When I was a kid, I was unknowingly raised by actual no-shit communists. The big-deal organization was called Der Arbeiter Ring (Workman’s Circle), and it was no coincidence that their version of Jesus was FDR. The fact that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews through his policies of violently preventing their escape from the Nazis was just completely ignored or denied because his “labor” and central state policies were perfectly in accord with the Ring’s desires. I, of course, wasn’t old enough to get the dynamic, so to me, Der Ring meant a beach- the only beach in the Baltimore area that Jews were allowed to use- and thus it was a wonderful organization.

Fortunately, that generation is my family faded out, so that by the time I was 10 years old, no commies were telling me about the wonders of wealth redistribution and the rights of the working man (meaning “the right to exclude outsiders from their guilds, prevent the free market and flow of labor, and impose cartels on consumers”). In their defense, they DID provide their form of welfare, insurance, and the aforementioned beaches for the kids. And before the US decided to have highly restricted immigration, they were instrumental in helping newcomers find work and make new lives for themselves here. No clean demarcation between good and evil, Arbeiter Ring was both.

So much for my thoughts on Labor Day.

And speaking of thoughts, there are a few birthdays today, including one of (((us))) whose work lives on at nearly all college campuses; a weird example of a celebrity musician being an incel; a fascinating guy who blurred scientific boundaries; another one of (((us))) whose work memorably lives on; a guy whose… diction was… famous for random… pauses; a guy who slept with Elizabeth Montgomery; a guy whom everyone thought he was good, but he was just a pretender; a Dr. Phil wannabe (at least Dr. Phil’s money) and might be one of us;  and a guy who don’t play that.

And I now enact labor for Sloopy and Banjos and bring Links.

 

I hadn’t heard about this before, but this makes me love Martha Stewart even more.

 

Speaking of which, h/t to Professor Roy Spencer for digging this up. You mean the catastrophic climate models don’t even pass a first principles test? Huh.

 

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

 

I dunno, sounds like good parenting to me.

 

“But don’t worry, everything is fine and we’re winning.”  This is like the 0-14 football team replacing the coach as if that’s going to fix the fact that they are fundamentally terrible.

 

C’mon, you gotta admit this is hilarious.

 

They needed this stuff more than the stores did.

 

Woodchipper, with extreme prejudice.

 

I have four or five versions of this Paul Cebar-written masterpiece, and Peter Mulvey and Redbird might have come close to doing it best. This is one of the Old Man’s favorite songs.