Good morning one and all to another great day!
Pope Francis dead at 88, Vatican says
Divisions Remain as Republicans Steam Ahead With ‘Big Beautiful Bill’: What to Know
Hunter Biden Whistleblower Replaced As Acting IRS Commissioner Just Days Into Job
Record Number of Adults Baptized in France on Easter
El Salvador Proposes Swapping Venezuelan Deportees From US for Maduro’s Political Prisoners
New Mexico Democrat Judge Resigns After ICE Arrests Alleged Tren de Aragua Gang Member in His Home
Oakland Has Had Four Mayors in Four Months
Sam’s Club phasing out checkouts, betting big on AI shopping
That’s all I for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
I lay odds that it betrays everything the electorate actually wants done in favor of more pork and status quo.
I seriously doubt anyone here would bet against you.
We’ll work on cutting spending next time …
How will that get anyone reelected?
Along with their pinky swear to repeal Obamacare? Finally.
The purpose of Congress is to provide congresspeople with the kind of lifestyle they enjoy.
Snout, meet trough.
Jeez, there was a time not that long ago when someone here would’ve leapt to the defense of Trump and the promise of smaller government. Guess after you’ve been STEVE SMITHed enough, you learn.
This is Congress we’re talking about, JI. What’s Trump got to do with it?
^^^What he said.^^^
I’m honestly not sure what more Trump (as President) could really be doing, realistically, to cut spending.
Congress (with an assist from the courts) will continue to bleed the country dry until the voters decide to vote out the current crew.
This is Congress we’re talking about, JI. What’s Trump got to do with it?
The common obsession with Our Glorious Leader (for half of the people anyway).
“The common obsession with Our Glorious Leader (for half of the people anyway).”
I would say you are in a obsession group yourself, all things considered… Just on the other side of many.
TDS is a helluva drug. – Rick James’ Bitch
Alex there was never a time we didn’t object to the obsession of Democrats for Obama. Ever so slowly are some of them opening their eyes. Likewise, there was much talk, some of it even here, about how Trump was going to change things. As UCS correctly points out – this is Congress we’re talking about.
Anyway, I guess Trump didn’t declare martial law as he was supposed to – so much for the prophesy.
I would totally vote for it.
But only if it is legally named either Big Beautiful Bill, or Billy McBillface.
Your children will be indoctrinated but at least they will also be illiterate when they graduate.
Love the school district’s argument that “Just hearing about other beliefs doesn’t violate the families’ religious rights”! Which is true in that if they are just passing by a street preacher or choose to listen, they wouldn’t. Little bit different when it is compulsory teaching to little Johnny with no notice or opt-out and you know full well that the teacher is going to be expecting certain responses (There’s honestly a lot of Established Mindset / Religion in school anyway… I doubt I’m alone in having “required” Social / Eco classes even back in the ’90s where you knew full well to regurgitate what the teacher expected, not any actual analysis… much like HR training today…)
That this even needs to be questioned up to the Nazgul is a sure sign of how deep the rot of “Your kids are our kids” has spread.
It’s the same as teaching “about”, oh say, Islam has morphed into kids praying on mats.
Everything is indoctrination.
Maybe the schools should be sued under sexual harassment laws.
They are grooming kids. I guess this is what all-in on demoralization looks like. Where are the pitchforks?
The ‘your kids are our property’ mindset apparently isn’t just a problem in govt and academia.
I want to see, say, Idaho pass a law that every school age child needs to take a basic riflery course. And that there is no opting out.
Supreme Court To Consider If Religious Parents Can Opt Kids Out Of Sexually Explicit Storybook Readings
Why the hell would religion have anything to do with this? I’m an atheist, and I also do not want my kids (or grandkids, now) to be presented with sexually explicit material at what I deem an inappropriate age by people I don’t know and trust. It has nothing to do with gods, and everything to do with personal morals and convictions, regardless of the existence of gods. My kids, my decision of when they should be educated this regard. It seems that “deeply held beliefs” can only come from god now days, and I find that repugnant.
Same fucking thing with the vaccine, if you have a god belief then you could claim HE didn’t want you to get the jab, but if I have my own beliefs, then tough shit, get jabbed. It’s tiresome that, although my personal beliefs are based on my deeply held personal views, they don’t hold the same holy water that other people’s imaginary friend beliefs hold (no offence intended.)
Look, I don’t care if you believe in God, I respect your beliefs. I just ask the same in return.
Only God trumps government experts. No god? Then shut up and do as the experts say!
Without those God-people, you’d have even less freedom. While it might not be fair for a god-person to have a court-recognized exemption, the alternative is no carve-out. They are the wedge shoved in the door to crack it open and let you make your argument.
Same fucking thing with the vaccine, if you have a god belief then you could claim HE didn’t want you to get the jab, but if I have my own beliefs, then tough shit, get jabbed. It’s tiresome that, although my personal beliefs are based on my deeply held personal views, they don’t hold the same holy water that other people’s imaginary friend beliefs hold (no offence intended.)
The exemption statute for medical treatment is written just that that way – deeply help personal beliefs, no religious basis required. My exemption “request” – it was more exemption demand, grant exemption or fire me, those are your only options – was presented exactly that way, a deeply held personal ‘belief’ in individual autonomy and limitations of state power. It was successful. Granted, probably for a host of other reasons and not a fundamental agreement or understanding, but was not on presented on a religious basis, nor required to be.
Will they next Pope be tranny to continue the trend?
If the various tell all books about the Vatican Gay Mafia were true… may well be. If it isn’t apparent, my hopes for the next papal selection changing the course of the Church back to orthodoxy are pretty low. Francis was brought in for a reason by the Cardinals who had power — and from what I can see, they made sure to pack the College of Cardinals with like minded folks during his tenure.
The African guy would be a popular choice – but he’s supposedly ultra orthodox. Puts the liberals in an uncomfortable bind.
I thought this one that just passed already was. Oh wait, he was a commie. Never mind.
Next? Haven’t they all been?
Cue up South Park.
Isn’t about time there was a Galgamek pope?
You guys did see “Conclave”, right?
Next pope will be a sinless intersex person who has ovaries but identifies as a dude.
But sinless!!
I read that as “skinless”.
Interesting mental image.
So the anti-Christ?
I read that as “skinless”.
Yet another institution skin-suited.
I texted that same sentiment to my family this morning.
Nonononono no no no….
My dad doesn’t have a smartphone. How is he going to be able to shop?
I don’t want to put any of my card information on my phone.
I do not install apps on my phone. It’s a security policy. I have most services disabled because I do not use them. I make and recieve phone calls, text messages, and sometimes pictures. My battery lasts forever. I often do not take my phone with me when I go out and about. If I have my wallet and my keys, I am good.
See, and people thought SSN or some tattoo was going to be the mark of the Beast. Who knew it would be your cell phone #?
I’m with you, UCS. I try to keep my online footprint as small as possible.
Instead of putting items in your cart and scanning at checkout you now scan as you put in cart and still scan at checkout?
Stop & Shop has had handheld scanners you can use to scan as you shop and just pay when you’re done for years.
This has nothing to do with AI.
No, you scan as you put items in the cart. As you leave, instead of having an employee spot check your cart, a machine verifies your purchases with what it detects in your cart. You then leave.
I don’t know what to tell these technophobes above. It works.
I read it as “Scan when you put it in your cart / claim it so we know you weren’t just looking at it, RFID / cameras / whatnot confirm when you leave the store with it.” No actual checkout involved… kind of like what Amazon was supposedly going to try a while back with RFID tagged items that charged you when you left the store, I would think.
Since Sam’s is supposedly more small business targeted than Wally World, this may work for their customer base — I don’t know. The article calls out Costco as sticking with checkouts… so let the market decide seems reasonable to me.
We don’t have a Costco around here.
I’d rather pay with a real card, and not one that requires biometric access, as is supposedly trying to be introduced. I also specifically want at least one card whose information is NOT on my phone.
Heck, I don’t check my bank balance on my phone, only on my desktop.
And God only knows what information the Sam’s Club app would be trying to steal from my phone.
Amazon stores have been doing this for years now, except there is no scanning. You run a card when you enter the store, walk around, put stuff in your pocket, take it out and put it back, put something else in your pocket, and walk out. It’s kind of creepy but it works well. I’ve used the Amazon kiosk to buy beer at Mariners games. It’s nice ’cause there’s never a line. It’s the same deal, except a real person has to check your ID.
Glad I don’t have that membership then. I refuse to do self checkout. I know several people that were accused of stealing because of scanning errors. Do not want ay of that, which is why I do a cashier.
Anything that specifially involves a smart phone gets a hard pass from me.
I loathe that my bank requires two stage authentication and needs my phone to do this.
Sams has had the scan-on-the-go app, or whatever it is called, for years now. Its just self-checkout but carrying the scanner around with you.
But it was Optional.
“phase out” traditional checkout implies, to me, that there will still be at least 1 open.
I drove to Costco yesterday, but it was closed for Easter. The Wife suggested we join Sam’s since it’s a block away. Glad I didn’t.
Do the boardroom folks who live on Zoom, have all their food delivered to them, and use Apple Pay for everything think the entire nation also subscribes to Convenience Uber Alles?
The question to ask is what major news story did they want to distract people from seeing when they killed the Pope.
The man was 88, had 1.5 lungs, which were infected for the past several months. I’m surprised he hadn’t keeled over weeks ago.
True enough. My only real surprise when I saw the headline this morning was that it was right after he made a public appearance for Easter Sunday (was that just too much stress to ask of his body?) and that no one was claiming Vance killed him (they met on Good Friday, I believe) in some OMB counter-plot.
I still won’t be surprised if some lunatic tries to spin that conspiracy.
He probably did keel over weeks ago, but the story is they kept him in a freezer till now to make it sound special.
Artificial intelligence is so fake.
AI is not fake. The people claiming AGI however is not something I see us ever achieving. The problem we have with that is that human general intelligence is nothing but people finding facts to meet their wild gut feelings and calling it logic. No computer can ever accomplish that. AI specifically created for very narrowly defined tasks however, will be a thing. But they will always needs humans in the chain to avoid the hallucinatory problems.
Glad you posted this one, Banjos — I saw it this morning and while I’ve got nuthin’ beyond “Wait and see what comes out” like everyone else… boy is the a weird enough situation to be interesting.
First thought is that the daughter is dating the gangster.
Second is that the daughter might have been chosen leverage by the gang to influence the judge and this was just their chosen watcher.
Third is “How many judges have the gangs influenced throughout the US anyway? It isn’t like they don’t have playbooks from their bases of operations… the old Mexico ‘silver or lead’ choice, etc.?” Maybe if we hadn’t been allowing a slow invasion for 60 years (escalating dramatically in the past four) it would be easier to answer these questions….
The answer to “Silver or Lead” is to buy bullets and shoot the gangsters until they stop sending more gunmen.
Yes, I know that’s more courage than a judge ever possesses to take that route.
There used to be judges like that.
Sounds like we’re going to get France and Italy sponsoring some mayors and denouncing others as
Anti-PopesAnti-Mayors. Fun times!If Heather had two mommies, Oakland can have four mayors.
Good morning!
I deeply apologize for totally forgetting to finish the columns. No idea why this week’s fatigue was so much worse than normal. OTOH, one of my distractions was Lily being abnormally demanding of pets, so I at least had that going for me.
NPR was all in on the beatification of commie pope this morning. Three stories about how awesome he was and how much he energized The Church and how everybody loved him.
I hope you don’t mean literally. While I don’t think anyone is really expecting changes in Church policy (see above about the Cardinals chosen to pack the college as it were), if they move to beatify Francis (on the path to canonization), that might well be enough to trigger a schism.
If you just meant NPR was tongue bathing his legacy… yeah, that’s no surprise. I expect even the more conservative Catholic media will opt to not speak ill of the dead… the liberal will be in full exaltation of his “cultural impact” or something.
Dude’s not even in the ground, it’s a bit early to dance on his grave.
No, I don’t think NPR would be willing to explicitly endorse any particular Church practice.
Yet.
I don’t think anyone’s going to be dancing on his grave (if for no other reason, his successor is unlikely to move in a direction said dancer would want). I meant that they’re less likely to discuss the more controversial aspects of his tenure in their eulogy articles, that’s all.
My dad recently came back to the church after many years. Before he came back, he had to sit and meet with a priest as well as make the act of confession. Before he started, he said he had one issue, and that’s that he did not consider Francis the true head of the Church. The priest responded “you really get it.” So there’s that.
Had the same experience myself.
I’ve been seriously considering going Greek Orthodox.
For now I’m going to the local Russian Baptist church (I shit you not-it exists and it’s great!)
I live not too far from a Charismatic Episcopal church, which I never would’ve believed existed.
Greek orthodox? Why not try that pretty cool Orthodox religion that George Costanza was trying to join?
that’s that he did not consider Francis the true head of the Church. The priest responded “you really get it.”
Good the priest recognizes Francis is an Antipope.
Same at local Big U. Everyone is going ape-shit. All of these schools are determined to not change any of their racist ways (and any of the Jew-hating ways expressed by faculty, students, and “students”) but who knows… money supposedly talks.
I know “FYTW” is the answer — but other than direct defense research like the Manhattan Project (which was very much a special case), the idea that the Fed is supposed to be taking tax money, extracting their cut to keep their beaks wet and then spreading it back around to universities… and that this is the Only Way ™ to fund science in this country is just bizarre. Just stop it all. It isn’t the Fed’s job, turkeys.
The Manhattan Project was done at a public university, not a private. And it does make a huge difference.
👆
The students who claimed everything is a “microagression” want to commit gigaagressions against the Jews and non-left students.
I am hoping Harvard loses its tax exempt status… They need to pay their fair share.
I heard one of the late night ‘comedy’ guys ranting and foaming at the mouth about taxing corporate unrealized gains because “all of those billions just sitting there untaxed! Unthinkable! “.
I wonder what his take is on university endowments?
What part of “Unrealized” do they not understand? That money DOES NOT EXIST.
Imagine what the inside of their head must be like. All they do is look around at everyone else and dream of stealing all of their stuff, even if they dont have that stuff.
What part of “Unrealized” do they not understand? That money DOES NOT EXIST.
All parts, of everything about economics, at all times. The idea of costs v benefits, the idea of perverse incentives, the idea of opportunity costs, and the idea of unintended consequences are just words nasty hate filled people throw around to disguise their bigoted refusal to just make things utopian in their minds.
All parts, of everything about economics, at all times.
Trade-offs are a lie man!
The commies have completely skin-suited academia. This must end. If we have to burn it all down and start over then that is what we have to do.
They are all hoping to get this tied up in court, and wait him out that way. All the while praying that Vance doesn’t become the next president, or that Sotomayor doesn’t go tits up.
She’s got the “sweet blood” so it could be at any time.
Harvard is the club where all the important people in our government and the bureaucracy come from. It’s only natural that they want the government to finance it.
Harvard is a hedge fund, with a degree mill on the side.
What, no love for Columbia University?
🙄🤮
Only the highest layer of the bureaucracy. Most of the bureaucracy is far more mundane in terms of education and expectation.
When you take the King’s shilling, you do the King’s bidding.
This, in a nutshell. And, on the surface at least, Trump isn’t make some outrageous demand. He’s essentially asking that they make changes to comply with the SCOTUS ruling in a case that they were actually a party to.
Daily Ray of Sunshine
lol My best friend thru elementary school was a black kid and it was only some years later that I came to understand some of the teacher reactions to that.
What if no one wants to switch?
/Sad face
Same thing happened to me when I was a kid. In elementary school, there was a black kid named Jimmy and we became friends because we had the same first name and our last names made us sit next to each other.
The best was when we went trick or treating together. Jimmy was wearing a white sheet and my dad told him that he had a great ghost costume. Jimmy’s reply was “I’m not a ghost, I’m a spook!”
It was years and years later that I finally figured out why my dad laughed so hard.
Your holiness, when you told me that story a while back, you said you met him in the bus on the way to boot camp. Also, that his name was Benjamin Beauford, and he told you to call hum Bubba.
I ask again – in ten years I suspect we will all be unemployable. What will we do?
A bunch of people replaced in the workforce by AI with nothing to do? Buying stock in a lube company might be a good first move.
You say that because you think we will be displaced by technology, or that we will be unemployable due to our social credit scores?
Fair point but I think the pendulum is swinging on the social credit score thing, thank God. No matter how things go culturally and politically we will inevitably be replaced by technology. I think it is a good thing but it does create a quandary.
I’ll probably keel over from a heart attack or something by then anyway. And there are way too many corpses to compete effectively when you can’t stand up for yourself!
Yeah I sure hope I’m not working in ten years anyway, but…
“Learn to code the AI that took your job.”
I think the AI’s already code much faster and better than we can.
Suthen – Code produced by AI is actually less efficient and more error-prone than human-produced.
Yeah I actually think AI is wayyy overblown. The amount of money being thrown at it is unbelievable, and I don’t look forward to yet another crash when reality reasserts itself.
“I think the AI’s already code much faster and better than we can.”
I spend a lot of time writing and teach AIs. And I now use AI sometimes as a backup to generate automated user tests (I don’t let it do my code ever cause it will suck). I will tell you for a fact that I have to check and correct whatever it produced more than half of the time. It may bet better, and then at specific task, but it will never get smart. It is just really brute force computing work that it excels at. And it can often make up shit. Humans will always need to be in the loop. The problem is how you create the humans that are smart enough to correct the AI when the young ones are all letting the AI do the basic work that over time creates expertise, these days.
Code produced by AI is actually less efficient and more error-prone than human-produced.
Like code from some person who thinks they are clever.
Perfect time for a tag fail.
Who pays for the AI?
My biggest gripe about AI is that it costs too much. Microsoft spent $5B to make $3B. How long can that go on?
How many devs will be using AI to help with their code when they actually have to pay for its actual costs?
I just wish I would have gotten into the business of constructing data centers. You never hear about those guys, but they’re the ones reliably making mad money, not the ones desperately trying to shoehorn AI into every single damn service whether it makes sense or not.
Just like in the Gold Rush: Everyone was dreaming of striking it rich with gold, even though very few actually made money that way. The ones who got rich much more consistently were the guys who sold things TO the hopeful miners: Shovels, picks, pans, etc.
… including blue denim work pants.
I’m not all that sure that automated tech programs really will work that well in the physical world.
Maybe we’ll all be on universal basic income – but I doubt it.
The kinks will be worked out quickly.
I don’t think that’s true. Maybe AI and robots can do totally predictable tasks.
But I still am optimistic enough to believe that only humans can truly innovate and create new technologies and art.
Problem is how to deal with the increasingly bored and unsatisfied mass of more feral humans. We’re already seeing some of that now.
“Problem is how to deal with the increasingly bored and unsatisfied mass of more feral humans. We’re already seeing some of that now.”
That is really what I was asking.
Not everyone is going to join some group with common interests to indulge in. The bulk of humans are governed by their emotions, their animal instincts and have very poor impulse control.
Walled cities surrounded by oceans of barbarism?
I think you have that backwards – the cities will be walled-in barbarism kept from breaking out by a constant stream of prolefeed of sufficient quantity to placate them sufficiently to not cause too much destruction.
And we can’t afford to pay any more people to sit on their couch getting high.
“Walled cities surrounded by oceans of barbarism?”
Or walled cities to keep the barbarians in??
I see my oldest kid as a microcosm of that bored and unsatisfied mass of humans. She has no motivation to do anything but look at a screen. Her health is crap, she’s overweight, she’s constantly in some sort of pain. That population is going to keep increasing.
We’ll all paint like Jackson Pollock.
Didn’t O- care already free us to pursue our hobbies?
Funemployment!
AI and robotics won’t be that far along in 10 years. At some point, maybe, they will get to where most jobs can be done by computers and robots, but not for a long time. If we ever get to that point, economics may drive automation and culture/psychology may resist it, so who knows?
Hell, I’ve been unemployable for 30 years. Something to do with skills or lack thereof.
Hope everyone had a great Easter (those that celebrate). We just joined a parish after being gone for years after the lockdowns. We had fallen off, and couldn’t handle all the restrictions when churches re-opened.
It was nice, the bishop was there and we had 10 adult baptisms. At the local level it seems like people are coming back. I hope the next Pope focuses on that, instead of chasing the latest political trends.
❤️✝️☦️
My church is in transition right now, we sold our old building and should be moving into a new one about June. For April/May we are meeting in a school auditorium, and have had to switch to two services (which we will also be doing in new building, so good warmup), so its hard to tell numbers, but I think we had a good crowd yesterday.
The CEOs came out all over yesterday. The local Catholic church had them parking on the side of the road.
“The district argues that there is “no evidence that any parent or child was penalized for his or her religious beliefs, asked to affirm any views contrary to his or her faith, or otherwise prohibited or deterred from engaging in religious practice.””
I get the legal strategy, but religion shouldn’t be the issue here.
Isn’t exposing children to explicit materials a crime? Shouldn’t these teachers be prosecuted?
Yes. That we are even having this conversation shows how deep the demoralization rot has gotten.
What kind of person thinks it is ok to talk to other people’s children about sexually explicit subjects? That is creepy as fuck.
Disrespecting OMWC on the site he helped create is just rude man!
As always – “it isn’t wrong when we do it”.
That depends on what “explicit materials” are. If it is a “I know it when I see it” situation, the whole idea is bound to fail. If it is a specific item or concept, that could be made to work.
One of the sailors on the ship with my son-in-law had gone missing while the ship is in Guam. It wasn’t someone he knows. Thankfully my son-in-law isn’t the type to go out and party, but I wish he’d go out and see some sights instead of spending all his time on the phone with my kid. I guess that’s newlyweds for ya.
https://www.kuam.com/story/52705473/search-efforts-continue-for-missing-sailor
It would probably be cheaper than the phone bill.
This weekend I asked her if she was talking to him, or if he was restricted to messages in a bottle.
That other sailor is trying to tip the island over?
He might have fallen off.
Elderly often make it just past key milestones before dying…the Pope dying on Easter Monday makes sense.
Is it just me, or do you notice more people die around this time of year? Mrs. TOK and I know a lot of people who lost family members in the last week or two.
Another day, another funeral.
Now it’s younger siblings of classmates
So about those anti-Trump marxist globalist protests all across the country that were planned for this past weekend that the media told us was going to draw something like 11 million people. Looks like they barely broke 10K. And it was the usual conglomeration of marxist douchebags. Thank you DOGE for ending programs like those USAID used to funnel my tax dollars to these scumbags to pretend they actually had a serious following!!
Speaking of USAID, and pivoting back to the
argumentsdebate on art last night, I wonder what will happen with the art scene with no government grants to fund unpopular art?It will improve dramatically?
R.J Shoots.
HE SCORES!!!
What R.J. says.
Without a financial incentive bad art will mostly go away.
I’ve been alive long enough to hear the Republicans will put an end to all art about six times and somehow that never happens.
Oh, it happened but it wasn’t the Republicans.
There should be zero gov’t funded art. That said, there will never be another Jackson Pollock, and no one has been able to successfully recreate his work because there was only one Jackson Pollock. Everyone who says “I can do that” is wrong, as they are not Jackson Pollock. Love his work or hate it, it was singular.
The protest at the local courthouse was all about “unifying the country,” while some douche bag waved a sign accusing
Trump supporters of being “facist (sic) maggots.” A sure way to win over hearts and minds.
LOL
That is the whopper of the millennium.
They support uniting under their control.
“unifying the country”
Under us, of course. GET IN LINE, BADPEOPLES!
Here’s a NPR story fluffing the protests.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5370619/protesters-turn-out-against-trump-in-hundreds-of-weekend-rallies-across-the-u-s
Early on, you can hear Steve Inskeep emoting “arson is NBD, but I guess we need to mention it to pretend to be objective.”
Why didnt they just say ‘dozens’?
They are so predictable. “Hundreds of protests”. If you counted every gathering of 10 people, then I’m sure it was hundreds.
The low turnout is encouraging, people were predicting a lot more violent protests as the weather gets better. Maybe making a martyr out of a wife-beating gang member who will just be re-deported if they get him back wasn’t the best move.
“The low turnout is encouraging,”
The one at the local county courthouse got twice the crowd that any Tea Party protest ever did. One thing conservatives seem to lack is any kind of organizations with local clubs that can assemble on quick notice to protest – or counter protest – like the Left can.
When you astroturf, you start with that central command and control infrastructure. Real grassroots is always chaotic and disorganized, thus slow to mobilize in response to fast moving events.
My favorite stuff were the various clips from people that at the end of these protests followed the people collecting the signs and bringing them to some vehicle to store for the next astroturfed event, now immediately trying to block the videographer documenting the fact this shit is all artificial and pure propaganda.
The low turnout is encouraging
I know of two this last weekend in NH. One in Concord and the other in Portsmouth.
I saw pictures of both. They got more people than the Reopen NH protests during the Lil Rona Panic.
One thing conservatives seem to lack is any kind of organizations with local clubs that can assemble on quick notice to protest – or counter protest – like the Left can.
They’re probably more likely to have jobs, families, and other things that reduce their availability for protests.
Well, my appointment with the new neurologist was pushed from 9 to 10:30. It’s only 5 min away, so no biggie, but I kinda sorta wished I coulda kept on sleeping.
Regardless, waking at 7:30 instead of 3:50 is still a massive improvement. I filled out my paperwork and everything, so now just an awkward waiting game here back at home.
Commie Pope’s dead and I imagine it’ll be like the Left, clueless of how they went wrong and how to respond. I’m neither hopeful nor optimistic about The Church finding any sort of pathway forward, but again, I’m deeply irreligious and care-eth not. As long as you have the ‘right’ clergy, they can help make the world makes sense?
Ev no understandy. Well, I do. Humans have enough thoughtful agency to ponder one’s ‘existence’ after our time on this globe. They are the sum of (mostly?) pleasant fictions for people to attach to in order to make the click of the light seem less daunting. I’m fairly envious I don’t share the same mindset in some ways, but thankful I’ve never ‘depended’ on such.
John Paul II was kinda a badass. Elect another similar. That’s good advice, which like all mine, is never taken.
See also, this Pro Tip: Keep a roll of toilet paper in the car. It’s useful to have as is and is fantastic kindling for (accidentally?) lighting your car on fire will driving. Chicks dig scars and Evel Knievel-ing your way through the flames. Hawt.
I’m sorry you get explosive diarrhea in your car.
“The teens said they were questioned at Honolulu Airport for hours before they were allegedly subjected to full-body scans and strip searches, according to the outlet.
They were then given green prison uniforms and placed in a holding cell with long-term detainees, some of whom were reportedly accused of serious crimes.
The young travelers said they allegedly had to sleep on thin, moldy mattresses and were warned by guards to avoid expired food.”
https://nypost.com/2025/04/21/us-news/german-teens-traveling-to-us-jailed-and-deported-over-loosely-planned-vacation-being-found-suspicious/
Seems a bit excessive.
Indeed, at least treat the mattresses for mold in a humid environment.
These were chicks that thought if they put out, they would get free accommodations for most of their stay, is my bet. That sort of shit is popular for young women in Europe.
Border agent thought they were whoring and got pissed off when they wouldn’t service him?
wut
They were on vacation — makes sense they’d want to go to plan B if Hawaii was verboten.
I don’t think that’s how deportation is supposed to work.
Were they “deported” or “refused entry into the US?”
Reading it, it sounds like they were refused entry.
There has to be more to this story. It does sound like the “plot” of a porn movie though.
There is a really shitty joke in there somewhere.
This is a number of times now I have heard this story about German young people. Is there some reason I am unaware of about Germans that make them worth extra scrutiny? First two thoughts: Lots of muslim immigration and Baader-Meinhof gang.
Antifa is a German thing… It came to be around 1922, when so many Germans, using logic, realized marxism was a doomed and failure guaranteeing system – because government would destroy everything and end up blamed for it – and concocted fascism, which ticked off the early Germans that just wanted free shit.
Baseball birthdays: No HoFers today. Some good players though.
Hardy Richardson 41.0 war — he played 1879-92
Ken Caminiti 33.4
Gary Peters 28.7
Al Bumbry 24.5
Jesse Orosco 23.2
“Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth embroiled in ANOTHER astonishing war plan group chat leak”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14630469/Pete-Hegseth-second-group-chat-leak-Trump.html
OFFS!
Better not leak the plans for Canada.
You mean War Plan Red?
That was the old plan when they had a military. They new plan uses JROTC units.
Seems kinda overkill.
I figured they would use the WNBA instead.
The corruptocracy needs to stop Hegseth and get him out, cause he has wrecked decades of work to make our military lap dogs of the new marxist globalist world order masters.
That is how I see it. On the other hand, Hegseth needs to watch his ass with anything that even looks like an issue. And he clearly needs to purge staff around him.
There is no nepotism in the Trump administration!
Bonus Daily Ray of Sunshine
Were they rotten? And how many kids had to be hospitalized from impacts?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6936c11661234b7fdd57c6ad51c140569b9c92794e57cb415bc121a3b182d0fb.jpg
What are his plans for Thanksgiving in Cincinnati?
“The couple – who got together months after his brutal divorce was finalised – wished their fans a ‘Happy Easter’ in a joint post on Instagram Sunday, sharing a photo of the two canoodling by a fence in a field.
Elizabeth, 59, looked glamorous wearing a blue plaid button down shirt and a pair of faded jeans, while the Achy Breaky Heart singer, 63, was kissing her cheek, wearing a festive pair of green bunny ears over his long, dark waves.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14631185/elizabeth-hurley-fans-concern-billy-ray-cyrus-romance.html
Has anyone seen Tundra?
Hugh Grant is stupid.
Yes. Yes he is.
That is a funny way to say ‘gay’.
I always got the distinct impression that Sir Hugh liked some stuff that was outside the ordinary even for posh British public-school gentry, if you get my meaning, and Liz got tired of him outsourcing it to hookers…
She has a lot of Mylies on her.
I’ve been thinking about that “Maryland Man” the Dems are trying to bring back. While much of what they do is just knee-jerk anti-Trump stuff, I think there might be more to this one, engineered by the same people who brought us Soros judges. They keep talking about “due process”. Right now that’s just an immigration judge and there isn’t much to it. But if they can redefine “due process” to mean multiple court hearings and appeals and a years-long process, that will overwhelm the system and those millions of illegals are here to stay. To the left it’s all about winning, and that would be a win.
In fact, the immigration “judge” is an Executive branch position, not an Article III judicial position. The whole argument about due process is that the Executive cannot be both prosecutor and judge, as has been common with administrative proceedings leading to fines, etc.
Do they really want to ‘win’ that one?
Pyrrhic victory?
Hmm, if losing the ability to speedily deport ends up eliminating administrative proceedings I’d call that a win.
Everyone should start using this “Maryland Man” stereotype like they do for “Florida Man”.
You know who else was born in Baltimore?
No.
Nancy Pelosi?
OMWC?
John Waters?
H. L. Mencken?
Stringer Bell?
I was under the impression the guy had been before an immigration judge 2x and been ordered deported both times but it never came about.
This shit has to come to an end. Yes, there is more to it than resisting Trump. The open borders thing is an all-out war on our culture and our country. The left is deliberately trying to import the worst kinds of people for that reason. High crime is a standard tactic for them, they always do that.
The elite being altered to be superior to the masses has been a long-standing trope.
Slowly, it’s coming true. Once they’ve worked the kinks out on luxury animals, then they can move into humans.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/04/argentinas-scientists-create-gene-edited-polo-super-ponies/
“After spending some time in El Paso, Texas, Ortega-Lopez met the judge’s wife, Nancy Cano, and began doing some handyman jobs as well as construction.”
I guess pool boy was too obvious?
Yup. A gang member has no need to do odd jobs.
I was more thinking boom chicka wow wow.
Right. He has no need to do odd jobs.
Dissatisfied wives OTOH…
Not Adahn:
He was a gang banger not a gang member.
He was a gang banger
So he had to have his homies there backing him up?
He was there to fix the cable.
Meine dispatcher says there’s something wrong with deine kable?
After posting two weeks ago, I forgot to update the Premier relegation fight last week. Mostly because nothing changed. But this weekend was different.
Mathematically safe: The top 16 teams
Reasonably safe: West Ham United
Safe for now: none
Danger zone: none
Toast: Ipswich Town
Relegated: Leicester City, Southampton
To survive, Ipswich Town must win their last 5 matches, West Ham must lose their last 5, and Ipswich must overcome a 20 goal differential difference. The third is actually more likely than the first two requirements.
Realistically, with 5 games to go, its all determined. The 3 teams that came up this year are headed right back down, and there wasn’t even a fight.
In the Championship, however, things are interesting with 3 matches to go:
Clinched title: none
Clinched promotion: none
Clinched playoff: Leeds, Burnley, Sheffield United, Sunderland
Playoff eligible: Bristol City, Coventry City, Midddlesbrough, West Bromwich, Millwall, Blackburn Rovers, Swansea City
Playing for Pride (safe from relegation, cannot make playoff): Watford, Norwich City, Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday
Reasonably Safe: none
Safe for now: Stoke City
Danger Zone: Preston North End, Portsmouth, Oxford United, Hull City, Derby County, Luton Town, Cardiff City, Plymouth Argyle
Toast: none
Relegated: none
And one level down from there, Wrexman has slipped out of automatic promotion but is guaranteed a playoff spot.
Since you brought it up:
Clinched title: Birmingham City
Clinched promotion(2nd place): none
Clinched playoff: Wycombe Wanders, Wrexham, Charlton Athletic, Stockport County
Playoff eligible: Leyton Orient, Reading, Bolton Wanderers, Huddersfield Town, Blackpool
Playing for pride: Lincoln City, Barnsley, Rotherham United, Stevenage, Exeter City, Wigan Athletic, Petersborough United
Danger zone: Mansfield Town, Northampton Town, Burton Albion, Bristol Rovers, Crawley Town, Cambridge United
Relegated: Shrewsbury Town
And if you go down a few more levels, the top six in the National League South can all win the title with two games to go.
And the other 5 will have to fight thru a playoff for the 2nd promotion spot.
I feel like Sunderland has been MIA way too long, unless they yo-yoed recently and I missed it.
Sunderland was relegated in 2017, which led to them selling Pickford to Everton.
They did the double-drop, and may even have threatened to fall to League 2 at one point. Took them a while just to get back to the Championship.
“The statement reads, “Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez has been suspended as Garrison Commander at Fort McCoy. This suspension is not related to any misconduct. We have no further details to provide at this time while this matter is under review.”
According to multiple reports, Col. Ramirez—who assumed command at Fort McCoy in July 2024—has openly engaged in left-wing political activism and repeatedly defied Department of Defense regulations requiring the prominent display of official portraits of current civilian leadership, including the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/fort-mccoy-garrison-commander-who-refused-display-photos/
“Have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
Why did she have to be MI? Don’t disgrace the corps.
I wonder what her PFT score was.
She scores high on the weight test.
It’s too early for Thicc Thursday.
Whenever I see that reconstruction of Otzi the Iceman’s pre-mummification appearance, I can’t help but think it looks exactly like one of my grandfathers.
“Trans activists responded by taking to the streets over the weekend, where they vandalized a statue of South African leader Nelson Mandela and called for the hanging of the gender-critical Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
According to police, statues of Sir Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett were also defaced during the demonstrations, which were held in Parliament Square rally on Saturday.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/trans-activists-call-jk-rowlings-hanging-deface-nelson/
CWABOA
Summer of Love incoming.
The commie ratfuckers have been primed for it and are itching to go.
Wouldn’t they save it for the midterms?
I do not think it will play out the same way it did last time when democrats & democrat politicians kept using tax payer money to keep bailing out the terrorists so they could keep vandalizing and terrorizing night after night. I suspect this time the FBI will file federal charges, and then prosecute anyone that disregards those and frees these team blue agitators. It will quickly end up ugly and bad for them with lack of fund and authorities now sending them to pound-you-in-the-ass prison.
I’m OK with defacing Disraeli’s statue.
Total security state
Bannister and her classmate Sarah Walker were inside a classroom on the second floor of a building with a view of the student union, located right at the top of the staircase, open to the hallway.
As they went into lockdown, a classmate shouted to lock the doors at the front and the back of the classroom, Bannister recounted. The student who was standing at the door said in response: “These doors don’t lock,” she said. “The response was, ‘What do you mean they don’t lock?’”
Walker said their classmates broke down. “The fear in people’s faces, the shaking and the crying started really badly in everyone after we realized there were no locks on the doors,” Walker said.
——-
Brian Higgins, who teaches emergency preparedness and response at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and consults several colleges for active shooter response, said: “It doesn’t seem like not having locks contributed to any casualties, but at the same time they’re an integral part of an active shooter response plan.”
Walker and Bannister are now trying to bring awareness to their school and others by organizing a petition signed by nearly 30,000 people and counting, calling for working locks on all classroom doors. “No one should have to be in a classroom feeling unprotected during what was the most terrifying moment of our lives. This is a basic safety measure that can no longer be overlooked,” the petition says.
Many of the students sheltering in place across the campus who signed the petition reported they could not lock their classroom doors because they were not equipped with functioning locks.
What they need are doors which can be locked automatically from a central location. Like a jail.
Countdown on when a shooter will lock himself into a classroom and everyone will be outraged.
What were they thinking putting locks on the doors? It kept the kids from escaping and the police from getting in!!!!
Countdown? That dweeb who shot up UVA did exactly that – he ran a bike lock thru the door handles of every building exit except the one he made entry through. Boom, no way for the victims to escape, harder for the police to get in. Guaranteed 20+ body count.
I was informed by Michael Moore that locking doors was bad.
Have all the doors open inward and train teachers to wedge a desk behind it or something. Locks on the doors would cause all sorts of issues and that includes with good old fashioned school troublemakers.
Ugh imagine a college dorm situation with two bedrooms connected by a bathroom and the locks are in the bedrooms.
That was a lot of fun. 🙄
Does anyone here have the MLB app and love, hate or in between it? I see it is now $20 a month to get it for your specific team. As my only sports watching is F1 and the SF Giants, that seems like a good bargain for my sports viewing wants.
No. Pay attention to their blackout rules:
I’m 100 miles from the Orioles on the other side of Washington but they claim my area.
Ooof. Not for me. I do have an MLB app that I use to share tickets. To me $20 a month is too much subscription cost. So many places want subscriptions….
Life coming back at ya…
At least he has all the trendiest flair in his bio.
Unseriousness
But the flight, and its grim promotional cycle, might be most depressing for what it reveals about the utter defeat of American feminism. Sánchez, the organizer of the flight, has touted the all-female crew as a win for women. But she herself is a woman in a deeply antifeminist model. It is not her rocket company that took her and her friends to the edge of space; it’s her male fiance’s. And it is no virtue of her character that put her inside the rocket – not her capacity, not her intellect and not her hard work – but merely her relationship with a man. (The fact that the rocket itself looks so phallic does not help to lessen the flight’s message that the surest way for women to raise themselves in the world is to attach themselves to a man.)
There are at least two women on the mission who can be credited as serious persons: Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer, and Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights entrepreneur whose past work with Nasa makes her something closer to an actual astronaut. But most of the crew’s self-presentation and promotion of the flight has leaned heavily on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness that insults women by cavalierly linking their gender with superficiality, vanity and unseriousness.
A civil rights entrepreneur?
“The fact that the rocket itself looks so phallic”
I can’t wait until they finally come up with a vagina-shaped spacecraft.
So, like Barbarella’s spacecraft?
Feminists have been saying this for decades, as if aerodynamics has nothing to do with it.
A civil rights entrepreneur?
Innovations in grifting?
Pronounced “grifter”?
[fist bump]
a civil rights entrepreneur whose past work with Nasa makes her something closer to an actual astronaut
I once cleaned a general’s office which makes me close to being a general.
Yeah, I sat at Walter Annenberg’s desk and used his phone. I’m close to being a media mogul.
G;DR
I thought it was called the DDR?
I’m willing to debate Douglas Murray on this. I’m an expert on Hispanic women with huge boobs.
Ugh, the author’s pic checks out. Truly the wee lass is a dour looking banshee.
It is not misogynist to say that these women do not have their priorities in order. Rather, it is misogynist of them to so forcefully associate womanhood with cosmetics and looks, rather than with any of the more noble and human aspirations to which space travel might acquaint them – curiosity, inquiry, discovery, exploration, a sense of their own mortality, an apprehension of the divine. These women, who have placed themselves as representatives for all women with their promotion of the flight – positioning themselves as aspirational models of femininity – have presented a profoundly antifeminist vision of what womankind’s future is: dependent on men, confined to triviality, and deeply, deeply silly.
Is this the future that awaits women in Donald Trump’s America: one where the only way to achievement is through sexual desirability, the only way to status as an ornamental attachment on a man who really counts, the only subject on which we are qualified to speak is whether lash extensions will stay in place? If this is the future, count me out. On the other hand, the notion of being launched off of such a grim and sexist Earth is looking more and more appealing.
Lighten up, dollface.
the only way to achievement is through sexual desirability, the only way to status as an ornamental attachment on a man who really counts, the only subject on which we are qualified to speak is whether lash extensions will stay in place?
The thing is, there are a lot of women who willingly embrace this. I believe in freedom above all, so I don’t care either way if a woman wants to be a bimbo or a biomedical engineer… I just don’t want to hear complaining that it’s “the patriarchy” or “Trump’s America” when some women pursue nothing in life except luxury cosmetics and social media attention.
The only true women are feminists who hate women who aren’t woman-hating feminists.
From CNBC:
“We’re seeing a clear signal from the market that it doesn’t like even the idea that the president might try to remove the Fed chair. There has been some loss of confidence in U.S. economic policy making in recent weeks. We’ve seen that in this very odd combination of upward pressure at times on longer-term bond yields combined with a weaker dollar. That suggests global investors pulling capital out of the U.S.,” Krishna Guha, vice chairman at Evercore ISI, said Monday on “Squawk Box.”
Where is it going? Tell me something I can use.
So far it doesn’t look good. Market going down this morning.
Trump couldn’t care less. He’s at the White House egg roll, emoting about what a great country we have.
Big Nanny is watching
Instagram is beginning to test the use of artificial intelligence to determine if kids are lying about their ages on the app, parent company Meta Platforms said on Monday.
Meta has been using AI to determine people’s ages for some time, the company said, but photo and video-sharing app will now “proactively” look for teen accounts it suspects belong to teenagers even if they entered an inaccurate birthdate when they signed up.
——-
Meta says it trains its AI to look for signals, such as the type of content the account interacts, profile information and when the account was created, to determine the owner’s age.
I thought the big panic was adults faking it as teens.
You don’t need any more controls to prevent me from creating a Meta account.
“Hello, fellow teens!”
Instead of bombing the Houthis, which probably isn’t going to defeat them, we could use decoy cargo ships to get them to deplete their stocks of drones and anti-ship missiles.
That’s actually not a bad idea.
Use the decoys to develop anti-drone weapons.
Hack the navigation satellites from the CCP and Russia they use to identify Russian and Chinese ships as flagged to other countries and have them sink their allies’ own cargo ships, I say.
Technically, the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, not the PRC or Russia.
There’s a suspected Iranian spy ship (Zagros) parked in the Red Sea which has not been attacked. Probably because we are trying to get a new nuclear deal with Iran. The Israelis probably attacked a different one (Saviz).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56661069
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/targeting-iranian-spy-ships/
During the opening phase of the Gulf War, drones were used to get the Iraqis to turn on their air defense radar systems, which were then immediately bombed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-141_TALD
If I was still at NSA, I’d probably be analyzing Houthi communications to help with the current bombing campaign. I don’t have a moral objection to that, but if we bomb them for months with our billion-dollar wowie-kazowie weapons and fail to defeat them, we look like idiots.
I’d prefer not to work for the fedgov again at this point. Too much waste and stupidity. Teaching math is more constructive.