I’m so old I remember when this sort of thing** only happened in third world countries:
Oh wait…
Third World tent cities in Denver, left, and LA
I don’t know about you, but I blame guns.
Those foundations didn’t just shoot themselves out from under the building.
**Except in the case of Muslim terrorism
Meanwhile, back in the Upside Down/Backwards world of Washington:
Senator Chuck Schumer, explains why we need to pass the Democrats’ “For The People (ha!) Act” which would allow unscrupulous members of his party to vote 2 or more times and otherwise cheat in federal elections with impunity. He also explains that it’s necessary because the racist Republicans – those dastardly demons of anti-diversity - have passed state laws making it harder for them to do so – and that’s unfair or something.
He explained how Republican state level reform will kill democracy:
"Republican legislatures are making it harder to vote early, harder to vote by mail, harder to vote after work. They're making it a crime to give food or water to voters waiting in long lines."
“Even worse, it has poisoned our democracy, eroded faith in our elections which is so detrimental to the future faith people need to have in this democracy.” – Yahoo
Again, upside-down and backwards. But let’s face it, it’s all about the narrative and who controls it.
The For the People Act aims to set up automatic voter registration, expand early voting, ensure more transparency in political donations and limit partisan drawing of congressional districts, among other provisions. Democrats pushed for the reforms before the 2020 election, but called them more necessary to protect the democratic process after former President Donald Trump’s false claims of electoral fraud sparked an attack on the Capitol and restrictive state voting measures. - CNBC
Because “expansion” good: “restrictions” bad. Got it?
I don’t see the problem
For the record, the Republican minority blocked the Senate from debating the bill last night so anticipate the argument to move on to eliminating the filibuster.
Proof that time flies by: I completely missed this year’s summer solstice in which the longest day of the year ushers in the season’s languid, slothful days as we march inexorably towards the shortest. It is a lovely, ancient rhythm, you just need to get used to it.
One way or another we all do.
My languid day begins at the dentist so I bid you adieu for the time being.
Consider this an open thread, I know, I know – they’re all open threads, but I mean officially.
Somebody who shall remain nameless was allowed to book his own PT appointments and inexplicably scheduled them all very early. This from a guy who has hated mornings and everything related to them other than coffee for as long as I’ve know him. He claims that with the first appointment of the day, which he discovered from his last round, that they aren’t as busy and you don’t need to wait as long to use the equipment (which of course still needs to be decontaminated between each torture victim) and icing station. And while that makes sense I still blame the drugs. Discharge instructions should be expanded to read “do not drive, operate any heavy equipment, make any financial decisions or appointments.”
But here we are, stuck with weeks of extreme physical therapy sessions scheduled at an extremely early hour so there will be many open threads.
Have fun, don’t pick on each other and whatever you do, don’t feed the animals any sugar.
They’re already a little hyper-active these days.
People make fun of Hollywood’s idealized family of the 50s.
But I would point out that every single episode of every one of those shows taught a life lesson geared to values that - at the time – consisted of a universal moral code: the value of telling the truth, the virtue of hard work, patriotism, what it means to be honorable, why loyalty matters, what personal responsibility consists of. In other words bedrock American values that are often looked down on, snickered at and scorned by today’s cultural elites in Hollywood, education and Washington.
Ever since that era Hollywood has been offering so-called family shows showcasing escalating Socialist/Marxist propaganda and the demise of the nuclear family: single moms struggling to survive in a sexist/classist world, two mommies/daddies struggling to raise their children in a homophobe world, People of Color struggling – with everything, everywhere. In the process the values on display in pop culture morphed to relativism so gradually few noticed.
From the raunchy Two and A Half Men in which two ostensibly straight brothers try to raise the son/nephew to Modern Family where you get a bit of everything,
Modern Family is genuinely funny in large measure because they have fun with stereotypes of all ilk
to The Fosters – (full disclosure: I’ve never seen an episode) a multi-racial Lesbian couple raising 1 bio son and 4 adopted teenagers.
Hollywood can’t kill the traditional family soon enough it seems. The nuclear family if not dead is on life support, struggling under the weight of an anachronistic paternalistic world. Instead we end up with True Crimes shows of sex trafficking, child abuse and sexual identity confusion. We’ve come a long way baby and the Left would have us believe that’s a good thing. Bio Mom, Bio Dad and their two bio kids is no longer valid. “Family” has been co-opted to mean whatever they say it means. If society moves any further along the alternate lifestyle continuum Bio Family might turn out to be downright subversive.
Well here’s to good old fashioned, subversive Bio Dads everywhere:
If more kids had more of these “subversive” Dads instead of the likes of self-centered “Pops”
I wonder if Pops gets 10% of Hunter’s painting sales?
we might not be in the mess we’re in now. I do hope that history doesn’t have to report of our time that for the want of a few good Dads the world was lost.
Happy Fathers’ Day to all the good ones out there!
The Biden White House has temporarily halted a military aid package to Ukraine that would include lethal weapons, a plan originally made in response to aggressive Russian troop movements along Ukraine’s border this spring.
The aid package would be worth up to $100 million, according to four people familiar with internal deliberations. – Politico
Only this time he doesn’t need any more prosecutors fired. And since his surviving son - as Joey refers to him – has taken a new direction in the career department he likewise doesn’t need any more well paying perfunctory board seats. No sir, this time everything’s on the up and up versus the down low. This time all Ukraine needs to do to get the aid package is to become one of the proud anonymous patrons and owners of some of Hunter’s art work, currently expected to bring in up to half a million per piece – and worth every cent of it!
“The palette was wonderful. The space was well-organized. I would buy a couple of them. And anybody who buys it would be guaranteed instant profit.
"He’s the president’s son. Everybody would want a piece of that. The provenance is impeccable.’’ - Alex Acevedo, Manhattan art dealer
Please. Stop already.
Hunter’s art isn’t as penny dreadful as some of today’s lionized artists of little talent, but were he anybody else’s kid launching an art career at 51 he might sell a piece or two for a few hundred bucks to friends and family at a local art fair and that would be it. Let’s not mis-underestimate the “art” value of provenance and progeny vis-à-vis talent.
Hunter, demonstrating one of his artistic techniques: blow art. And nobody would know about the art of the blow like Hunter.
But back to the Ukraine story: Jen Psaki was quick to correct the aid-on-hold story, saying it just wasn’t so – and she would know I suppose, being the President’s Press Secretary now and all. Clearly nobody would know the dangers Ukraine faces from Russia better than old Jen, who was on duty as the State Department Spox-person the last time Putin determined that In Russia All Our Former Peoples Are Belong To Us and decided to “annex” Crimea.
The power of #hashtag turned out to be not as powerful in international circles as it was for #MeToo
Seven years and this red-headed ditz– and I mean that in the nicest way possible – has not only learned nothing, she may have actually grown stupider. Which is what happens to people who refuse to learn from history.
While Kurt Schlichter points out that this is all you need to know about Critical Race Theory:
Ashleigh-the-Lion Shackleford gives a lecture titled "All White People Are Racist" to some white people. *Paypal Me
I would like to point out that it is also all you need to know about fashion. First of all, let me get this out of the way: this has NOTHING to do with Fat Shaming. In fact, after reading the Lion’s self-description…
Hunter Ashleigh Shackelford (they/she) is a Black fat cultural producer, multidisciplinary artist, nonbinary shapeshifter, and data futurist based in Atlanta, Georgia, with roots in Richmond, Virginia. They are the creator and director of a Southern body liberation organization, Free Figure Revolution, which focuses on decolonizing antiblack body violence. With bylines in Wear Your Voice Magazine, For Harriet, Buzzfeed, and Teen Vogue, Hunter illustrates the relationship between Blackness, fatness, desire, queerness, and popular culture.
I’m not even sure “they” ARE fat.
What I do know is that I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that outfit anywhere in public - let alone holding a seminar which I presume is intended to be taken seriously - and I’m pretty sure I weigh less than half what The Lion does. But since the topic today is fashion I would like to remind everyone that it isn’t what you weigh but rather how you choose to display it that reveals your sense, both fashion and common. Ashleigh The Lion appears to have neither.
And now, since it is Fashion Friday, a brief recap of last week’s fashion from the G7 and visit with the Queen. Here is my favorite Dr. Jilly look from the trip:
…messy fake blonde locks and extensions, tacky bedazzled LOVE jacket, weirdly draped Dalmatian spotted frock
Which draped no better in the coming than in the going…
and Minnie Mouse pumps - accessorized by a semi-sentient elder statesman. It manages to capture the entire Biden Presidency in one photo op.
And here is my least favorite:
It’s hard to pinpoint what I hate most: the flouncy, see-through skirt, the floral turned back cuffs that match the jacket pocket flap linings, the ill-fitted shoulders of the hot pink boucle blazer, the embroidered face diaper, the leg plaster?
All I know for sure is that if there were ever a poster child for why older women should wear their hems below the knee – with stockings – this is it.
Honey-babe: we were not designed to be forever young, I don’t care what Bob Dylan said.
Everything in Geneva went swimmingly between Joey and Vlad. And if you don’t believe me just ask the acting President himself. He said his meeting with Vlad went “pretty good.” Well, I suppose - if by “pretty good” you mean “train wreck.”
Whoops, no more track
The degree to which the summit was a disaster became evident when Putin emerged for his press conference — alone with a forum all to himself. (The Biden Team did not want to do a joint presser so held their own)
Putin fielded softball questions from Russian news agencies, but he also welcomed hostile questions from the U.S. media. (In fact, Putin, an enemy of press freedom, was more polite than Biden would be, and took far tougher questions.)
The opportunity to defend his own position, and to attack the United States, without fear of contradiction was a massive gift to the Russian president. He used the old Soviet tactic of pointing to American problems as a way of deflecting from questions about human rights and political opposition. - Joel Pollack
Here’s an example of that fine Soviet style deflection:
When asked about the assassinations of political rivals in his country, Putin responded by implying that the United States had assassinated Ashli Babbitt during the Capitol riot.
“Secondly, I want to ask you: Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?” Putin asked. “Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering Congress? And they didn’t go there to steal a laptop. They came with political demands. Four hundred and fifty people have been detained. They’re facing jail time, from 15 to 20 years. And they came to Congress with political demands. Isn’t that prosecution for political opinions?”
As a result of Biden’s weak position,
“Putin walked away from Geneva with no significant response to cyberattacks; with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which Trump had opposed; and with no real pushback against his aggression in Ukraine…”
The response from America’s media was predictable:
The American media echoed Biden’s posture of appeasement. CNN, which had raised the alarm when Trump and Putin appeared to get along with one another, gushed about Biden’s “optimistic” tone at the summit, and how wonderful it was that Biden and Putin seemed to have had a friendly conversation.
It’s no wonder Biden thinks reporters are “the smartest people in the entire country.”
Except, that is, for that one moron who dared asked him a real question.
Kaitlan’s question:
“Given his past behavior has not changed, and in that press conference, after sitting down with you for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyberattacks, he downplayed human rights abuses, he even refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name. So how does that amount to a constructive meeting, as President Putin framed it?”
Ha! I do love Joey’s response though:
“What the hell? What do you do all the time?…If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”
I could say the same about the man currently occupying the White House.
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