the view at intermission of a recent show I went to. The woman in front of me was reading updates from someone traveling through London, describing how she’d checked off Abbey Street (sic) from her itinerary. 🙄
(And don’t forget the obligatory We Attended This selfies.)
The most notable was “The Raven,” which teamed Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone.
Wasn’t that a GlibFlick selection?
PM Rishi Sunak last month warned Vladimir Putin “will not stop at the Polish border” if Russia defeats Ukraine.
C’mon, just call him Vladimir “Adolf” Putler.
Pretty sure that the Russian claims are not for the whole of Ukraine. It’s entirely possible that these claims are Sudetenland shaped. In any case Sunak is decidely not Churchill, I don’t think he even crosses the Chamberlin threshold.
Wheel have finally found a use for the 6 wheeled “brodozer”.
Idiot blocks driveway, another idiot helps him
There’s always a solution to every problem
Pure case of self-defense.
Would acquit.
In the early ’90s I gave a similar lesson to the owner of a new Pontiac Grand Prix GTP about why you don’t block in an already rusted/dented ’77 Impala. “Please move your car I said” “Fuck you, I’ll get over when I get over” he said. “Don’t worry about it” I said.
Looks like a Mad Max neighborhood where once you leave the compound, you don’t stop moving.
Gender Traitor asked last night how much we get from Cafe Press merchandise. The answer from on high was a coy “not much.” But something is always better than nothing, and you get cool merch.
Thanks! I suspected it was minimal, so I didn’t limit my support to that.
The new world. Cops protecting the crazies. This is getting more and more interesting as the cops aren’t always be available to stop street justice. Or they are going to start turning a blind eye to it.
Raging Harlem mob surrounds suspect in attack on 11-year-old, woman – as NYPD cops protect him
In a high-trust society, this is one of the proper functions of the police, to protect a suspect from the braying mob so that the accused can get his day in court.
How much the US is still a high-trust society, however….
Yup. I’m not sure how much longer it is going to last in NYC.
US was never a high trust society, it has been at best a medium trust society. There are far too many different cultures here for that, but we had, had being the key word, a very good justice system. But, as that erodes, the cement of whatever trust we had fails, and now we are heading too a low-trust society.
Agreed.
Now that race means more than law or justice, it’s only a matter of (not much) time.
“A Queers for Palestine chapter created a human barricade to the entrance of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, prompting a bystander to lose his cool.
On Saturday, the Central Florida branch of Queers for Palestine pulled their cars in a blockade on Interstate 4, claiming that Disney supported genocide.
An angry driver became so irate that he got out of the car to yell at the demonstrators, three of whom were arrested 11 minutes later by Florida cops.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13408269/Queers-Palestine-group-block-entrance-Walt-Disney-World-Orlando-prompting-foul-mouthed-argument-driver-claims-behavior-costing-support.html
“Queers” against rainbow Disney and for Palestine?
Same shit here.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13407843/Greta-Thunberg-detained-cops-pro-Palestine-protesters-try-storm-Eurovision-Climate-activist-hauled-away-demonstrators-clash-armed-riot-police-outside-final-venue-yell-Shame-fans-kicked-off.html
Those people are seriously delusional.
https://images.app.goo.gl/xZaw2DEefCwLH8Bs8
I’m not even trying to make sense of any of this. It’s complete fucking madness now.
The tiger repelling rock.
AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine is no more – but its remarkable success must not be forgotten
We have people like the ADL and Shapiro saying any criticism of Israel is antisemitic – which is complete horseshit. Then we have these protestors, some who may have legit complaints about Israeli policies,saying “screw-it” we’ll just go full antisemitism so nobody takes us seriously.
If they use that floating pier to dump Palestinians here, it will get so much worse. As if Biden and Netanyahu planned out how really get jew hate going here in Weimar America.
I’m thinking it’s because they actually are antisemites and don’t give two shits about Palestine. This whole nonsense was whipped up by full-on radicals and commies, after all.
Good piece I saw linked from NRO.
https://graboyes.substack.com/p/a-field-guide-to-guaranteed-certified
“As American campuses boil over with hatred for Israel and for Jews in general, it’s helpful to know what we’re dealing with. Below are five brief lessons:
Michael Moore channels 19th century German racists to prove that protestors calling for the mass murder of Jews are not antisemitic.
Professor David Bernstein notes that, like today’s campus protestors, most antisemites of the past were quite fond of Jews—as long as said Jews were sufficiently contemptuous of other Jews.
Israeli grad student Iddo Gefen discovers disturbing antisemitism at Columbia and then veers toward futile left-of-center virtue-signaling.
Karol Markowicz argues that threats to American Jews reside primarily in blue states and leftward political groupings.
I reiterate my recent argument that my alma mater, Columbia University, should be eviscerated—both for its own misdeeds and as a warning to like-minded institutions. ”
The whole piece is solid.
Probably a lot simpler. The universities teach hatred of whites in general and love of brown people. On the internet and news right now you can see brown people being blown up by whites (or close enough for these dummies). So they react as trained. The trainers have lost control of their useful idiots.
Arabs are not brown people, though. That’s why the census is cobbling up a new category to shove them into because too many of them in America were picking “white”.
But yeah, not many people are thinking too carefully about any of this.
Well… Semitic IS a language type. Arabic and Hebrew are part of the same language family. It is called Semitic. It’s just linguistics.
But of course meanings grow and change.
“Teacher on the run after being charged for criminal sexual conduct with 17-year-old student in Minnesota
24-year-old Caitlin Thao, who was a substitute teacher at St. Paul City School in Minnesota, confessed to having sex with the student after school in an empty classroom. The school issued a letter to parents on Friday about the incident.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/teacher-on-the-run-after-being-charged-for-criminal-sexual-conduct-with-17-year-old-student-in-minnesota
Tragically lost in a boating accident*. OMWC hardest hit.
*not really.
This article was not about firearms, as I expected it to be.
“Burning Man removes massive ‘antisemitic’ pro-Palestine sculpture that aimed to cause ‘stir’
More than 1,000 people signed an online petition demanding the 8-foot-by-14-foot fiberglass watermelon titled “From the River to the Sea” previously listed on the event’s website be removed — but organizers said the listing was only submitted to cause a “stir” and likely won’t be part of the annual festival in the Nevada desert.”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/11/us-news/burning-man-massive-antisemitic-pro-palestine-sculpture/
watermelon?
From the River to the Sea…Israel will be Free.
Watermelon slices were adopted by Palestinian activists after Israel banned the Palestinian flag following the 6 day war. A slice of watermelon contains red, green, white, and black.
https://hyperallergic.com/666111/how-watermelon-became-a-symbol-of-palestinian-resistance/
Oh, OK, thanks.
Added bonus, most of the campus protesters also are environmental activists, so the green on the outside/red on the inside works.
it was actually a well-managed event with well-mannered students.
The Silent Majority lives.
Dominoes
Still, Bolton said he’s never seen anything like Biden’s threat, essentially saying it would cut Israel “loose if they proceed.” He argued that this is a signal of weakness on Biden’s behalf and sends “a very bad” message to Russia and China.
“I mean, if we won’t come to Israel’s support, what are we going to do … if Russia or China threatened countries along their borders that are not so close to the United States?” he said. “I mean, people have to wonder … if we’re not going to follow through on our commitments to Israel, who will we follow through on?”
Hamas is just like China.
With the exception of Ukraine, all the other major beneficiaries are Middle East or Africa. What could possibly go wrong?
We are paying the interest on borrowed (printed) money so folks in faraway countries can live in a kleptocracy. Just like here.
Knives out
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, a former U.S. attorney with a long history of voting in favor of prosecutors, has shown signs of empathy for defendants in recent cases involving gun owners, Jan 6. rioters and former President Donald Trump.
——-
Neil Siegel, a professor at Duke University School of Law, said it struck him that someone with Alito’s background as a prosecutor would make such remarks.
“It’s really quite puzzling that the most pro-government, anti-criminal-defendant justice is the one who when it comes to President Trump being a criminal defendant is willing to slander the career attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice,” he said in an interview.
——-
But to those critical of Alito, his selective empathy ties him solidly with the kind of conservative cultural grievances that they think helped Trump become president.
In 2017, Siegel wrote an article in which he called Alito “the primary judicial voice of the many millions of Americans who appear to be losing the culture war.”
Now, he puts it slightly differently, saying Alito is “the most MAGA Republican justice — and that is a horrible, horrible thing to say about any jurist.”
Impeach him.
Weird that a guy who’s only been on the bench for 34 years can discern between an ordinary criminal prosecution and one that’s politically motivated. Baffling, it is. Utterly mystifying.
When you are convinced of your moral righteousness, anything that goes against it is utterly wrong, corrupt and evil.
Full might and majesty
— Former President Donald Trump may face an IRS bill in excess of $100 million after a government audit indicates he double-dipped on tax losses tied to a Chicago skyscraper, according to a report by The New York Times and ProPublica that drew on a yearslong audit and public filings.
The report’s findings could put renewed focus on Trump’s business career as the presumptive Republican nominee tries to regain the White House after losing in 2020.
Trump used his cachet as a real estate developer and TV star to build a political movement, yet he has refused to release his tax filings as past presidential candidates have. The tax filings that the public does know about have come from past reporting by the Times and a public release of records by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee in 2022.
Trump’s presidential campaign provided a statement in son Eric Trump’s name saying the IRS inquiry “was settled years ago, only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office. We are confident in our position.”
He’s exactly the sort of billionaire tax cheat Joe Biden wants to save us from.
Is any of this true? We’ll never find out by reading AP stories.
The tax filings that the public does know about have come from past reporting by the Times and a public release of records by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee in 2022.
Recipient of stolen/unauthorized releases?
I find it hard to believe that only now is the IRS supposedly going to issue a huge tax bill for something that was years in the past. They were in possession of those tax records all along. The only thing that change is outsiders, either in Congress or political appointees in the Biden admin or their foot soldiers, now deciding to try yet another avenue against OMB.
The report did not have any updates on the status of the IRS inquiry since December 2022, but said Trump could owe more than $100 million, including penalties, if he were to lose the audit battle.
Guilty as charged.
Scientists unlock key to breeding ‘carbon gobbling’ plants with a major appetite
Basically this could make crops more productive by allowing them to use carbon dioxide in the air more efficiently, while lowering the need for nitrogen fertilizer.
“Noo… we don’t actual solutions! We want an excuse to foist our authoritarianism on everyone!”
-Swedish Gremiln, probably.
Humanity must be punished for it’s wicked ways. Not me of course, but the rest of humanity.
Auditioning
“We’ve created, I think, a beautiful infrastructure for continuously sharing with each other what’s going on and in different realms of organizing in the camp, making sure that everybody is plugged into everything as much as possible,” said Princeton graduate student Aditi Rao in an interview with ABC News.
Students in pro-Palestinian groups from at least four universities told ABC News they created organizational structures to coordinate, plan and communicate around their calls for their universities to divest from companies or groups that profit from Israel’s war in Gaza.
We made an app for that.
Campus Jihad?
“Canary Mission is one of the oldest and most prominent of several digital advocacy groups that have intensified campaigns to expose Israel’s critics since the war broke out, often leading to harassment such as Sayed experienced.”
GASP! HARASSMENT?! Well I never! What is the world coming to when Nazi-apologist, terrorist sympathizers can’t go about their business in peace?
Top quality T&A on Slutty Sunday.
https://archive.is/pT3UH
I remember in 2016, trying to convince my wife that her theologians and Christian speakers she was following and believing were full of shit. They were more up in arms about Trump vulgarity than the blood on Hillary’s hands and her completely ruining the lives of Jennifer flowers and other bill clinton accusers.
+1 pro choice Catholics
Yes, blatant partisanship masked as following a Christian message.
I can at least see their point.
I can’t glean anything but civic religion from the fire and brimstone types that are silent on the fire and brimstone as it would apply to Trump
Just look at her now
Jill Biden on Saturday told Arizona community college graduates to tune out the people who like to tell them what they can’t do.
The first lady shared with graduates of Mesa Community College how her high school guidance counselor told her she wasn’t college material and shouldn’t waste her time going. She didn’t listen and got her college degree.
Then she got three more, including two master’s degrees and, at age 55, a doctorate in educational leadership. She went to school at night while raising three children and working full-time.
——-
“And the next time someone tells you that you ‘can’t,’ you’re going to say, ‘Oh yeah? Watch me,’” Biden said.
This is America. Anybody can grow up to be married to the President.
Wait is a commencement speech at a community college the best she can do after all those degrees and marrying a president.
Not denigrating the CC just noting that I would expect her to expect and desire more “prestigious” requests
Future LPNs and AutoZone assistant managers are just about Frau Doktor Jill’s intellectual speed, so it tracks.
Eh, my father started at a CC, and ended up with a PhD in Genetics.
“A graduation ceremony for nursing students at Howard University ended abruptly and in chaos after angry family members chanted “Let us in!” and pounded on the doors and smashed a window after being locked out when the auditorium hit capacity.
Loved ones of students in the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences packed into the Cramton Auditorium in Washington, DC, on Thursday, but not all relatives made it inside the building before the ceremony was abruptly canceled during the keynote address.
Chaotic video footage shows dozens of people standing outside the auditorium chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” as the ceremony began. Pictures showed a glass door had been shattered during the commotion as people banged on the doors and tried to push past security to go inside. ”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/us-news/howard-university-graduation-in-chaos-canceled-mid-ceremony/
WTF?
Thank goodness it wasn’t an insurrection! 🙄
With England finally in contention for a major championship, 6,000 ticketless football fans storm Wembley Stadium