A Glibertarians Exclusive: Sweetheart, Part I
Belleau Wood, 5 June 1918
“Didja hear?”
“Hear what?” U.S. Marine Corporal Paul O’Doull looked over at his squadmate, Private Henry Houlihan – two misplaced Irishmen, in France, awaiting a German attack. The two men were dug into shallow fighting positions behind the main trench line and were laying prone, bayonets fixed on their Springfield rifles, in case the Germans got ambitious again.
The two, other than both being of Irish ancestry, could scarcely have been more different. O’Doull was a big man, barrel-chested, bullet-headed, with fists the size of babies. Houlihan was skinny, slight, wiry and red-haired. O’Doull came from a farm in Marshall County, Iowa; Houlihan from Boston. But now they were effectively two of a kind, Marines of the 73rd Machine Gun Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, Over There as part of the U.S. Expeditionary Force.
“The Frenchies, they ordered 5th Marines to fall back. One of the officers told the French General, ‘Retreat? Hell, we just got here.’ They dug in and held.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Paul replied. “Good to have your pecker up. But tomorrow, sure as hell, we’re gonna have to go into them woods across the way and hit the Bosche there.” He lifted his head for a moment to examine the wheat field between their positions and the Germans. “That ain’t gonna be any fun. Not any fun at all.”
Paul looked up at the sky. A good hour of daylight was left. He looked around for any officers. “Seen the Captain?” he asked Private Houlihan.
“He went off to talk to the French General,” Henry said. “Up towards the north end of the line, I think.”
“Good.” Paul pulled his tobacco pouch out of his jacket pocket, rolled a smoke, lit it.
“Ask you somethin’, Corp?”
“You can ask. Ain’t sayin’ I’ll answer.”
“Fair enough.” Henry looked pensive. “You got a gal back home? Anyone waitin’ for ya?”
Paul took a long drag on his cigarette. “Nope. Was a gal I was sweet on for a while, but then I went in the Marines… So, no.”
“That’s right. You were in the Marines before the war started. Me, I joined up when Wilson got us mixed up in it.”
“Yup.”
Henry stole a look at the wheat field. “I got me a gal at home. Back in Boston. Nice little Mick gal, too. Betty O’Toole. Pretty as can be, and built…” He rolled on his side and traced half an hourglass shape with his left hand. “Gonna get married, when I get home.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Wish we had better machine guns,” Henry griped. “Damn Hotchkiss is a piece of shit. I’d rather have our old Lewis guns back.”
“We’re relying on the French for ammo. Gotta use their guns. Enough trouble getting ammo for our Springfields. You just concentrate on covering the machine gunners when they move forward, you hear?”
Henry chuckled. “I hear you real good, Corp. Hell, at least we don’t need ammo for our bayonets.”
“That’s the way to talk.”
Night fell. Henry took the first watch while Paul rolled up in his blanket and tried to ignore the rats and lice long enough to sleep.
In the morning they got the Word: The 73rd would go in with the second wave, into Belleau Wood. Their commander, Major Sibley, came down the line, his uniform clean and – wonder of wonders – pressed. “Damn dandified officer,” Paul muttered when the Major appeared.
“He’s got style, though,” Henry chuckled.
“That’ll do the sumbitch a lot of good against German machine guns.”
“We go in at 1700,” the Major told them.
The day slid by quickly. Rifle and machine gun fore picked up as the Allies pushed forward. Artillery started hammering away. The 73rd moved up into the forward trench lines, preparing for their attack.
Finally, the time came.
Whistles blew up and down the line. From the right, Paul heard a leather-lunged First Sergeant shout, “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”
The Marines came out of the trenches and charged through the wheat field. Paul ran hard, his bayonetted Springfield held ready, his equipment slapping and pounding against him as he ran. Henry ran ahead of him, faster, lighter. The German machine guns started hammering. Bullets lanced through the wheat – whick, whick, whick.
Paul heard the slap of a German 8mm slug hitting flesh. In front of him, he saw Henry go down bonelessly. Shit, he thought. He kept running. On either side, Marines shouted – “Uuuurahh!” They fired from the hip, hoping to keep the Germans’ heads down. It didn’t work.
Then, one moment, Paul was running. The next he was facedown in the wheat, stunned. His left thigh felt as though someone had jammed a red-hot poker through it. He screamed and screamed again. He grabbed his thigh, blood pouring through his fingers, and passed out.
He awoke in a field hospital. The burning in his thigh was still there, but different, somehow. He shook his head and tried to sit up.
“Hey,” a medic called. “You there, Corporal. Careful.” The scrawny corpsman ran to Paul’s cot and steadied him.
“What happened to me?”
“You stopped a machine-gun bullet. Your leg…”
“What about my leg?” Paul struggled to sit up enough to see; one foot was there, at the end of the cot. The other?
His left leg was gone from about six inches above where his knee should have been.
“They had to take it off,” the medic said. “Bone was smashed. You’d have died.”
“Dammit,” Paul said. Tears rolled down his face. “They should have let me die. What the hell am I gonna do now?”
“You’re alive,” the corpsman pointed out. “At least you get to figure that out. Plenty of Marines won’t get that chance.”
Paul let his upper body fall back onto the cot. “Dammit,” he repeated. “What the hell am I gonna do now?”
***
Marshalltown, Iowa, June 1933
The Marshalltown Daily Reporter was a typical small-town rag; some national news of the ongoing Depression, news of President Hoover’s attempts to turn things around, local farm prices and gossip. Paul O’Doull covered local sports and social events for the paper and had done so since before the Crash. He reckoned himself to be damn lucky to have any job at all. Times were hard enough as it was, harder still for a man with a leg missing. But Paul was doing all right. He had a job, he had a wooden leg, he had a rented room on the second floor above the town’s only drugstore, and he had nobody but himself to please.
It was a warm afternoon; work was done for the day. Paul was walking slowly from the Daily Reporter’s tiny offices to a nearby tavern and billiard parlor where he had planned to have some supper and a few beers, maybe get involved in a poker game to (hopefully) supplement his income.
He could move no other way but slowly, with a rolling gait, swinging his artificial leg forward with his hip at each step so the artificial knee joint would lock before he put his weight on it. He got by with no crutches, just a cane, and counted himself fortunate to be doing that well.
The Great War was fifteen years in the past. Paul was now thirty-nine. He had recovered as much as he was going to. All in all, things were going as well for him as he could expect. “Things,” he reminded himself as he made his slow way down the dusty street, “could be a hell of a lot worse.”
There was the tavern, the sign out front proclaiming “Billiard Parlor.” Two local men sat out front, each with a cigarette going. “Harry,” Paul greeted them, “Jack.” Both men greeted him; being on the newspaper, Paul was well-known in the town. He chatted with them for a few moments, then went inside.
Just inside the door, he stopped.
Things were mostly as they had always been. At a round table at the back of the place, a poker game was going – there was almost always a poker game going. At the two tables, the click-click of billiard balls came from the two tables, both in use.
But behind the bar, now that was someone new. A woman tending bar, Paul thought. What will they think of next?
Paul looked for a moment at the card game in progress. The table was full up. Instead, he went to the bar, climbed somewhat awkwardly onto a bar stool and propped his leg against the step. He regarded the new bartender as she finished drying a beer mug. About his age, he thought, maybe a bit younger, slim, red-haired, a spray of freckles on her nose. Nice figure, too. She for a white blouse and a knee-length black skirt, and some kind of floppy sun hat over her red hair. She put the mug away and came over, smiling.
“What’ll ya have?” Her voice wasn’t the flat Midwestern you usually heard around Marshalltown, nor was it a southern drawl or eastern accent Paul had heard from some of his fellow Marines; it was a smooth contralto, accentlessly cosmopolitan.
“Beer,” Paul said, “and a ham sandwich. Soup if you got any.”
“Beef and barley soup today. That all right?” The Depression had hit lots of places hard when it came to eating, but Iowans could always get beef and pork.
Paul nodded. “You’re new here,” he said, belaboring the obvious.
“Yup. Just got into town. Been working up in Waterloo, but it’s too noisy. I like a smaller town.”
Paul stole a look at her left hand. No ring. He smiled tightly, inside, to himself. “Me too. I’m Paul. Paul O’Doull.”
“Margarethe Dillon,” she said. “They call me Maggie.”
“Pleased to meetcha, Maggie.”
Seems like a fine enough gal. Pretty smile, too. I wonder, Paul thought, what’s she’s doing in a dump like this?
***
Well the pressure’s down, the boss ain’t here.
He’s gone North, for a while.
They say that vanity got the best of him.
But he sure left here in style.
By the way, that’s a cute hat,
And that smile’s so hard to resist.
But what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
What the hell am I gonna do now?
yesterday I recommended Soldier’s Pay to anyone who doesn’t yet love Faulkner
But then I would need to subject myself to yet another Faulkner story.
Well, alright then.
Bout time we got some amputee sex here on Glibs!
Jack Huston’s character in Boardwalk was the most compelling.
Pssst… that’s not why she calls him “Stumpy”, sorry.
Yo, Stumpy’s all about that bonus hole.
Bout time we got some amputee sex here on Glibs!
HAH!
Thanks Animal
Even the English had a system
https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/the-disabled-first-world-war-soldier-how-his-pension-was-calculated/
The people most likely to lose limbs got the lowest compensation?
Naturally. I also noted that officers with disabilities aren’t discussed.
Ancestor of famed army nurse Margaret?
Named after her sainted mother, begorra?
But behind the bar, now that was someone new. A woman tending bar,
Uh-oh.
“Margarethe Dillon,” she said. “They call me Maggie.”
For a moment, I was expecting Betty O’Toole.
Thanks for the soldier story. It reminded me that, just about now 160 years ago today, there were 10,000 men forming up to attack the enemy in a little town named Gettysburg, PA. Several thousand of them were spending their last afternoon on earth. “If we can just get over that wall, the War will end and we can go back to everything we love.” Feckless politicians, ego-ridden generals, cheerleading newspapers, even puffed up Dads and Moms – feed Moloch, lads, we are all behind you.
When I was a kid I loved the details. Growing up near Shiloh, playing on the cannon, reading and re-reading the maps: I never tired of military history.
But I recently summed up the way I’ve thought about these things for a good thirty years now: the war was over before it began, won in the factories of the north, but battles were required to produce 630,000 dead before generals finally accepted whose production and logistics were better. I had heard Lee criticized for wasting time and lives in the Wilderness, and that stung, but it was kind of right; but if that were true, what other time and lives were wasted? Was Davis guilty of anything if he didn’t understand? How long had it been sure that splitting the Confederacy was the way, island hopping four score before Tarawa? At the time, how sure was anyone of anything?
Standing on the barricades on the bluffs at Columbus KY one imagines that the position could never fall (see also Vicksburg), but Columbus was abandoned without a shot. When Polk evacuates, does he really believe he is moving to a position that is part of a viable future? Henry and Donelson and Pillow fall: where is the future? Over 12,000 CSA casualties at Shiloh, unprecedented, and the South didn’t even secure a draw. Morale and commitment in the north would surely falter….because southern mothers were more willing to sacrifice?
I wonder if there is ever a time when the calculation is unambiguous.
Today, for example, is Russia or Ukraine wasting lives on the way to the inevitable? I don’t know what will carry the day; maybe the answer is neither ordained nor inevitable?
Yep. 33 years ago I volunteered for a war.
Now I’m disgusted by what our government has fomented and sponsored in the Ukraine and other places. Nobody except “crazies” like Trump and RFK Jr. are even talking about peace. The only insiders who want to get out of the Ukrainian mess are those most enthusiastic to start an even dumber war with China.
Was Davis guilty of anything if he didn’t understand?
Should have let Jackson march on DC following First Manassas.
maybe the answer is neither ordained nor inevitable?
Oh absolutely the answer is neither. It is contingent on a million things. Least of all is it rational, and that is surely the lens we foolishly use in analysis.
“the war was over before it began”
I think it was a closer run thing than that. It wasn’t popular in the North, with draft riots and all. And the South came dangerously close a couple of times to winning (potentially?) decisive battles. Always a long shot, but not impossible.
If the British had thrown in with the South, they would have won. They also would have lost Canada, which is why they didn’t.
Don’t forget the twin victory on the Mississippi River that is equally as important as what will be won this afternoon in Pennsylvania. Today is when Pemberton realized that he must surrender to MG Grant. Tomorrow he will surrender his army and the city of Vicksburg thereby cutting the western part of the CSA from the rest of the body politic.
July 3 and 4, 1863 pretty well doomed the confederacy. When Lincoln appoints US Grant as the head of the Army the coffin for the CSA is constructed. When Grant executed the coordinated 1864 efforts the Rebel body was ready to be rolled into the grave.
A note to your quote. You can visit the spot and memorial stone where the NC infantry briefly got over that wall. The Union Soldiers promptly pushed them back.
NC infantry briefly got over that wall
I’ve tired of the relative fame the Maine men won at Little Round Top. Compare the remarkably faint praise for the victories at Chattanooga: the Union there won fighting uphill.
Until “The Killer Angels” was published the 20th Maine defense on day two was not well known. It was the fight in the wheatfield that got more attention. But almost everybody knows (and knew) about Pickett’s Charge. You visit the battlefield today and the Lee and Longstreet monuments are right there by the line of departure and you can still see the stone wall and the trees at “the angle”. Probably 100K or more people have walked that axis of advance (including me). I couldn’t, and still can’t, determine what Lee was thinking when he ordered that attack. There was no way for it to succeed and the Union could replace casualties in a way he couldn’t. His tactical blunder on day 3 proved to be an operational and strategic failure as well.
Don the turning spots are rarely seen at the moment. But a key turning point was when Sherman and Sheridan starting ripping apart the deep southern homeland in 1864. You can see the tone in the letters from wives to their rebel husbands change in the fall of 1864. The writers quit supporting the menfolk and start talking about their responsibility to get home and protect their own farms and families. Soon after desertions in the ANV start to climb and are an epidemic by spring 1865.
That was genius of Grant’s vision on ending the war. He attacked everywhere preventing Davis to use his internal LOCs to reenforce points in danger. He looked beyond a battle and fought campaigns. His decision after the 2d day of the Wilderness to turn the AoP towards Spottsylvania was electric to the Soldiers. Now they knew this new (and largely unknown) General was going to fight for victory. Sherman had doubted Grant during Vicksburg for cutting free of logistics, by the fall of 1864 he embraced it. In the fall of 1864 Sheridan devastated the Shenandoah Valley to a point “where a crow would have to carry its own rations”. Meanwhile, at Petersburg Lee was stuck in a trap he knew he couldn’t escape.
By November 1864 election the CSA knew they were doomed but the leaders, including Lee, continued to sacrifice their soldiers for a cause they knew was doomed. Even at Appomattox Longstreet had to tell Lee it was time to meet Grant and end the madness. Yet another reason some southerners dislike James Longstreet. But it was Longstreet who correctly called the outcome when word arrived that Lincoln had appointed Grant to the top spot.
right, my point entirely
some ignorance is willful; some calculation is epically incompetent; I, for example, loudly challenged the weak and inconsistent rationalization of WMD instantly and earned unending scorn in my conservative neighborhood for doing so even as we took casualties
we are led to believe Yamamoto knew
Waging total war against your own people is as American as apple pie.
Are we still talking about Chicago, Baltimore and Philadelphia?
Tribal conflict over turf isn’t really total war.
my favorite implication of in the hyper rejections of the lost cause: The men of the Union were so decent and ahead of their time and entrenched (pardon the pun) in the dignity of man, so monolithically abolitionist, humane, and colorblind, that they couldn’t wait to get out west and kill a million natives.
Don’t forget — same generation initially forged in the Mexican War.
I think Mexico got off really light in hindsight… though if we hadn’t been two nations of racist pricks on both sides, conquest might have been better for everyone all around (smaller southern border, racial integration might have kept Jim Crow from getting as bad, lots of labor pool so no need to import more, more Catholics so getting the WASPs to stop bewailing Papism, etc.
Since we were two nations of racist pricks, I know that’s rose-colored-glasses land. More likely some nasty slaughters… hence, they got off lucky.
Or that the anti-slavery societies of the north were the originators of the return them to Africa movement.
Did someone mention Liberia?
Slate has three stories running on third-party candidates one of which has a headine saying that 3rd parties won’t save you.
I wonder why the borg is letting these stories out.
Because RFK will be running for a third party
that would be great
I hereby proclaim this to be… The Summer of Animal.
…
I just scheduled more Animal works, through Labor Day.
Wonderful
What can I say. You guys’ feedback inspires me to write more.
Your efforts are greatly appreciated. Rainy days and Mondays not longer get me down.
Thanks, Animal! — I’m just glad we don’t have to pour some sugar on you or something…
However, the agency faced several setbacks in the X-57’s development. The project got off to a rough start with the lithium-ion battery packs short-circuiting and overheating, causing thermal runaway events.
Way to earn your pay, writer-person.
real men of genius
in automotive we were joking as early as 1997: unplanned-thermal-event walls for the barrier between cabin and engine
Here it’s important to distinguish between thermal events and pressure events.
Only one of the two involves a boom.
Now they know that heavier-than-air flight requires a lot of energy while batteries are heavy and don’t have all that much power.
X-58: $200 million to see if they can scale up those rubber-band driven balsa airplanes you find in hobby shops….
For close to $100 million, I’m pretty sure I’d be happy to deliver an electric plane that doesn’t work too, NASA.
(Real goal achieved… slushy, slushy pork in the trough!)
As long as he proves he is sorry.
“Before I let you go, I want to ask you to put on your attorney general hat again. Would you counsel President Biden, or the next president, whoever that is, to consider a pardon of the 45th president of the United States, either before or after a theoretical conviction,” Margaret Brennan asked Eric Holder.
“I think I’d look — tell the president, the next attorney general, you know, to let the – let the system do its work, try the cases, see what the results are, and then treat that convicted president or anybody else who is convicted as any other person would be treated,” Holder said.
“Pardons generally are for people who express remorse and then who have done things that show that they have turned their lives around. If those kinds of determinations can be made with regard to the former president or anybody else who is convicted, yeah, I would support that. In the absence of something like that, I don’t think that would be a wise thing to do,” Holder said.
“Pardons generally are for people who express remorse and then who have done things that show that they have turned their lives around.”
Sometimes. But sometimes they’re for people who should never have been convicted in the fist place.
Like large campaign donations to the party in power and the current pardoner?
tl;dr- It was perfect the way it was before Musk got his grubby Nazi paws on it
Elon Musk keeps finding creative ways to make the platform he paid $44 billion for less attractive to the majority of people.
Over the weekend millions of Twitter users were greeted with the message ‘Rate limit exceeded’ accompanied by a frozen timeline.
Musk quickly explained that he’d applied temporary limits on how many tweets users could read per day:
“-Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
-Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
-New unverified accounts to 300/day”
A rational person who has not been using Twitter for 16 years might have read that and said, “Okay, Musk is asking us all to chill.”
I am not that person, and made my displeasure clear in a series of tweets.
It’s a slaughterhouse.
“made my displeasure clear in a series of tweets”
Like the soyboy you are.
If you recall, Musk blew up the verification system earlier this year, stripping millions of users of the blue checks they’d held onto for a decade or more. Now, if you want verification, you pay from $8 / £9.60 / AU$13 a month (Twitter Blue also comes with a bunch of other features including the ability to post 25,000-character tweets 🤦♂️).
Many, including me, have refused to pay Musk to fill his platform with content. But Musk likes to remind us that he thinks we made a mistake, and he will do anything, including, it seems, undermining his own platform, to prove that point.
Nice try, Elon. I’m still not subscribing.
What a gyp. He should pay me.
Clearly Elon simply doesn’t appreciate the genius of this person. Sad.
Not said is that bots have been ravaging the Twitter servers, incurring costs for the company and generally stealing their data.
Musk is ending that and there are a lot of butthurt companies and three letter agencies out there because of it.
Democracy dies in court.
Well, it was another banner week from the six unelected zealots who apparently make all of America’s public policy decisions. Yet even after the hard-right supermajority on the Supreme Court torched affirmative action, greenlit all manner of ugly discrimination against LGBTQ Americans and yanked up to $20,000 from millions of indebted borrowers, President Biden and his allies still can’t bring themselves to threaten or even contemplate serious reform to the judicial branch. Instead, they seem content to watch our very own Guardian Council wreak total havoc on American society.
I only made it this far. This person is a) dishonest as the day is long or b) completely ignorant of the world.
Why not both?
Demanding that Congress legislate is ANTI-DEMOCRATIC because there is a party that OPPOSES Democrats!!! If no one opposed Democrats we would have a perfect democracy!!!
fair enough
for me it’s neither here nor there: SCOTUS never takes the constitutional bull by the horn and unambiguously rules on the simple core values. Instead of confirming the freedom of the individual, the cases turn on administrivia, tons of gotchas irrelevant to anyone not narrowly situated near the litigant.
Harvard is a private institution and should be able to do whatever the hell they want full stop; see: that wasn’t hard. But you’ll never see such a ruling.
it’s all just culture war, petty battles over the least of things
Schools should be private, and they should decide who gets to run in their girls’ races…full stop: so very easy to write….but unwritten.
The rulings obfuscate rather than clarify. The Constitution is very clear, a simple situation which both sides seem to despise, but they are to be congratulated for drawing the battle to a field of their liking term after term; ’tis evil genius.
When Harvard stops taking federal grants and accepting federal student loans, they can do what they want.
I don’t know what Musk’s true goal is, but his actions seem moronic
cracking down on high-traffic bots or whatever miscreants and intruders: easily done in private with zero announcements
dragging little people who have already proven they’re not buying the blue check: wholly pointless (weird flex? last chance warning?)
at DonCo, I’d go full Mossad: vanquish the enemy and say nothing, neither confirm nor deny
It’s not that easily done.
Now whether this was the best course of action is debatable, but the technical challenge of firewalling off that traffic is not insignificant, particularly when they’re constantly shifting ip addresses and resetting packet data in an attempt to appear as new.
yes sir; absolutely: none of this is easy
but it is the correct philosophy
and we won’t have any sense until we rake the garbage off the foundations
but it’s true that I don’t know the actual mechanism
but I still think it’s silly to telegraph intentions any earlier than necessary
sure; stipulated; we seldom disagree; and we all know the construction of scope very well, so that’s not my point, but I’ll step over to this:
and double down in the spirit of debate: what rights should an individual or institution lose because it takes a contract from the USG? Can my professors no longer preach inconvenient lectures? Can my dean no longer carry a concealed weapon? Can the Pentagon suddenly quarter troops in the dorms? I am glad to argue that the USG does not have the authority to buy away anyone’s rights: they have no such authority, and my ruling is that any such contractual clauses are null and void.
A military recruiter might try to convince you that you retain your rights when signing up.
But in answer to your question, I think it’s worth considering the even more important and pervasive racial quota systems currently in place. It’s interesting that education has been singled out for the elimination of pure racial discrimination while the 8(a) system parcels out billions upon billions of contracts for “disadvantaged” groups.
And even further, if I sell product to the government, I am required to assert that I do not hire or fire based on skin color or any other protected class or I do not get the sale. But at the same time, I would have an advantage in getting the sale if I met certain racial characteristics. It’s a built-in double standard.
To say the entirety of the system is fucked up is an understatement. But from a purely pragmatic standpoint, a step in the direction of barring racial quotas of any kind in government contracting is an improvement.
I’m not particularly concerned about consistency of thought any more. I’m never going to get it.
“what rights should an individual or institution lose because it takes a contract from the USG?”
At that point, the individual or institution is an agent of the USG. When acting as such, they can do nothing that the USG isn’t allowed to do or else the restrictions on the USG are so easily circumvented they might as well not exist.
The difficult question is when is someone acting as a government agent. It’s relatively easy to tell with individuals. It’s harder with organizations.
Schools should be private, and they should decide who gets to run in their girls’ races…full stop: so very easy to write….but unwritten.
Not anywhere near as easy as that. Compulsory education is the elephant in the room. You can call a school private all day long, but it matters not when licensing and accreditation is determined by the government. And then children are forced to attend by threat of violence against them and their parents.
I could get behind a ruling that the government has no place in education and no law can be enacted regarding education. Including provision of funding by the State, which blurs the line between private and public.
A lot of the culture wars are bullshit. And a lot aren’t. I think that’s intentional to promote discord, just as police shootings focus on the most ridiculous cases to promote dissension between sides. A good example is the story about Twitter, a private liberal company before Musk bought it, isn’t about ‘owning the libtards’, it’s the government using a private business to promote propaganda and then claiming it’s a private business so there’s not a constitutional conflict.
Much of the culture wars are about the government hiding their subversive actions through private companies.
yes but: compulsory education is unconstitutional on its face
My very point is that these tropes are built on one garbage notion after another.
When enough unconstitutional shit is struck down, we can return to a reasonable society of people voting with their moneys and their feets to determine what shapes institutions should take
Perhaps, although I doubt we’ll ever have a legal system close to the constitution without a complete dismantling and rebuild from the ground up.
The private vs public distinction is often meaningless today. The culture wars shed light on this, although it’s hidden in the background. COVID quickly became a culture war battle. Hidden the background is that the there is a revolving door between the executives on pharma companies and the regulatory bodies of the government. When Musk took over Twitter, it quickly became a culture war battle. Hidden in the background here was that the 3 letter agencies actually had offices at Twitter and ran the company like an extension of the government.
The definition of a private company isn’t so simple. And I believe that blurring of lines is 100% intentional as the government has realized it can use the private company label as a sock puppet label to continue its expansion of control and degradation of rights.
The regulatory state exists primarily to have businesses enforce laws upon the populace that would otherwise be too unpopular for the government to enact directly.
And to have businesses act as tax collectors.
+1 Bank Secrecy Act
“The private vs public distinction is often meaningless today. The culture wars shed light on this”
I think this is the big idea that has relatively recently broken cover, at least on the fringes. Simplistic slogans that start “it’s a private company . . . .” have been, shall we say, overtaken by events. The formerly relatively clean distinction between civic society and government has been pretty much erased.
Let’s have plebiscites on affirmative action, free sex changes for kids, college loan forgiveness, and open borders.
That will reaffirm David’s faith in Democracy.
But spiking the Biden administration’s loan forgiveness program served another important purpose for these robed cretins: It landed another blow against “the administrative state” by restricting the power of executive agencies to act without explicit authorization from Congress.
I can only imagine how shrilly this idiot screamed at the illegality of Trumpenhitler’s executive orders.
The X-57 project has also eaten up a lot more of NASA’s federal budget than was originally intended. It was initially expected to cost $40 million to get the Mod IV in flight by May 2018. By the end of 2022, NASA said the program had incurred costs of more than $87 million, and the agency had budgeted for a total cost of $99 million through the end of FY 2023. According to NASA, the X-57 program would require at least another $64 million to complete the Mod IV by 2027, and the agency determined that “the small percentage of the industry that would benefit did not justify the additional cost and delay,” according to a report issued May 17 by the NASA Office of Inspector General.
Spoilsports.
“Pardons generally are for people who express remorse and then who have done things that show that they have turned their lives around. If those kinds of determinations can be made with regard to the former president or anybody else who is convicted, yeah, I would support that. In the absence of something like that, I don’t think that would be a wise thing to do,” Holder said.
Confess your sins against the Church. Make obeisance. Beg forgiveness.
Remember that proud socialist WOC from Boston who was unjustly persecuted by the racist police for no other reason than crashing an unregistered car while driving on a suspended license with her kid not belted in the back seat?
She has some detractor digging into her past:
https://tbdailynews.com/boston-city-councilor-kendra-lara-crashes-into-house-with-unrestrained-son-while-driving-unlicensed-in-unregistered-car-belonging-to-man-she-made-sex-tape-with/
It’s kind of amazing which national pols will happily pose with her because of the party/skin combo.
I would like to think that a policy of supporting the absolute worst people as long as they are in the “correct” party will eventually prove to be a bad idea. So far not so much.
^^^^^
Loyalty above all else.
I’m still wondering why her license was suspended. That usually takes some moving violations.
When enough unconstitutional shit is struck down, we can return to a reasonable society of people voting with their moneys and their feets to determine what shapes institutions should take
You slay me.
sniping at cultural enemies all days isn’t enough to live for
Unsurprising.
Reid, who appears to be admitting that she wasn’t smart enough to get into Harvard, told her minuscule audience, “Let me be perfectly clear—I got into Harvard ONLY because of affirmative action.”
This issue is causing a lot of people to say some very embarrassing things out loud, and they’re not self-aware enough to realize it.
“I got into Harvard ONLY because of affirmative action.”
I believe it.
Now that’s funny.
Thanks Animal, the sequel in spirit to Through the Wheat.
Non-student adults are allowed to carry concealed pocket knives to schools on election day if the school is their designated polling place and if they are using the location for the sole purpose of voting.
Tennessee legislature gets to top ten issues
Much as I would like to pretend otherwise, shit does not flow uphill. Time does not reverse. Governments do not increase freedom.
“Shit does not flow uphill”
I wish someone had told me this sooner.
*starts tearing out drain pipes *
*passes pump catalog over before demo work commences*
I’m still wondering why her license was suspended. That usually takes some moving violations.
Or unpaid fines.
This was predictable.
https://zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-announces-export-controls-two-metals-used-chips-citing-national-security
The end of an era.
The Air Force announced plans last week to replace two of the last remaining A-10 squadrons with more modern F-16s and F-35s. “This is all in line with the service’s goal of divesting the last A-10s before the end of the decade, if not sooner,” according to Yahoo News. Air Force brass have been trying to retire the hog for years but Congress has kept telling them no. This new announcement indicates that the A-10 will not keep flying until the 2040s, after all.
-1 Splthhhhhhh…
🙁
Not flashy enough-if it can’t do at least Mach 1 the generals refuse to fap to it.
“modern F-16s” First flight: 20 January 1974. Almost 2 years newer than the A-10.
I assume they mean the F-16 Viper.