Saturday Morning Behind Enemy Line Links

by | Feb 10, 2024 | Daily Links | 165 comments

Non-academic business brought me down to Pittsburgh whence I limn this ode to the stupidity of the world. If Lamar Jackson hadn’t done an epic choke two weeks ago, I’d be trolling the populace with my Ravens sweatshirt. Alas, that opportunity vanished. But I did manage to see the sights of this metropolis and I was again reminded of why I eschewed big city life and banished myself to academic Hooterville. And of course, I got the giggles every time someone said “yinz.”

Here in the rurals, we do birthdays before news, and today’s include a guy who always gets me stoked; a delightful actor who birthed the Skipper; a guy who made me feel better about MY nose; the original Mr. Transistor; the best drummer to ever come out of Baltimore; the best harmonica player to ever come out of Baltimore; a woman who wrote the worst cookbook of all time; a guy who liked to stand next to Robert Reich so he could feel big; an absolutely awesome TV producer/director/writer; and a guy I put in the same bin as Rush Limbaugh (“I absolutely don’t see what’s entertaining here”).

OK, now it’s the news’s turn.

 

“I smell a rat.” And looking at Pritzker, he probably ate it.

 

…and then she downed her third bottle.

 

“Oh, we forgot that Team Blue is supposed to hate Jews. My bad.”

 

Team Blue wants to increase food costs even more. On the bright side, there will be less shitty food around.

 

I can only celebrate when a concept this shitty is euthanized.

 

Go long on popcorn futures.

 

Fusion is the power source of the future and always will be.

 

The Old Man wonders if it would be possible to have any more saxophone greatness on one stage. I don’t think so. Coltrane was, of course, Coltrane, the absolute peak of hard bop, and Dolphy was clearly the guy who started taking that genre into the sort of free jazz of Andrew Hill, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and the later era Miles Davis. It’s just fucking brilliant.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

165 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’

    l’chaim !

    • Gustave Lytton

      Dog woke up. Then went back to sleep.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The dog went back to sleep, not me.

      • Sean

        It’s good you clarified that. 😂

  2. Tres Cool

    “sometime, when the team is up against it — and the breaks are beating the boys — tell them to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Skipper…”

    • The Gunslinger

      Felt like a 3 hour tour to get to the payoff on that one. Well done.

  3. Ted S.

    a woman who wrote the worst cookbook of all time;

    Damon Knight?

  4. Grosspatzer, Superstar

    
and then she downed her third bottle.

    Drunk shaming? Here? Oh, the humanity!

    • Ted S.

      Three bottles isn’t enough to get the Irish drunk.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Damn, you’re right. This time.

  5. R C Dean

    “a delightful actor who birthed the Skipper”

    A medical miracle!

    • Grosspatzer, Superstar

      This is commonplace today, but the man woman birthing person was way ahead of his her Oh, fuck it, I give up.

    • Cunctator

      —“a delightful actor who birthed the Skipper”—

      When I was young, I watched Gilligan”s Island (first run, not reruns) every week. When I got older, I began watching old movies, and saw several with Alan Hale Sr. I remember thinking that the Skipper looked very good on Gilligan’s Island, since he had been around 40 years already. I have never seen a Sr/Jr that looked so much alike.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        As opposed to Ed Begley pĂšre et fils.

  6. R C Dean

    “Coyote v. Acme, a live-action/animated hybrid that stars Will Forte and the “Looney Tunes” gang,”

    Why?

    • The Hyperbole

      Because some people may enjoy a thing like that?

    • Ted S.

      The idea of Wile E. Coyote suing Acme sounds like it could be a good one, but with today’s execution you always have to wonder.

  7. OBJ FRANKELSON

    Oh we have fusion all figured out, its just the not vaporizing everything bit that is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

    • Don escaped Texas

      Dad was in the Marshalls the year after the last H test about 200 miles from the Bikini Atoll.

      At 83, he’s yet to show ill health effects.

      • Drake

        Weren’t the fusion bombs somewhat cleaner than the fission bombs?

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Based on my very tenous understanding the thing that makes fission or fusion nukes ‘dirty’ (i.e. fewer lingering affects) is the altitude of detonation.

        Ground burst = more fallout.

        Maybe the fact that Operation Crossroads was done ove mostly water resulted in a lower amount of fallout.

      • DrOtto

        Yes and no – fusion bombs use a fission bomb as the trigger. That also helps compare how much bigger a fusion blast is compared to a fission blast.

    • Grumbletarian

      The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research experiment also managed to maintain temperatures north of 100 million degrees Celsius, enough to fuse atoms, for 30 seconds back in 2022.

      Let’s pretend we figure fusion out. Imagine several thousand fusion plants each creating temperatures over 100,000,000 C. Methinks I know what angle the eco-nuts will take to ban fusion if it ever becomes economically viable. “Creating temperatures that high on earth will boil the oceans away!”

      • rhywun

        Literally cooking the planet.

        Yeah, I always pictured – fancifully, I guess – something a little more room temperature.

    • Lackadaisical

      Those are some incredible explosions.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Nice work, explosions are tough to make

      • R C Dean

        I was hoping you’d drop by, Yu. I immediately thought of you when I saw it.

    • Grosspatzer, Superstar

      Wow. That is impressive.

  8. juris imprudent

    Steyn pays the price of representing himself.

    Simberg assessed $1 in compensatory damages and $1000 in punitive. Steyn also hit with $1 in compensatory, and the cool mil in punitive. Obviously the DC jury didn’t like the way he represented himself.

    So whenever some idiot talks about what Mann won – remind them it was $2 in actual reputational damage.

    • R C Dean

      I don’t know that he had much of a choice, given the cost of litigating for, what, 12 years?

    • Don escaped Texas

      In contrast, the prosecution was — in the words of the court, “disjointed” — and was reprimanded on multiple occasions by the judge, most notably for knowingly providing false information to the jury on alleged damages suffered by Mann.5 When I was cross-examined, Mann’s lawyer had considerable trouble getting basic facts right like timelines and who said what.

      our correspondent seems to have considerable trouble getting basic facts right about what the parties to a civil case are called

      • juris imprudent

        Well the truly correct term would’ve been persecuter.

      • Don escaped Texas

        sustained

    • The Other Kevin

      He should have gone with unfrozen caveman lawyer.

    • Lackadaisical

      That’s pretty terrible, but as long as court rooms in DC can be used to punish the right they will be. The right needs to find a similarly biased court in bumfuck somewhere to have a chance.

      • juris imprudent

        Venue shopping should be penalized – by death.

      • DEG

        Simburg wrote his article that was in question for CEI. CEI is based in DC.

      • DEG

        I read the complaint a little more closely.

        The complaint, starts at page 11, has a few paragraphs on why the case should be heard in DC. At the time of the complaint, Steyn resided in Canada. This was before he moved to NH. Simberg was a resident of Idaho at the time. The complaint says both of their writings are widely read in DC. NR is based in New York but circulated in DC. CEI is based in DC. The complaint uses these things (Simberg’s and Steyn’s work being read in DC, National Review circulating magazines in DC, and CEI being based in DC) to claim that all are doing business in DC and therefore the case can be heard in DC.

        I’m no lawyer so maybe their legal reasoning is correct. Even so, CEI is based in DC so you really can’t get away from that.

      • juris imprudent

        Actually under the diversity of jurisdictions it should’ve been in federal court, not DC Superior court (equivalent to a state court I believe).

      • DEG

        Yes, DC Superior is roughly equivalent to a state court.

        I doubt the US District Court for DC would have been a better venue.

        I looked through the filings in the case. Nowhere do I see a filing about a venue change, nothing about a claim that the DC Superior Court does not have jurisdiction, and nothing about a claim that the DC Superior Court is the improper venue (i.e. it should have gone to Federal court).

        Poking around the intertubes, diversity of jurisdiction requires the dollar amount in question be more than $75,000. The only bits about money in the complaint I see are that the dollar amounts of damages be determined at trial. Given the $2 total compensatory damages (punitive damages I thought were limited at the Federal level via Supreme Court ruling so I expect the punitive damages to be reduced on appeal), diversity of jurisdiction doesn’t apply.

    • Gustave Lytton

      So much for truth as an absolute defense. Mann is still a lying sack of shit.

      • mrfamous

        Apparently saying that could cost you a million dollars.

    • Cunctator

      —“Steyn also hit with $1 in compensatory, and the cool mil in punitive”—

      I don’t actually understand our legal system< I guess. How can you punish somebody for causing $1 in damages by ordering them to pay $1,000,000?

      • Sean

        Heresy will not be tolerated.

  9. cavalier973

    Navier: “ His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.”

    Hale: “
 played “Little John” in the film Robin Hood (1922), with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, reprised the role 16 years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, then played him once more in Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950) with John Derek as Robin Hood’s son, a unique 28-year string of portrayals of the same character in theatrical films.”

    “Durante was an active member of the Democratic Party. In 1933, he appeared in an advertisement shown in theaters supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and wrote a musical score titled Give a Man a Job to accompany it. He performed at both the inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and a year later at the famous Madison Square Garden rally for the Democratic party that featured Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK.”

    Brattain: “Other recognition—USS Brattain, Star Trek: The Next Generation, ‘Night Terrors’”

    Chick Webb: “ In November 1938, Webb’s health began to decline; for a time, however, he continued to play, refusing to give up touring so that his band could remain employed during the Great Depression. He disregarded his own discomfort and fatigue, which often found him passing out from physical exhaustion after finishing sets. Finally, he had a major operation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1939. Webb died from Pott disease on June 16, 1939, in Baltimore. Reportedly his last words were, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”[10] Webb was buried in Baltimore County, in Arbutus Memorial Park, in Arbutus, Maryland.”

    Larry Adler: “Adler wrote an autobiography entitled It Ain’t Necessarily So in 1985, and was food critic for Harpers & Queen.”

    Lappe: Which of these is the “worst cookbook” that oMWC mentioned?
    A. Diet for a Small Planet
    B. Great Meatless Meals

    “Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld.”

    “Gilligan’s other work includes writing, directing, and producing some episodes of the Fox science fiction series The X-Files (1993–2002) and co-creating its spin-off series The Lone Gunmen (2001), as well as co-writing the screenplay for the superhero film Hancock (2008).” —And he did it all while stranded on an island with Little John’s son. What’s your excuse?

    “By 1994, Beck was suicidal, and imagined shooting himself to the music of Kurt Cobain.”
    Stop listening to that garbage and see how dramatically your outlook on life improves.

    • Lackadaisical

      “Stop listening to that garbage and see how dramatically your outlook on life improves.”

      What if I’m only happy when it rains?

      • R.J.

        What you did. It was seen.
        *Golf clap

    • rhywun

      Which of these is the “worst cookbook” that oMWC mentioned?

      Oof that is a poser. The first one was mentioned in the link which describes a long life spent trying to pretty up an impressive litany of commie derp.

      I have no experience with this person or her books but they both sound wretched.

    • Old Man With Candy

      TBH, I never read the second one. “Small Planet” was so wretched I couldn’t imagine buying another one of her books.

      Runner up for Worst Cookbook is a tougher one- maybe Laurel’s Kitchen?

      • Gender Traitor

        ::sheepishly recalls having both books:: No wonder my feeble attempts at a vegetarian/vegan diet failed. Well, that and the horrifying prospect of a life without Cincinnati-style chili.

    • juris imprudent

      Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld.

      I’m confused – is that the set up or the punchline?

      • cavalier973

        It’s a joke about nothing

      • cavalier973

        If you think about it, you’ll get there

      • Zwak says the real is not governable, but self-governing.

        What if you were in the pool?

        Asking for a friend.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        It shrinks?

  10. Lackadaisical

    “On the downside, the record also failed to produce a net positive energy balance, requiring far more energy to be put in to achieve these results”

    Max derp? It truly is a fitting swansong.

    • Lackadaisical

      It took some scrolling, but the Taylor Swift one was good.

      ‘just remember that most of Taylor’s songs are about choosing the wrong man.”

      • The Gunslinger

        I liked the Epstein one also.

        “I asked Hillary to be my Valentine, but she left me hanging”.

    • The Gunslinger

      I always enjoy these.
      Thanks Yusef!

    • Drake

      That’s a lot of memes.

      • Cunctator

        —“That’s a lot of memes”—

        Wait until there are about 400 comments. There are a lot more memes posted there, some good, some not so.

      • kinnath

        Error 1011 Ray ID: 8535b887abd629e8 ‱ 2024-02-10 16:27:40 UTC
        Access denied

        You need to open the photo of interest in a new tab and then link to that new URL

      • Gender Traitor

        Huh. Opened fine for me. ::shrugs::

      • kinnath

        Hm. Works in Edge, not in Brave.

      • Gender Traitor

        I’m in Firefox. Sometimes individual images from Powerline open fine, sometimes they don’t.

      • Mojeaux

        Too many things lately not opening up or working in Brave. I think I’m about to switch to something else.

  11. Shpip

    Left unmentioned in the links today is the fact that it’s Vietnamese New Year.

    In an American twist on ancient inscrutable Oriental traditions, you should encourage your wife or girlfriend (or both) to lift her shirt today and give you a good eyeful, Mardi Gras-style.

    This is known as “Tit for Táșżt.”

    • Grosspatzer, Superstar

      Boo! We need to nip this in the bud before Swiss shows up.

      • Lackadaisical

        No one be offensive, I have a feeling he might go nuclear on this thread.

      • Shpip

        Well, napalm is more historically accurate. But it’s made with petroleum jelly, and that could lead to a slippery slope.

    • The Gunslinger

      Brah. That’s not right

  12. rhywun

    rules to guarantee workers are scheduled enough hours to make enough money to sustain themselves

    I must be old because I remember when the point of an entry-level job was not to “sustain” oneself.

    • Ted S.

      No more part-time jobs ever?

    • juris imprudent

      That serf class isn’t going to build itself.

    • Homple

      The way things are going, jobs that were formerly entry-level will be lifetime careers.

  13. rhywun

    I can only celebrate when a concept this shitty is euthanized.

    I’m skeptical.

    The concept sounds less shitty than great heaps of crap that did make it to the screen, so I’m wondering what the real reason for the memoryholing is. Someone toxic that nobody wants to work with, maybe.

    • The Hyperbole

      I don’t understand high finance but the article claims they could ‘write it off, Jerry’ for 40 mil, so unless some one would give them 70-80mil they weren’t going to sell it.

      • R C Dean

        What people don’t seem to grok is that if you “write something off”, you take a hit to your income. It’s not like you get the money back. At best, writing something off reduces your tax bill, which nets you a fraction of the amount written off. So, yeah, I’m baffled by why they would insist on more than, say, $12MM for it.

      • rhywun

        “They’re the ones writing it off.”

      • mrfamous

        I’m self employed as are several other people I know. I keep trying to explain to them that “write offs” aren’t free, they’re just like a 20-30% discount. And they have trouble grokking the idea.

    • Gender Traitor

      ::prepares to click link, pauses:: Wait, what if Drake is speaking literally? ::refrains from clicking::

    • R.J.

      He didn’t even address Putin’s accusation. Funny about that.

  14. The Other Kevin

    Damn this Covid/flu sucks. I’m on day 4, still have a low fever (99.3). Feels like I’ve been sick a month. I’m missing a hockey weekend. Told my teammates if they go undefeated they don’t need me so I’m switching to curling.

    • R.J.

      Take it easy, take your vitamins. Mine was two weeks over Christmas because I kept working like a goof. I should’ve tried that relaxing thing people keep talking about.

      • Grosspatzer, Superstar

        I should’ve tried that relaxing thing people keep talking about.

        Make sure that the camera is turned off.

        TOK, any curling tournaments coming to NJ? Asking for a friend.

      • The Other Kevin

        😂 No I only tried it once. I did surprisingly well. The curling club in Chicago has a beautiful wood paneled bar and lounge so there’s definitely a big social and drinking aspect. Maybe when I’m too old to skate.

    • KSuellington

      Extra zinc and Vit D dude. Hope you get better quickly.

    • DEG

      Get well soon!

  15. Drake

    Channel surfing this morning stopped on ‘In Search of”.

    I didn’t realize that new Spock did new episodes. Had some weird pre-coffee confusion for a minute.

    • The Other Kevin

      As a kid that show scared the hell out of me.

      • Drake

        Right now he’s with some guy in Jericho who’s really close to finding the Ark of the Covenant. Except some other guy in a fort in Ethiopia swears he already has it.

        The unintentional reenactment of Monty Python’s search for the Grail is amusing.

  16. Q Continuum

    “he did not have “any confidence” that Israel’s government was willing to take “meaningful steps” toward Palestinian statehood”

    Except for the fact that Israel has offered a two-state solution more than once and Pali leadership has torpedoed it.

  17. Sean

    I played https://squaredle.com/xp 02/10:
    *24/24 words (+6 bonus words)
    📖 In the top 2% by bonus words

    I played https://squaredle.com 02/10:
    31/31 words (+10 bonus words)
    📖 In the top 9% by bonus words
    đŸ”„ Solve streak: 139

  18. Suthenboy

    “She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises…”
    That’s easy – socialism – but I bet she came to the opposite conclusion.

    “Hamas a future partner for peace”
    Uh…I am not sure how to address that.

    My question is why do people who privately express somewhat reasonable opinions publicly express the evil and stupid. What the hell is that?

    Dont we already have the SCIU?

    Where is my goddamned flying car? Yeah, I want abundant power supply off of the grid too. And water.
    Future headline: “Dude invents perfect fusion reactor for individual homes. People line up to the. horizon to murder him.”

    I am keeping an eye on that guy…balls and brains. You dont see that every day.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Last September, a new California law created a state fast-food council, to allow labor and business to negotiate over minimum pay and workplace regulations for the first time at chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell, among others. As part of that legislation, SEIU and fast-food companies reached a deal to raise the state’s minimum wage for some 500,000 fast-food workers to $20 an hour by April.

    I wondered if they would get around to mentioning that. The state effectively unionized fast food businesses already. The SEIU just can’t bear to not get a cut.

    • juris imprudent

      “Everything within the state…”

      • R C Dean

        That really is textbook fascism.

        Of course, so is the NLRB, so . . . .

  20. DEG

    On the downside, the record also failed to produce a net positive energy balance, requiring far more energy to be put in to achieve these results.

    Oh no! Anyway…

    • PieInTheSky

      is there no one on this site who’s dick you would use?

    • Urthona

      Are you sure? You can borrow mine.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Joe Biden, the geriatric collectivist America needs

    The commitment to the principles of the New Deal and the Great Society — to the idea of America as a group project, not a series of isolated and individual efforts at personal advancement — are what we desperately need. Turning over all important decisions to “the market” has left us on a planet with melting poles and cartoonish levels of inequality.

    Johnson, of course, wasn’t reelected; with the war in Vietnam raging, he didn’t even run. Biden appears to have remembered that too, with his forthright decision to finally get us out of Afghanistan. Now Gaza may be the kind of inhuman quagmire that could still bring him down.

    That would be a shame, because given another four years Biden might well be able to restore confidence in an America that has so destructively turned on itself.

    Age matters. My cohort agrees. Why did Biden believe he could do what he did in his first term? Because he’d seen it done. Let’s hope the politicians of the future are watching his successes closely.

    FDR, LBJ, and JRB, the great pillars of American socialism.

    • Grumbletarian

      Biden appears to have remembered that too, with his forthright decision to finally get us out of Afghanistan.

      wat

    • juris imprudent

      Ah, McKibben, of course. What a dipshit.

  22. cavalier973

    I posted on the previous thread the story about the sun’s magnetic poles flipping out.

    A question I have: how will this affect the giant umbrella that scientists are going to launch into space to protect us from the sun?

    • PieInTheSky

      a good umbrella can manage a change in wind direction

  23. KK, Plump & Unfiltered

    The Looney Tunes thing sounded mildly interesting. I like Will Forte.

    • Old Man With Candy

      They cut out some of the best stuff in the Chuck Jones cartoons. Restore those, stitch them together, and now you have something worth watching.

      FFS, stop digging in the graveyard of my childhood memories.

    • PieInTheSky

      I like Will Forte. – gay

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Outrageous obstructionism

    “It’s criminal neglect for Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden to get together to send $100 billion overseas to fix someone else’s border before addressing our border,” Paul said Friday in an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow, calling the idea “outrageous.”

    Paul hit back on Biden’s comments that not providing aid to Ukraine was “neglect,” saying it is reprehensible to negotiate a deal to fund foreign government’s militaries without resolving the issue of the U.S.-Mexico border.

    In a 64-19 vote Friday evening, the Senate proceeded with the bill whose border provisions were stripped by Schumer (D-N.Y.) after only a handful of GOP senators voted for the original bipartisan package.

    Paul pledged to delay votes on a $95.3 billion bill Friday after branding the legislation “rotten.” In response, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) called him a “peckerhead” for forcing colleagues to through the procedural steps Friday night and into the Super Bowl weekend in order to pass the funding package.

    Boo fucking hoo. Is Lumpenproletarian going to miss a supar bowl party?

    • juris imprudent

      Wonder if Paul finally smells blood? He’s always been fairly cautious about McConnell.

    • Gender Traitor

      “Thirty-two of us out of 48, three-fourths of us, said we wanted to keep fighting, and wanted to actually fix the border before we ship $100 billion of our money overseas.”

      ::stage whisper:: Pssssst! Two-thirds, but you go, Rand!/pedant

  25. The Late P Brooks

    “We have an emergency, we have an invasion,” Paul said in Friday’s interview, highlighted by Mediaite. “We have 700,000 people who came across in the last two months, and they’re willing just to punt on that. You know, they put forward a fake proposal, it wasn’t any good. We shot it down.”

    Whaaaat? I have it on good authority that was the greatest thing to happen to immigration policy since they dedicated the Statue of Liberty.

    • juris imprudent

      Even some Republicans backed it!

  26. PieInTheSky

    About 70% of liberal 12th grade girls believe women are discriminated against in getting a college education, despite the fact that women obtain more bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees than men, and there are 11 times more women’s-only than men’s-only scholarships in the US.

    Inaccurate beliefs about women’s opportunities, in our sample of American adults, appear to have increased dramatically among Millennials and Gen Z. See our chart below.

    https://twitter.com/SkepResCenter/status/1755730991757365676

    • Common Tater

      Feminism is cancer.

    • cavalier973

      They probably sense that their expensive degrees are worthless, but lack the education to properly think about cause and effect.

      • Shpip

        Kinda like the silly bint I linked to yesterday. She:

        Attends a non-selective college (88% acceptance rate)
        Pays $50K / annum in tuition plus fees
        Selects two non-rigorous majors (communications and theater)
        Expects a “career” as an “influencer” as a result
        Is shocked when things don’t quite work out as planned — so she makes a TikTok video about it.

      • R C Dean

        Aaand . . . The video goes viral, thus launching her career as an influencer?

      • Urthona

        I was in NYC this week and walking around in some touristy areas I was shocked at the number of people doing influencer videos. I can’t imagine any market supports them all. Some
        most wannabes.

  27. Common Tater

    “Turning over all important decisions to “the market” has left us on a planet with melting poles and cartoonish levels of inequality.”

    So, something we haven’t done has lead to two things that aren’t happening.

    • R C Dean

      It actually makes sense when you put it like that.

    • rhywun

      That might be the dumbest sentence written down so far this year. Just wow.

    • Seguin

      Gulag Archipelago is the MUST HAVE for aspiring communists..

    • The Gunslinger

      I really must grow…

  28. The Late P Brooks

    Do-nothing President

    Former President Donald Trump told thousands of members of the National Rifle Association that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he returns to the White House, and bragged that during his time as president he “did nothing” to curb guns.

    “During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” he said as he addressed the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Friday evening.

    Casting himself as ”the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House,” Trump pledged to continue to protect gun owners’ rights, even as the country grapples with a crisis of gun violence and mass shootings that have left more than 3,000 dead since 2006.

    “Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president,” he said.

    He should promise to do absolutely nothing but veto legislation and slash regulation for the next four years.

  29. Common Tater

    “A Kindergarten teacher who publicly questioned his school spending $250,000 on a ‘Woke Kindergarten’ curriculum for ‘disrupting whiteness’ amid plummeting numeracy and literacy rates has been suspended.

    Hayward Unified School District teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said officials told him Thursday not to return to his classroom at Glassbrook Elementary until further notice.

    He said he was told the suspension was in place while the district investigates allegations of ‘unprofessional conduct’, after a tense meeting where one female colleague stuck her hand in his face and shrieked that he was ‘a danger’ to children.

    Craven-Neeley, who is gay and who describes himself as a liberal, propelled the school into the spotlight after he queried the decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the controversial curriculum. It is described as an ‘abolitionist early learning system’ designed to uproot white supremacy and disrupt racism, with non-binary founder Akiea Gross ranting about how she thinks Israel and the US have no right to exist on her Instagram.

    After spending the federal money on the program the Hayward school saw numeracy among its 474 students fall to a new low of just 4 percent and literacy just 12 percent.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13068069/Woke-Kindergarten-whistleblower-SUSPENDED-glassbrook-school.html

    I heard Bill Maher say 70% of the DNC delegates are teachers.

    • R.J.

      The other 30% are various government employees. The government now votes itself into power.

      • Common Tater

        I wonder if a federal law banning public sector unions would be constitutional.

      • rhywun

        Stop, I can only get so hard.

      • R C Dean

        Don’t know why not. Trust me, nobody in our ruling class wants to open the “freedom of association” can of worms.

    • rhywun

      who is gay and who describes himself as a liberal

      Subtext – he is not “queer”, because “queers” are totes down with the abolition of police, money, and Israel.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    They probably sense that their expensive degrees are worthless, but lack the education to properly think about cause and effect.

    The sociology department isn’t exactly a bastion of rigorous logic and empiricism.

  31. Common Tater

    So with Steyn and Trump, expressing an honest opinion is now defamation?

  32. The Late P Brooks

    TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s reelection campaign, accused Trump of placating the gun lobby Friday night and said “the American people are the ones who will suffer and die if he’s allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again.”

    Just like one of those old cowboy movies where the bad guys pull their wagon up to the indian village and start handing out Winchesters, Trump’s henchmen will be on school playgrounds handing out ARs and Glocks.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    They cut out some of the best stuff in the Chuck Jones cartoons. Restore those, stitch them together, and now you have something worth watching.

    Pfah! Tex Avery or GTFO.

  34. Common Tater

    “A former prodigy at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science who went on to become a city chemistry teacher resigned last year after she “engaged in an inappropriate relationship” with a male student in the Manhattan high school where she taught, an investigation found….

    But in February 2023, Leffler, then 36, was caught on video taking a 17-year-old male student into a locked bathroom at the High School for Health Careers and Sciences in Manhattan’s Fort George — then later handing the teen a wad of cash.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/02/10/metro/nyc-teacher-had-inappropriate-relationship-with-male-student/

    “A married Virginia teacher faces up to 50 years behind bars after pleading guilty to having sex with her 14-year-old student over the school year — at his home, where “her DNA was recovered from his bed linens.”

    ​Megan Pauline Jordan, 25, who taught at Hungary Creek Middle School in Henrico County, pleaded guilty to four counts of carnal knowledge and one count of indecent liberties of a minor, which are all felonies, according to WRIC.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/news/va-teacher-admits-to-sneaking-into-14-year-old-students-home-to-have-sex-in-his-bed/

    I find all this more baffling than school shootings.

    • R C Dean

      #metoo

  35. The Late P Brooks

    The emperor is resplendent in his finery

    Washington is abuzz with fresh concerns about President Joe Biden’s fitness after a special counsel report released Thursday raised questions about his memory.

    But Democrats have rallied around Biden and despite the fantasies of some pundits and anxious Democrats, the president is almost certain to be the Democratic Party’s nominee as long as he wants.

    Both parties have moved away from the era when insiders in proverbial smoke-filled rooms could be kingmakers at the national conventions, and Biden has dominated every primary he’s competed in thus far.

    No prominent Democrats have called for Biden to step aside and there’s no known serious conservations about it.

    “The Democratic Party is united in supporting President Biden, who will be his party’s nominee this fall and will make Donald Trump a loser a second time this November,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Daniel Wessel in a statement to NBC News.

    Sharp as a tack, he is.

    • R C Dean

      “Both parties have moved away from the era when insiders in proverbial smoke-filled rooms could be kingmakers at the national conventions”

      Indeed. Now the insiders just rig the primaries. Much easier to do without drawing as much attention.

      • Urthona

        Given candidate quality these days, I’m all for the smoke filled rooms.

  36. Common Tater

    “On Friday, transgender activists across the state of Florida targeted multiple Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices after Gov. DeSantis announced a new policy change to state driver’s licenses.

    This includes removing the option for an individual to choose their own gender. Residents will only be able to list their birth sex on state driver’s licenses, which reverts back to the state’s initial policy.

    Last month, Robert Kynoch, deputy executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, sent a memo detailing the policy change which stated that allowing an individual to change their own gender on licenses and ID cards goes against state law explaining that gender “has historically been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”

    Kynoch explained that a driver’s license “is an identification document and, as such, serves a critical role in assisting public and private entities in correctly establishing the identity of a person presenting the license.””

    https://thepostmillennial.com/trans-activists-protest-florida-dmv-for-not-allowing-gender-identity-lies-on-licenses

    Couldn’t they just remove it entirely? I don’t see how sex is an issue in regards to driving. In regards to ID, licenses already have a name, address, photo, dob, etc.

    • R C Dean

      Or, dump the “M” and “F”, and go with “XY” and “XX”. Anyone who challenges it has to submit a genetic test showing which pair of genes they have.

      • Mojeaux

        This.

      • kinnath

        And a genetic test for all the other abnormal conditions?

      • Common Tater

        Except that wouldn’t work for intersex people who are naturally XY and F, or XX and M. Around one in 5,000 people are intersex, and birth certificates aren’t based on genetic testing.

    • Urthona

      Well it’s useful for identifying someone although I must admit my weight at times has been quite off.

      • Common Tater

        It is, but also confusing in regards to trans people who are very passing.