Home » Open thread 3/20/2025

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Open thread 3/20/2025 — 35 Comments

  1. Almost as shocking as when Hillary lost….

    Mazel Tov! In any event, Dad looks like he’s a natural…

  2. How is it possible that a woman can be a short time ( 1 day ? 1 week? 1 month? 2 months?) before giving birth and not know they are pregnant?

    Doesn’t the baby move / kick while in the womb? How can the soon to be mom not notice this?

    I don’t get it.

  3. Not to worry.
    Jerry Nadler will insist that these people are just espousing a philosophy but that their existence as a movement is simply false…

    (Either that…and/or that they’re “mostly peaceful”.)

  4. I know its a niche audience of stoopid people who still watch the daily show, but still it only takes one psycho like the alexandria shooter,

  5. FSFO

    In some places a Molotov Cocktail will get you shot.

    In Austin pointing a semi-auto AK-47 at a Uber driver got Mr. AK-47 shot. (George Floyd riot times).

    FAFO. Just sayin’, righteous justice and direct action can get you shot.

    FAFO.

    As Dan Bongino said:

    Don’t get dead.

  6. John Tyler:

    Happens quite often, especially if the woman has never been pregnant before and if periods havebeen irregular, such as going into menopause. Some babies don’t move much. Or the movements can feel like gas. Some women don’t “show” that much, either.

  7. “President Trump’s executive order to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund: “He’s going to be the first President in generations who is going [to] create assets for the American people, not just debt. [Fund v. Debit: Higher Return]” — Scott Bessent – Treasury Secretary

    https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1902439068064948724

    “…explains how America’s assets could be worth triple our national debt: “There’s 700 million acres of subsurface that we have the mineral rights, critical minerals, oil and gas… And there’s 2.5 billion acres of offshore many of which have not even been explored. [Balance Sheet: Debit & Assets]” — Doug Burgum – Interior Secretary

    https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1902370946112975182

  8. Houthis have launched ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and at Tel Aviv.

    Trump has warned that Iran “will suffer the consequences” for further Houthi attacks as Iran’s responsibility and given Iran a two-month deadline to begin negotiations on Iran’s nuclear weapons.

    Things are moving very fast in the Middle East. If Iran continues to attack Israel or the US directly or by proxy or doesn’t come to negotiations, it’s likely that Israel will launch a massive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    Trump and Netanyahu aren’t playing.

  9. When I was in seminary my wife was concerned there was something medically wrong with her. I thought she had put on a little weight. She went to the doctor. Found out she was pregnant.

    We were stunned. Because we did not think it was a good time for another child. What with one baby already and being in seminary and together having a modest household income. And because she had been having her cycles although they were a little different than normal.

    Oh it gets better. She had a follow-up exam. During the ultrasound the technician almost dropped the transducer. Instead of a tiny little someone the size of an acorn there was a fully developed baby. Not just pregnant but eight months pregnant. Not just you’re going to have a baby next year but you’re going to have a baby next month. My wife didn’t start to “show” until the last few weeks.

    We’ve read stories of women who have a stomach ache and go to the bathroom and end up giving birth. How could they not know they were pregnant?!?

    And then it happened to us.

  10. Thinking about how polls show that many college educated women still support DEI.
    Seems that one way to fight that is to protest white liberal women in positions of influence and prestige and demand that they be replaced by ” people of color.”
    Make them live it.

  11. Things are happening so fast everywhere.

    It’s like the sixties … only without the good music.

  12. yes the music is terrible, even some of the latin offerings, like bad bunny who beclowned himself over Puerto Rico, who can’t sing a note,

  13. Rick67:

    I had a friend whose mother was in her 50s and had 2 adopted grown children because she was supposedly infertile. She went to the doctor because she was feeling a bit off, and was told she was 7 months pregnant. My friend was born prematurely 2 weeks later. I knew her in college and her mother was in her 70s and her father close to 80.

  14. Pregnancies are so variable. Increasingly fewer people have direct experience of them, and so a lot of stuff seems surprising that really isn’t.

    The “due date” always makes me laugh. There’s uncertainty about the true date of conception, the doctors in most cases just assign it to the mother’s recollection of the date of the last period and calculate the due date from that. And some buns just take longer to be done, even if the true conception date were being used to calculate the due date.

    I once witnessed a car accident involving a woman who was at term. Someone asked me later, why didn’t the accident make her go into labor? Because it wasn’t a TV show, that’s why.

  15. Seeing a lot of chatter about Trump “abolishing” the Department of Education and how he can’t do that without Congress.

    In reality, I predict he will be doing something that he can legally order, that thing will not be literal “abolishing”, but it may have almost the same practical effect, and so when it gets to a judge and gets upheld so many people will be surprised.

    A lot of the drama that’s going on is based on games of telephone like this. No one can trust headlines or takes.

    I’ll give one example. Here’s the headline:

    Trump to sign order to shut down Department of Education, White House says

    Then a bunch of yada yada he-can’t-do-that- unconsitutional- Congress-lawsuit-billionaires-WWE.

    Then, in paragraph 9:

    The order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

    And what does it leave out of the article entirely?

    The president’s order will direct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps permitted by law to shrink the Department of Education, according to the sources.

  16. Mortgage Fraud Alert: Did Letitia James Marry Her Father?
    ==
    What it tells you is that her dishonesty antedated her time in politics and antedated her admission to the bar. It also tells you her father countenanced it.
    ==
    It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Letitia is an unpleasant person in domestic circumstances and her father wanted her out of his house for his own piece of mind. Why he did not tell her to find work, find a roommate, and get out is a puzzle. The capsule biographies of her have it that she has seven siblings. If that’s true, why did he indulge Letitia in this manner?
    ==
    Between the time she finished law school and the time she was admitted to the bar, the New York Bar Examination was administered three or four times. Not sure about New York in particular, but in the states in general, > 90% of those admitted to the bar require one or two attempts at the exam, no more. After she was admitted, she spent ten years trying to earn a living working as a public defender and legal aid lawyer. After that, she went into politics and allowed her license to lapse. Give her one point: she figured out how to get elected. Her opponent in 2018 was a (black) BigLaw partner who had other things to do with his life. New York voters chose her over him, which tells you something about New York voters.
    ==
    She’s one of the more malicious and unscrupulous characters in Democratic politics.
    ==
    She’s never married and has no children. Something tells one that that’s probably best for all concerned.

  17. Neo and I had a discussion a few years ago about having older parents, generation skipping. My mother was 44 when I was born, and my father was 57. The birth stopped menopause for her a few years. Neo’s family was somewhat similar as I recall, but not as bad as mine. My father was born in 1887 and his father in 1839. Grandpa survived being wounded at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864, having mustered out 2 years prior only to reenlist in the Union Army a month or two before the battle. He took one bullet in the arm and another lodged in his pocket bible over his heart, saving his life. His grave is in a lonely old cemetery across the road from one of the covered bridges outside Winterset, Iowa. My father said he never missed a GAR camp out until his death in 1928. Quite a family story there.

  18. Our lives our often very scattered. Note to the above little story about generation skipping, my mother’s family was somewhat the same, her grandpa, born 1830, came to California in 1847 and had 13 children, the second to last being my grandmother who was born in 1877. Generation skipping on both sides. At least I knew that grandparent who, not unlike JD’s grandmother, was my protector and best friend as a kid.

  19. I can’t read the Gateway Pundit, but the chatter seems to be that Letitia James may have committed mortgage fraud by listing herself and her father as “husband and wife.” Piker. Ilhan Omar, per extensive reporting by Scott Johnson at Power Line, actually took out a marriage license and went through a marriage ceremony with her own brother to help him commit immigration and college loan fraud. Is it something about Democrats?

  20. @The Other Chuck:Neo and I had a discussion a few years ago about having older parents, generation skipping.

    All-time champion must be President John Tyler, who was born in 1790 and sired fifteen children between 1815 and 1860. His youngest daughter died when he would have been 157, and one of his grandsons is still living today* at age 96, which is a 235-ish year span.

    John Tyler: 1790 – 1862

    Lyon Tyler, Sr: 1853 – 1935, father’s age 63

    Harrison Tyler: 1928 – , father’s age 75

    *May want to check the timestamp.

  21. Is it something about Democrats?

    Kate:

    They have a certain moral flexibility.
    _________________________________

    John Cusack: When I left [high school] I joined the Army and when I took the service exam my psych profile fit a certain moral flexibility would be the only way to describe it….

    Minnie Driver: You’re a psychopath…

    Cusack: No, no, no. A psychopath kills for no reason. I kill for money. It’s a job. That didn’t sound right.

    –“Grosse Point Blank” (1997)
    https://youtu.be/-N3-AVJNueY?t=62

  22. @Kate:actually took out a marriage license and went through a marriage ceremony with her own brother

    What’s funny is that she didn’t do those things with her actual husband by whom she had children, nor did she get a legal divorce from the person who may have been her brother when she remarried the father of her children.

    I do not know if she went through any of those in order to marry her new white fundraiser/political consultant husband.

  23. I think she did divorce the father of her children, after having legally married him when the uproar over the brother-marriage hit the news. So far as I know she then legally married her consultant, but I don’t care enough to verify that.

  24. Other Chuck, that’s quite interesting about your family in Iowa. I have relatives (one of whom also GAR alum) a couple of counties over from there. Do you get back there at all?

  25. RE: Taking an ax to the Department of Education

    It seems to me that the calculation is quite simple.

    Total funding since its inception in 1979, reportedly $3 Trillion dollars.

    Then, for instance, take a look at the current percentage of 8th graders who perform at grade level in English, and the current percentage of 8th graders who perform at grade level in Math.

    Lots of different statistical sources, with the one linked to below reporting that in 2022 proficiency levels just keep dropping, with 38% of students performance dropping below their basic achievement level in Math, and 30% dropping below the basic achievement level in Reading. (They blame the drop on COVID, but a chart which covers a much longer time period shows a steady decline starting about 2004.)*

    I believe I’ve seen even worse numbers quoted, but I don’t know if I trust that any of these assessments are really reporting just how bad things really are.

    And spare me all of the blather about how “the children are gonna be deprived of the education they deserve,” because it seems quite obvious that, under the extremely expensive tutelage of the Department of Education, they’ve already been very expertly “deprived of the education they deserve.”

    * https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2022/report-card-score-decline-4th-8th-grade-math-reading.html

  26. My mother, when she was forty, and I was five, went to the doctor about a chronic case of indigestion. Doc laughed in her face and a couple of months later baby sister came along. Mom was trim and active but she did have a little bit of a tummy from having my older brother and I. Still…
    Other Chuck.
    What is GAR?

  27. Molly Brown:

    The GAR is the Grand Army of the Republic. Union Civil War veterans association IIRC.

    Not to be confused with a type of freshwater fish.

  28. @ Molly Brown > What is GAR?”

    I suspect that stands for Grand Army of the Republic.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic
    “The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), and the Marines who served in the American Civil War. It was founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, and grew to include thousands of “posts” (local community units) across the North and West. It was dissolved in 1956 at the death of its last member, Albert Woolson.”

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