A rushed and hectic week at work, so I deserve a short break. So weekend in the Finger Lakes with Prime hitting a few of my favorite wineries run by a few of my favorite people. Prime is more of a beer and spirits sort, but she’s gaining an appreciation for spoiled grape juice; a couple of trips like this and she’ll be as hooked as Spud and me. It’s tinged with melancholy, though, since this is something SP and I avidly pursued, and I can’t help but think of her and the joy we shared when a sleek and bone-dry Riesling was poured into our glasses. Nonetheless, the pleasure here is to be savored, and that’s something SP would be adamant about. I also think she’d strongly approve of Prime.
Birthdays of the day can also be savored, and comprise the guy who outlined modern politics; a guy who kept me alive in my flying days; a do-gooder with a camera; the (((pride))) of Milwaukee- and one tough lady; a guy who always had his hands on his organ; one more great musician who was a fucking moron and made sure we all knew it; the godfather of chamber jazz; a Nobel laureate who probably wrote the best science book for laymen I’ve ever seen; a guy who had a very full life… but wait, there’s more!; a guy who was clearly inspired by Vivaldi; a do-gooder who actually IS a do-gooder; and finally, Spud’s man-crush.
Let’s crush Links.
This is nothing but good news, despite it being the Guardian.
“It’s only a flesh wound. Have at you!”
Freedom = subsidy. At least if your only source is a commie antisemitic NGO.
Before even reading the story, I knew it had to be DC.
Straying off the reservation inevitably brings the sharks. Tulsi should have been a lesson.
“Oh, no, how can our research on Climate Justice survive this?”
NPR is also horrified that people will have to, you know, WORK for a living.
Less known: she and her husband were recurring characters in Kinky Friedman’s mystery novels.
I enjoy the Django tradition of jazz in so many ways. And there are so many amazing guitarists keeping it alive and well. Old Guy needs a fix of this now and then. This is some impressive fucking jazz guitar.
I strongly doubt I’m going to be the only one this morning who thought “Happy Birthday Liberace!”
Glad you’re finding your happiness, OMWC. Seriously. (What’s the German opposite of schadenfreude, I wonder — you know there’s a word… Germans always have a 3 page word for things…? Because I have no interest in the misery of others typically — it doesn’t please me. I do find joy when others find joy…. if I were less of an introvert and had life skills beyond kernel programming, I probably should have gone into some line of work to more actively promote happiness… ah well…)
Flag on the play, good sir — this is another one of those “Too many possibilities!” phrasings. Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, the list even for the still with us goes on and on and on….
There are two penalties on the play:
Bruce Springsteen is not a great musician.
Those penalties are offsetting: replay first comment.
I realized I was leaving myself open to criticism on that conditional right after I hit submit.
I honestly expected Ms. Crow to be the cited problem with my examples though.
There is. Freudenfreude.
If you find happiness in others’ happiness but always assume it’s sexual, is that Freudian Freudenfreude?
If I understand German correctly, it’s Freudifreudenfreude in that case. Which sounds like a dish the Swedish Chef would make.
Only if he was cheerfully aroused
Whatever the chef makes — it always seems to be borked.
Frauleinfreude??
““These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in the statement.”
Hey look, words!
Sounds rather like the reported Hesgeth memo for restructuring the Army. Apparently OMB’s appointees went heavy on the buzzword bingo requirements for their immediate staff, I suppose.
Or they simply pulled from the GS ranks and this is what they got.
And now having made it past the birthdays and skimmed the article… it is a start. I’d rather the Agency (and the rest of the IC) just be dissolved. They’ve proven themselves fundamentally untrustworthy on more than just the executive level and actively working against the interests of the citizens. So I’d really rather not vest any power or authority in that nest of vipers.
But yeah… at least it is a start.
“I’d rather the Agency (and the rest of the IC) just be dissolved.”
In a vat of sulfuric, or hydrochloric, acid?
¿Por qué no los dos?
The only way to fix the CIA et al is to feed it into the metaphorical meat grinder and burn whatever comes out of the other side. Having them around is like having a cobra somewhere in your house and sooner or later you’ll be bitten.
+1 JFK
That should be -1
Happy Birthday Lazarus!
and finally, Spud’s man-crush.
Happy birthday OMWC!
Heh…. polite applause. Nicely played.
Bwahahahaha – California only had 5 maybe 6 refineries when I last lived there. Everytime one was down for maintenance, supplies would tighten and prices rise, because of course they are the only ones allowed to brew up California’s special blend. Now two are shutting down for good? California should follow the Mexican example, make ’em state-owned and operated, that’ll show all the dirty capitalists!
Funny what the state telling them they need to produce, to keep as a reserve, how much profit they can make or they’ll be “profiteering”, etc. etc. etc. will do, innit?
I’m more surprised than anything else that they aren’t all gone by now. I’m sure SacTown will go full Venezuela on the plants and then suffer industrial accidents because they’re a bunch of chronic screwups or something soon.
It was only after living in southern Nevada for close to a decade that I found out substantially all the gasoline comes in by way of a single pipeline from California, which is why gas prices are so high in spite of Nevada’s much lower taxes. There was a break or disruption several years back, and everybody was shitting their pants queuing up for $4/gallon gas. It was resolved less than a week later…
Speaking of wine, leave it to California to have an appellation d’origine contrôlée for gasoline.
I lived near the Valero refinery for 12 years or so. It was clean, well-run, and provided good jobs for hundreds of people. So of course the state had to run it out.
Am I hallucinating or does that last phrase make no sense in that context?!
PS. It’s not “clean”.
“No matter how much we tell them not to, the idiots are STILL buying cars!”
Remember: despite -> because of
California will not need gasoline when they are all EV within a decade.
However, they will need electricity.
Common Tater:
What do you mean? They still have walls.
Everything is going to be fine. Newsome ordered the regulators to ensure CA has enough fuel to meet demand.
Devolution of HUD programs and money to the states, the states that have a better grasp of their individualized needs? Well heaven forfend…you suck NPR, maybe with the federal money being withheld you’ll have to utilize some AI or another to write your shitty articles, probably do a better job.
“Devolution of HUD programs and money to the states”
What, are you trying to make some sort of mongoloid program?
I would prefer just cancellation of the programs. Let the states decide what, if anything, they need to do to fuck up the real estate market.
One does search the enumerated powers in vain for references to housing and urban development, after all. As well as a great many other things the feds are balls deep in, of course.
There were several stories like that in my newsfeed the other day, lamenting how the Trump admin was ending some Federal program that helped communities in various states. My first thought was, “Why the fuck is there a federal program to help people in %other state%, shouldn’t that be a state, county, or city program?”
“Straying off the reservation inevitably brings the sharks. Tulsi should have been a lesson.”
Blocked. What was the headline?
Basically a hit piece in NY Mag — Twitchy talks about it here as a summary.
OK, thanks. This works in reader mode https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-struggle-mental-health-clinical-depression.html
“If his base was surprised by this, perhaps they hadn’t been paying enough attention. While Israel had not been a prominent issue in his various campaigns, Fetterman had been talking about his support for the country for years. “I’m not really a progressive in that sense,” he said while campaigning in 2022. “There is no daylight between myself and these kinds of unwavering commitments to Israel’s security.” Still, it wasn’t until October 7 that it became clear Fetterman was the most outspoken Israel hawk in his party, offering constant and unconditional support for the military action in Gaza. Early on in the conflict, 16 of his former campaign staffers wrote a letter — anonymously — saying they found his full-throated support for Israel to be a “gutting betrayal.” Jentleson had taken to defending Fetterman on X from such criticisms, posting, “The thing about being a staffer is that no one elected you to represent them.”
If the Democrats go all anti-Isreal how will that play in Hollywood?
It will play fine. The Hollywood types are Good Leftists first, Jews maybe fifth or sixth.
Since the Dems have gone all anti-Israel, we don’t have to wonder.
Turns out it plays just fine in Hollywood.
“Since the Dems have gone all anti-Israel, we don’t have to wonder.”
Israel got a massive amount of support under the Biden administration, which was run by Democrats. Not exactly sure which Democrats were in charge, but they were definitely Democrats.
Revocation of a clearance is a constitutional issue? Fascinating. Why do we put retards on the bench?
Because it is the only way to protect America’s bakeries from the cake-wanting horde?
Don’t let the judges off the hook with a presumption of retardation, they’re politically motivated bad actors who know exactly what they’re doing.
Little from column A, little from column B.
Good point, the truly mentally challenged are humble and moral for the most part. Something that certainly cannot be said about the average bench-sitter.
I’ve seen that movie.
I was thinking this.
I cannot express enough how much I despised that movie.
And that is why we love you, OMWC.
Oh try, please. Was it Giamatti’s insufferable snobbishness, or Haden Church’s insufferable cluelessness? Why weren’t they just as lovable an oddball pair as Matthau and Lemmon?
There’s an article I feel dumber for having even looked at… Sheesh…
I got a couple paragraphs in and usually I get a kick out of the derp but this one just made me angry. What a stinking pile of bullshit.
Happy birthday David Axelrod?
No such thing, says Ayn Rand.
QED, per your fist comment.
“Marianna Zhang, a cognitive scientist at New York University who studies how children form stereotypes and how to reduce those stereotypes”
SCIENCE!!
Perhaps they mean free as in gratis rather than free as in libre.
Trump isn’t serious about cutting spending, and you knew it.
Yeah, I think we did. Basically, he wants to shift money from discretionary bullshit to security and military bullshit. Of course, Congress is having a collective stroke. So I predict a compromise:
The security and military spending increases will go through, and the discretionary bullshit won’t be cut at all.
Donald Trump – social conservative and fiscal liberal. Yay
“I mean, it was one thing when he was a drooling vegetable doing the haldol shuffle on national TV, but now that he won the election and the governor can swap him out for a prototypical generic leftist progressive, we’re very concerned about his health and mental capacity.”
One of the few people in the world for whom a stroke brought a bit of clarity and they’re knocking the guy. If those staffers feel so strongly about it they should resign.
Nah, Shapiro is the Jew in the punchbowl of Democrat politics, no way would he gonna put some anti-Semitic current thing in Fetterman’s place.
It Fetterman lives and survives the primary, he will cruise to victory over whomever the GOP puts up against him.
Yes, Seeger was a moron. And a commie. But I repeat myself.
An axe to the CIA? That is good news.
Forget Hamas, cut their fucking water off. Stop treating the symptom.
In what way is the press restricted or limited? If they are being prevented from publishing lies and gibberish I cant tell.
In what way is it unconstitutional for a president to decide what law firms govt can hire? I am not 100% sure on this one.
At some point Big Oil is going to do the math and decide it doesnt pay to supply energy to some states. That should be interesting.
I am also suspicious when a Democrat starts talking sense. Something must be wrong.
The ‘scientific’ community today has done more damage to the credibility of science than all of it’s enemies in history together.
How exactly does one acquire the name ‘Kinky’? R.I.P. Ruth.
Perhaps the Brit powers that be missed their chance to do what the Germans (and French to a lesser degree) did. Who knew there was the glimmer of a chance of restructuring the party system there, and, if it can happen there, why not here? Trump’s Republican insurgency will end with him in ’28.
I suspect the people who dislike the Trump regime will be extremely disappointed by what eventually upends the two-party system, if anything ever does. It’s more likely to be an amalgamation of old labor and cultural conservatism on the one side, and neoclassical globalism and progressive wokism on the other.
Maybe but depends on how the economy goes and how Vance does. If anything Vance is more radical than Trump, who’s really not a radical BTW, smarter, and less of a bull in a china shop so he’d be more capable of working on meaningful reform. We’re only four months in now but we’ll see.
That is what has been amusing to me, that we are 100 days in, and have been hearing the death knells for most of it. Dropping approval ratings (which, by the way, are from the same polling outfits that said that Kamala was on equal footing), tariff deals that are failing (no matter that things are still being negotiated), and political death from a democrat Player to be Named Later (when all he needs to do is outrun them, not the bear).
No, what we are seeing both here and anywhere else, is wishcasting.
I’m not convinced that Vance can win on his own. Sitting VPs have a terrible track record electorally – they actually do better after being out of office. Nor do I think Vance can push the Republicans in Congress as much as Trump can, and even there, they aren’t conceding much to Trump.
So no, in general I do not see the duopoly here changing any more than the British one did. Both of them need to be swept aside by a new party but I have no idea who is going to lead that here.
For a guy who spent a good part of life in science OMWC sure hates Our Beloved Science
Indeed, I love science and hate Science.
Jeez, stop with the blasphemy already.
Oh, and to answer your usual question in advance, we’ll be drinking mostly Riesling and Cabernet Franc from Hermann Wiemer, Forge, and Ria’s today. Tomorrow, we’ll hit 628, Element, and Ravines. I’d like to fit Standing Stone in there somewhere…
I have not decided what wine to drink today. I bought a cigar and will have that with whisky.
Yesterday with mom i had a romanian blend of cabernet sauvignon and marselan was not bad.
‘Science’ is much like the word ‘America’ in that it refers to two very different things making it easy to muddy up the waters in any discussion of them.
Russia Enters the Railway Age, 1842–1855
https://theworthyhouse.com/2025/04/11/russia-enters-the-railway-age-1842-1855-richard-mowbray-haywood/
Mostly a book review but contains a bit of history
That looks interesting, thanks Pie!
We still don’t understand, why doesn’t Trump follow our foreign policy consensus!
The cries of “chaos!” and “worst 100 days in history!” and such coming from certain quarters on this anniversary are something else.
LOL!! It’s inconceivable that his minions aren’t resisting from within!
Was it worse than Jan6? I have been told Jan6 was worse than Pearl Harbor and the Civil War put together.
Does anyone know who is paying for all of this propaganda? I was under the impression that USAID was ended as a money laundering operation for commie propaganda.
Europe’s lost peasant utopias
April 16, 2025
Luka Ivan Jukic
Themes: Books, History
Eastern Europe’s 20th century witnessed an epic march of peasants from the countryside into the cities. The world they left behind, and the organised resistance put up by millions to its slow obliteration, remains an enigma.
https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/europes-lost-peasant-utopias/
It was a manifestation of a unique type of political consciousness that does not fit easily into any of the 20th-century’s main ideological trends. That of the proud peasant who sees his or her way of life not as something to be overcome by urbanisation and industrialisation, but rather to be preserved and supported. The requisitioning officials, the scorned ‘gentlemen’ with their frock coats, the oppressive estate owners, the merchants and middlemen; these were the enemies familiar to peasants across Europe’s east who only seemed to bring hardship and ruin to families and their farms.
As diffuse of a phenomenon as they may have been, the Green Cadres represented the wartime crystallisation of a peasant consciousness that became a major political factor across the successor states to Austria-Hungary. Taking advantage of vastly expanded franchises, peasant parties representing rural majorities in places like Romania, Poland, or Croatia (subsumed in a wider Yugoslavia) became wildly successful in the 1920s.
Guess the author never heard of neoprimitivism.
(Meant, of course, in the Kaczynski-ite political sense; not the cultural movement)
I do not think it is comparable
Similar enough that I wouldn’t necessarily call it unprecedented or outside of 20th century ideological frameworks. But then, some variation of the industrial/pastoral divide is as old as industrialisation itself.
My head hurts
This. Anyone who uses that term has never lived in said Utopia.
“Work your fingers to the bone, whatdaya get? Bony fingers.”
You wish you got bony fingers. You actually get swollen sausage fingers twisted from joint damage and exposure. The slender fingers are all on the upper classes.
TWO links from NPR… we’re not worthy!
Press freedom in the U.S. now falls in line with developing countries, such as Gambia, Uruguay and Sierra Leone.
Okay, Pinocchio.
Freedom means taxing you in order to push the agenda of the left. Why do you hate freedom?
There’s no doubt that Liberace was a hell of a piano player.
But I heard he really sucked on the organ.
‘Unparalleled’ snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times
You gotta suffer for the cure, they say.
Researchers have identified a hidden defensive structure deep in the forests of Neamț County, Romania. They used drones equipped with LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology to map the terrain through dense foliage, and revealed evidence of an elaborate feature from around 5,000 years ago.
This discovery might date back to the late Neolithic, a stage of prehistory that stretched from about 8,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., and it shows how early societies managed to build strong barriers in tricky places.
https://www.earth.com/news/5000-year-old-fort-hidden-in-the-jungle-confirms-ancient-society-sophistication-lidar/
I am not that sure neolithic matriarchal Old Europe was as peaceful as sone belive
THE PITCH: two best friends, a Black guy and a white guy, concoct a scheme to get rich by faking a racial incident and then launching dueling GoFundMes. As the stakes keep rising, will SETH ROGEN and KEVIN HART be able to pull it off? Find out this summer in GOFUNDYOURSELF
https://x.com/ArmandDoma/status/1918450019327459572
Sounds very xenophobic. No wonder that civilisation died out, what with diversity being our strength.
Always and everywhere the same. People have been building cities and eating each other since before we were people.
Pat: For civilization to die out it would have to exist first. I hear people talk about civilization a lot but I dont see any evidence of it.
It exists, we just allow to the wrong people to make up the connotations. It just means the process of becoming a city dweller. What the grizzled character in a western would call citified. Dependent and arrogant about it.
“Cat survives 380-foot fall that killed owners at Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park, Garfield County Sheriff says”
https://nypost.com/2025/05/03/us-news/cat-survives-380-foot-fall-that-killed-owners-at-utahs-bryce-canyon-national-park-garfield-county-sheriff-says/
Garfield county?
It’s an Odie-ous story.
“Nannen and Crane appeared to be living out of a U-Haul and recently came to Utah from Arizona, with their last known permanent residence being in Florida, according to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
It is not known how the couple fell, but they are thought to have crossed the guardrails at Inspiration Point, according to CBS News.”
Florida couple wins Darwin Award.
I guess they brought meaning to their death instead….
I sent that story to the friends we went to Bryce with last year. Having done sunrise at Inspiration Point, I’ll reiterate: stay the hell behind the railings, dummies.
300 to 800 foot sheer drops with steep scree covered slopes from the rail to the cliff edge. If you climb over that railing you are asking for it.
“We know that California gasoline consumption is going to decline over time,” Severin Borenstein, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Hill.
“We are going to have exit, and we need to figure out — how are we going to handle that exit?” Borenstein continued.
Following Valero’s announcement that it would be reducing or closing operations at Benicia, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) reportedly sent a letter to the CEC, directing the regulators to guarantee reliable fuel supplies.
The Fuel Fairy will wave her magic wand, and all your dreams will come true.
Because there will be fewer Californian, or because you envision their impoverishment?
Yes
If anyone knows anything about making stuff, it’s regulators. I think they’ll be in good hands.
“AOC heckled by hysterical protester shouting about Gaza ‘genocide’ at NYC town hall: ‘Shame on you’”
https://nypost.com/2025/05/02/us-news/aoc-heckled-by-hysterical-protester-shouting-about-gaza-genocide-at-nyc-town-hall-shame-on-you/
Nice rack. This has been going on for over a year. Published Mar. 5 2024 https://www.thedailybeast.com/aoc-slams-protesters-demanding-she-call-gaza-conflict-genocide-youre-not-helping-these-people/
“I’m a computer programmer, and I want to know when you stopped beating your wife.”
“It isn’t a binary choice!”
AOC is probably the most transparent fraud in the commie crowd. She is paying the protesters.
Also, you are correct. Nice rack.
“In a video posted to X, Starbucks union workers in Seattle can be seen marching on management in response to the new dress code.”
https://nypost.com/2025/05/02/lifestyle/gen-z-starbucks-baristas-revolt-over-new-dress-code/
Who could have guessed that people who turned coffee into a sundae would act like children?
I almost wish I could crawl up my own asshole as far as these people until I unironically believe I’m at work to express myself instead of perform a (mostly useless) function in exchange for money.
But what if your whole self is frankly aggravating?“
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2022/10/but-what-if-your-whole-self-is-frankly-aggravating.html
is in good faith of letting us express ourselves
Question on recent employee satisfaction survey at work: “Do you feel like you can be your authentic self at work?”
Fuck no, I can’t, and you don’t want me to be, and I don’t want any of you to be either. How about being your professional self and leave your politics and religion and fucked up personal hangups at home.
So… find a better job?
While Borenstein agreed that California’s gas prices aren’t going to budge anytime soon, he also expressed fewer qualms about the fact that they are high in the first place.
“I’m perfectly comfortable with the part that is due to higher taxes, which are going towards various government policies,” he said.
Borenstein acknowledged that California’s gas levies are more regressive — they take a greater toll on lower-income groups — in comparison to other taxes in the state, but he stressed that the fees fuel government action.
This guy probably wonders where all those homeless people came from.
California, is nice to the homeless
Now I feel like Glen. (I’ve never seen that particular episode… but that was good, Pat. Thanks.)
“I’m part of the elite, my salary is paid through taxes and will just always go up — so fuck all the little people! Live how I wish it, peasants!”
Was it Machiavelli that pointed out that being smart and having a good moral compass are hinderances to obtaining and exercising power?
It may be anti-Semitic, but it’s funny.
“Ex-prosecutor who stabbed driver repeatedly in rush-hour traffic reveals stunning defense..
Video of the incident shows Scruggs shattering the driver’s side window with the butt of a knife and then lunging inside, stabbing Sharp multiple times.
Scruggs briefly walks away before briefly returning to stab him again.
Now his legal team are arguing that he was acting to protect other motorists from what he believed was a drunk driver.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14674195/Patrick-Scruggs-Blake-Sharp-assault-Florida.html
Somehow the article compares it to George Zimmerman/Travon Martin.
Well… somebody’s on something… but I know who I’d think it was if I were on a jury right about now….
Or, if you really thought that* and were compelled to do something, you could have just slashed his tires. Going back to stick him a few more times was a nice touch, though.
*Nobody believes you did, BTW
I got rear ended by a drunken illegal at 10:30 in the a.m. about 10 years ago. Another guy stopped to help translate then told me it’s not that he doesn’t speak English, he’s too drunk to speak. Rather than wait around for the perpetually worthless Austin PD, the guys radiator was already steaming, so I just grabbed his keys and threw them down the sewer and left figuring the problem can resolve itself. It never dawned on me – I should have stabbed the guy.
Re: Old Guy Music. Beato recently had a pretty good interview with Joscho Stephan
I really, really want to like Beato. He’s knowledgeable, experienced, and interviews a lot of my favorite people. Seems like a personable guy.
But… I can’t help it, I find him boring and tedious, and almost always tap out within a few minutes.
I can see that. He is certainly knowledgeable, and while I don’t know about boring and tedious, maybe… obsequious? But I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he really is just like that and thinks the person in front of him at the moment is the best thing ever. Or maybe he sees the excellence that is appropriate for that artist and emphasizes that which can look like ass kissing. Either way, I’ll usually tap out if it’s something I’m not particularly interested in.
Many of the staffers I spoke with are angry. They are troubled. And they are sad. These were some of Fetterman’s truest believers, and they now question his fitness to be a senator. They worry he may present a risk to the Democratic Party and maybe even to himself.
Good golly.
even to himself – gonna be taken out? Wacked? Eliminated?
Disagreement with the Party is mental illness and you must be committed for your own safety Comrade!
This is insanely hardcore
https://x.com/AlecStapp/status/1918437683631636684
Dave DeCamp was on POTP, and https://www.antiwar.com/ hurts my eyes.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/05/the-week-in-pictures-ms-13-wing-of-the-democratic-party-edition.php
Maybe they’re working on it in the background, but we need more refinery capacity more than we need more crude.
The “Don’t you know who I am?” defense
Edward McCaffery, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, agreed that “it does not help that the president is politicizing this.”
“It raises the question that he’s directing this,” and suggests the move is “about retribution” and “vengeance” instead of public policy, which is something Harvard could use in its defense.
Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a Washington, D.C., attorney specializing in nonprofit organizations, said the IRS would face an “uphill climb” if it decided to move ahead against Harvard — one that could potentially take years.
Jason Newton, a spokesperson for Harvard, said in a statement after Trump’s post that the school would fight any action by the administration to change its status. The government has “long exempted universities from taxes in order to support their educational mission,” he said, and revoking that status “would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.”
They’re barely solvent. Subjecting them to taxes would force them to close their doors.
“This reasonably looks like a threat” and is “still unconstitutional,” Lakier said. “The First Amendment clearly prohibits government officials from threatening to suppress speech,” she said, a position the Supreme Court reiterated last year in a case involving a New York official’s attempt to pressure the National Rifle Association.
In a unanimous ruling in that case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
Seriously?
Freedom of the press means you have to buy me a typewriter.
“Must Reads: STDs in L.A. County are skyrocketing. Officials think racism and stigma may be to blame
But the picture is more complicated when it comes to the high STD rates among minorities. Gay and bisexual men make up the vast majority of new syphilis cases. In L.A. County, syphilis rates among African American women are six times higher than white women and three times higher than Latina women.
Northover said that officials need to evaluate what’s called structural or systemic racism, the way housing or education policies may negatively impact people and their health. Studies have found, for example, that people with HIV who had low levels of literacy were less likely to follow their treatment, and that poorer Americans were more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, increasing their risk of STDs….
Poverty or a lack of opportunity may be forcing women to exchange sex for resources, leading to the spread of STDs, Northover said. There also tends to be a mistrust of the medical system among African Americans, making them reluctant to seek care. Certain neighborhoods may be excluded from access to healthcare because of geography or finances, she said.”
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-std-stigma-20180507-htmlstory.html
This shit is so tiring.
The salons of 18th century Paris were rife with syphilis, by all accounts. I wonder who was racially oppressing the frogs in the 1700s.
One thing is for certain, it has nothing to do with flooding the country with unvetted illegals from places full of backward, ignorant people that have zero knowledge of germ theory.
And I was just thinking the other day that I need to do more to stop making blacks and gays stupid and reliant on whoring themselves.
I said this before but i have a soft spot for flowers that grow in cracks in the pavement
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CNh4wUMJzMaK7Ajm9
Congressional math
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) criticized the White House proposal for keeping the annual discretionary defense spending level flat at $893 billion.
“For the defense budget, OMB has requested a fifth year straight of Biden administration funding, leaving military spending flat, which is a cut in real terms,” Wicker said in a statement.
We’re sending our boys into battle shoeless, with nothing but rocks and pointed sticks to defend themselves with.
The least you can do is keep our trillion funding consistent with inflation!
Today is World Naked Gardening Day.
Just don’t make the mistake I did last year.
Immortalized in literature!
You’re not the boss of me. I’ve been gardening fully clothed.
I transplanted my bell peppers to larger pots and planted some radishes.
The Zebra Cactus appears to be doing all right.
Naked and cactus sounds like a bad idea.