On the “judicial coup” (Nayib Bukele) underway in this country, which is pitting the rule of law against its evil counterfeit twin.
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.
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.
“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
“…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
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.
the question of the Houthis is complicated, but the previous administration gave them lots of Running Room
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.
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.
Things are happening so fast everywhere.
It’s like the sixties … only without the good music.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
@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.
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.
@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.
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.
And now for something completely different:
A bit of I-P truth…from a most unusual source.
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?
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.”
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?
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.
@ 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.”
@ Barry > “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”.)”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan also weighed in on the incident, questioning the logic behind politically motivated vandalism. “Keying a car because you don’t like the person who designed it is like breaking a clock because you don’t like the time it shows. If this crime was politically motivated, our residents can’t be held accountable for something Elon Musk is doing 3,000 miles away,” Mahan said in a statement.
Back when Nadler was excusing the burning, looting, and assaults of Antifa and BLM, the perps had good reason to expect that they would never be punished for blatant felonious lawbreaking.
@ that guy > “He’s going to be the first President in generations who is going [to] create assets for the American people, not just debt.”
Knowing that many countries have sovereign wealth funds (and use them to buy American land and businesses, among other things), how is it that the US Government, which owns millions or billions of acres of land in America, has never done this?
I know the government leases land for various purposes, sometimes for either outrageously high or ridiculously low rates, but what have they done with the money?
My biggest worry is that the Democrats (and Republicans, let’s not kid ourselves) will immediately siphon any income into their pet pork projects even worse than they currently do.
Git along little DOGE, and get some laws safely regulating the assets BEFORE filling up the coffers!
@ miguel > “they really are this naive, or crooked”
Embrace the power of and.
IMO, someone in the city needed some cash immediately, and sold the city parking revenues to Dubai because the long-term loss of funds would not affect THEM.
Knaves AND fools goes a long way towards explaining today’s Democrat party. Just look at their Presidential ticket.
@AesopFan:Knowing that many countries have sovereign wealth funds
Some US states have them. Texas created one in 1854. Most of the countries that have them are countries that depend hugely on one exported commodity owned by the government, for example oil. When you pump the oil or dig out the guano it’s gone, so they want to turn the depletion of an asset into a revenue stream.
how is it that the US Government, which owns millions or billions of acres of land in America, has never done this?
I’m not sure how much economic sense it ever made for the US to do this. The US has a huge and diverse economy that’s not based on selling off assets.
I know the government leases land for various purposes, sometimes for either outrageously high or ridiculously low rates, but what have they done with the money?
Same thing they do with all the rest of it, but if you really want to know, you can look up how much it was with little more effort than it takes to type the question into the comment box. It’s a very tiny share of Federal revenue, in the tens of billions annually. Maybe they could make it more if they really wanted to, I suspect that a lot of the leases are “sweetheart” deals. But I don’t think we’ll be fixing Social Security with it, it would have be 100 or 1000 times more.
My biggest worry is that the Democrats (and Republicans, let’s not kid ourselves) will immediately siphon any income into their pet pork projects even worse than they currently do.
My biggest worry too. Or other kinds of mismanagement, like the Illinois and New Jersey pension funds. Putting Social Security and Medicare on actuarially sound footing and controlling Federal spending would do way more for this country’s finances than dinking around with wealth funds.
I’m thinking of a family where they have a car payment and a boat payment and an RV payment and credit card payments and can’t afford to do another cash-out refinance, but instead of cutting spending they think of working weekends at McDonald’s.
RE: Startling new scientific evidence of vast, complex, and deep stuctures under the Great Pyramid, and the two other smaller pyramids on the Giza plateau
A recent scientific paper discusses the result of an analysis of the Great Pyramid using synthetic aperature radar doppler tomography, which apparently has disclosed a network of vast and complex structures, descending downward into the earth for almost a mile, where they connect with a network of other structures which extend beneath the two other smaller pyramids.*
These underground structures of unknown function are apparently so massive, complex, and deep that they could not possibly have been constructed using the technology which archeologists say was available to the Egyptians at the time the current archeological orthodoxy says the pyramids were supposedly built.
Who knew Unicorns liked to tunnel? Doppler synthetic apetootude ground permeating sonar with LIDAR functionality, that’s what they used? And they also found a bridge in Brooklyn. Detected, in fine resolution structures a mile deep you say? Did they also find Jimmy Hoffa?
Philip Sells: “Do you get back there at all?”
The final visit to Winterset was in 1994 shortly before my last surviving 1st cousin passed, and a few months before Eastwood started filming “Bridges of Madison County.” The family farm had long ago been sold to become the Lakeview Country Club which is next to the Cedar Covered Bridge and just up the road from the cemetery. Since then the Cedar Bridge has been burned down twice, and restored twice. From what I read the replica is the only bridge left that you can drive through, and has a small park at one end.
P.S. Over the centuries the great Pyramid has been a subject which has fascinated a number of brilliant minds, who have tried to puzzle it out.
Although it is often spoken of as the tomb for a Pharaoh, no body of a pharaoh have ever been found in it.
Moreover, I have yet to see a convincing explanation as to how the Great Pyramid was actually constructed.
The accuracy with which a construction so huge has been constructed is amazing, it is apparently oriented to the cardinal directions, and to certain stars, and some mathematicians have found that it’s dimensions seem to encode several basic values like the circumference of the Earth.
Current ideas about the actual function of the Great Pyramid include speculation that it was used to create some sort of chemical process, or that it’s function was to generate or to store some form of energy.
The very theatrical Dr. Zahi Hawass is in charge of all archeological excavations in Egypt, and he has kept a very tight rein on such explorations, particularly on the Giza plateau.
If anyone knows what is actually under the Great pyramid, it would very likely be Dr. Hawass.
Wasn’t having an unnoticed pregnancy and delivery an unstated (but somewhat implied) subplot to Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”?
Wasn’t having an unnoticed pregnancy and delivery an unstated (but somewhat implied) subplot to Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”?
==
Don’t think so.
@Snow on Pine:Moreover, I have yet to see a convincing explanation as to how the Great Pyramid was actually constructed.
“I’ve already decided the ancients couldn’t possibly have a built a pyramid, so I will be never be convinced of any explanation of how they did it, I won’t learn anything about their construction techniques, and I will declare that it was therefore done by aliens.”
It’s architecturally a rock pile.
The accuracy with which a construction so huge has been constructed is amazing, it is apparently oriented to the cardinal directions, and to certain stars, and some mathematicians have found that it’s dimensions seem to encode several basic values like the circumference of the Earth.
Not this horseshit again. You can, post hoc, literally “discover” any number of “coded values” in any number of building, just by endlessly doing calculations and measurements until you get something you like. As for the accuracy, it’s only “impressive” if you are ignorant of what the ancients were capable of doing with simple tools.
Accurate right angles are easily made with a 3:4:5 triangle. Accurate verticals are easily determined with a plumb bob, and that was the primary tool for verticals up to the mid-19th century. (Was the Crystal Palace or the Eiffel Tower built by aliens?) You can use channels of water to determine the flatness of a surface, or you can use wood, water, and plumb bobs.
If you have wooden stick and plumb bob technology you can build anything the Romans built. Were the Colosseum and the aqueducts built by aliens too?
Anyone who talks about the “accuracy” of the measurements of the Great Pyramid cannot possibly have seen it close up.
It’s jagged, broken stones. It looks reasonably regular from a distance. If someone tore off all four edges of a piece of paper you could not say from measuring the ragged edges how accurate its dimensions may have originally been, and it is the same with the Great Pyramid.
I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive effort, but it’s not so impressive you have to invoke a hallucination to explain it.
Hmmm detailed tracking says my delivery driver’s name is Billijo [sic]. Must be synchronicity or aliens or something.
Comment from Matt Taibbi:
“The JFK don’t unmask a killer, but they do reveal a spy state out of control.”
And it hasn’t gotten any better since then.
Art Decco,
Any thoughts on what “…she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge” might have been? Or when she spends ” a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge and drop(ping) them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge” is she perhaps tending the graves of her baby and Billy Joe?
In 1967, people were already speculating that she and Billy Joe had an unplanned pregnancy and threw the baby off the bridge, causing Billy Joe to suicide from grief and remorse.
One promising idea about the pyramid building using an internal spiral ramp is from French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin. This video is not the one I was thinking of that explains it in detail, but it may present the core idea (which you may also know of already?). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlnMs616Z0
Updating the Great Pyramid Internal Ramp Theory [36 minutes] [2 years ago].
On our Nile River vacation in 2004, I ended up with two thoughts:
1) after you have seen a temple or three, you have seen them all (at least if you don’t read hieroglyphics).
2) the most astonishing thing for me that we saw was the presumed method of extraction of the very large obelisks from granite quarries. Supposedly this was done by pounding out holes next to the material to be extracted to make a slot or groove that could then be used to break the rest of the “stone” out (perhaps by pressure from expanding water absorbent materials?). I almost cannot understand the level of patience, manpower, noise, coordination, etc., needed to do that!
Snow on Pine: “… using synthetic aperture radar doppler tomography, which apparently has disclosed a network of vast and complex structures, descending downward into the earth for almost a mile, where they connect with a network of other structures which extend beneath the two other smaller pyramids.” My first thought was “oh, a gravity wave modulator!” Perhaps physicsguy can fill in the details for us.
Niketas Choniates on March 21, 2025 at 11:46 am said:
“Anyone who talks about the “accuracy” of the measurements of the Great Pyramid cannot possibly have seen it close up. …
I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive effort, but it’s not so impressive you have to invoke a hallucination to explain it.”
Yes, as off the top of my head I seem to recall something like 4 inches of accuracy within 400 feet? But it turns out when my new neighbor had our common property line (re)surveyed, they found using GPS (vs. prior tape and transit measurements?) that one point was off by 4 inches and the other end 1200+ feet away was off by about 12 or 16 inches. Go figure!!
One of the aspects of pyramid building that I still have not seen explained was just how they finished it off! To put the final gold on the tippy top, etc., you would have to be outside on the nearby (pretty smooth?) sloped surface (possibly on some support deck or structure? which would then be dismantled afterwards?) and then get off of the structure, either through some self closing tunnel or all the way down the slope or ????
A fun mystery for Friday night!
@R2L:I seem to recall something like 4 inches of accuracy within 400 feet?
The Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem, described in the Old Testament, was started by teams working at both ends, separated by 1.3 mile, meeting in the middle.
Roman aqueducts would have accurate slopes over miles…
Supposedly this was done by pounding out holes next to the material to be extracted to make a slot or groove that could then be used to break the rest of the “stone” out (perhaps by pressure from expanding water absorbent materials?). I almost cannot understand the level of patience, manpower, noise, coordination, etc., needed to do that!
When the Nile was in flood I think those guys had nothing but time.
To put the final gold on the tippy top, etc., you would have to be outside on the nearby (pretty smooth?) sloped surface
Work from the the top down, I guess. By the time they made the Great Pyramid they’d been building them for at least 200 years, so I’m sure they had the procedures down pretty well. There is a papyrus logbook recording moving stones for the Great Pyramid by water, and there’s some wall paintings showing them moving huge statues, but they didn’t document the process thoroughly. The work gangs left graffiti, which sounds very human.
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Almost as shocking as when Hillary lost….
Mazel Tov! In any event, Dad looks like he’s a natural…
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.
So much for “white fragility”…
(We knew that DJT would blow that whole grift right out of the water.)
“…My Masculinity Intimidates MAGA Voters!”—
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/03/19/tim-walz-my-masculinity-intimidates-maga-voters-n4938088
Speaking of water…
“…Dolphins Greet Astronauts at Splashdown!”
https://pjmedia.com/paula-bolyard/2025/03/18/watch-dolphins-greet-astronauts-at-splashdown-n4938047
Yikes
https://x.com/reddit_lies/status/1902688436508668164
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”.)
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,
Roger Kimball begins this piece with Neo’s favorite scene from “A Man for All Seasons”:
https://thespectator.com/topic/trump-working-overtime-rule-law-judges/
On the “judicial coup” (Nayib Bukele) underway in this country, which is pitting the rule of law against its evil counterfeit twin.
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:
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.
Cry havoc yadda yadda,
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/03/20/tom-homan-throws-down-the-gauntlet-on-aoc-signals-nothing-but-escalation-n2186878
some of the kabuki re the deportations seems very lame, as Julie Kelly has noted,
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2025/03/20/kevin-oleary-rips-bozo-tim-walz-for-lauding-tesla-stock-drop-as-its-shown-mn-invests-in-musks-firm-n2186874
how many pairs of clownshoes does he ware,
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1902439068064948724
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1902370946112975182
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.
they really are this naive, or crooked
https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1902716344992145457
the question of the Houthis is complicated, but the previous administration gave them lots of Running Room
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.
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.
Things are happening so fast everywhere.
It’s like the sixties … only without the good music.
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,
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.
Mortgage Fraud Alert: Did Letitia James Marry Her Father?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/03/mortgage-fraud-alert-did-letitia-james-marry-her/
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.
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:
Then a bunch of yada yada he-can’t-do-that- unconsitutional- Congress-lawsuit-billionaires-WWE.
Then, in paragraph 9:
And what does it leave out of the article entirely?
Mortgage Fraud Alert: Did Letitia James Marry Her Father?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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She’s one of the more malicious and unscrupulous characters in Democratic politics.
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She’s never married and has no children. Something tells one that that’s probably best for all concerned.
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.
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.
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?
@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.
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
@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.
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.
And now for something completely different:
A bit of I-P truth…from a most unusual source.
https://tinyurl.com/24sk3mh3
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
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?
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
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?
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.
@ 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.”
@ Barry > “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”.)”
The violence against Tesla dealers and owners is outrageous, as the San Jose mayor pointed out in one of the links from Miguel yesterday.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/03/20/police-arrest-suspect-in-viral-video-of-tesla-vandalism/
Back when Nadler was excusing the burning, looting, and assaults of Antifa and BLM, the perps had good reason to expect that they would never be punished for blatant felonious lawbreaking.
Today, AG Pam Bondi has another answer for them.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/03/just-attorney-general-pam-bondi-announces-severe-federal/
“The Days of Committing Crimes Without Consequence Have Ended”
@ that guy > “He’s going to be the first President in generations who is going [to] create assets for the American people, not just debt.”
Knowing that many countries have sovereign wealth funds (and use them to buy American land and businesses, among other things), how is it that the US Government, which owns millions or billions of acres of land in America, has never done this?
I know the government leases land for various purposes, sometimes for either outrageously high or ridiculously low rates, but what have they done with the money?
My biggest worry is that the Democrats (and Republicans, let’s not kid ourselves) will immediately siphon any income into their pet pork projects even worse than they currently do.
Git along little DOGE, and get some laws safely regulating the assets BEFORE filling up the coffers!
@ miguel > “they really are this naive, or crooked”
Embrace the power of and.
IMO, someone in the city needed some cash immediately, and sold the city parking revenues to Dubai because the long-term loss of funds would not affect THEM.
Breaking:
https://babylonbee.com/news/cias-jfk-files-clearly-prove-cia-destroyed-all-their-incriminating-jfk-files
“According to sources, the final unredacted release of the CIA’s JFK Files contains no incriminating information, definitively proving that the CIA destroyed all their incriminating JFK Files.”
AF: “embrace the power of and”
Knaves AND fools goes a long way towards explaining today’s Democrat party. Just look at their Presidential ticket.
@AesopFan:Knowing that many countries have sovereign wealth funds
Some US states have them. Texas created one in 1854. Most of the countries that have them are countries that depend hugely on one exported commodity owned by the government, for example oil. When you pump the oil or dig out the guano it’s gone, so they want to turn the depletion of an asset into a revenue stream.
how is it that the US Government, which owns millions or billions of acres of land in America, has never done this?
I’m not sure how much economic sense it ever made for the US to do this. The US has a huge and diverse economy that’s not based on selling off assets.
I know the government leases land for various purposes, sometimes for either outrageously high or ridiculously low rates, but what have they done with the money?
Same thing they do with all the rest of it, but if you really want to know, you can look up how much it was with little more effort than it takes to type the question into the comment box. It’s a very tiny share of Federal revenue, in the tens of billions annually. Maybe they could make it more if they really wanted to, I suspect that a lot of the leases are “sweetheart” deals. But I don’t think we’ll be fixing Social Security with it, it would have be 100 or 1000 times more.
My biggest worry is that the Democrats (and Republicans, let’s not kid ourselves) will immediately siphon any income into their pet pork projects even worse than they currently do.
My biggest worry too. Or other kinds of mismanagement, like the Illinois and New Jersey pension funds. Putting Social Security and Medicare on actuarially sound footing and controlling Federal spending would do way more for this country’s finances than dinking around with wealth funds.
I’m thinking of a family where they have a car payment and a boat payment and an RV payment and credit card payments and can’t afford to do another cash-out refinance, but instead of cutting spending they think of working weekends at McDonald’s.
RE: Startling new scientific evidence of vast, complex, and deep stuctures under the Great Pyramid, and the two other smaller pyramids on the Giza plateau
A recent scientific paper discusses the result of an analysis of the Great Pyramid using synthetic aperature radar doppler tomography, which apparently has disclosed a network of vast and complex structures, descending downward into the earth for almost a mile, where they connect with a network of other structures which extend beneath the two other smaller pyramids.*
These underground structures of unknown function are apparently so massive, complex, and deep that they could not possibly have been constructed using the technology which archeologists say was available to the Egyptians at the time the current archeological orthodoxy says the pyramids were supposedly built.
* https://www.youtube.com/watchv=5RoRCbaMJBg?
Who knew Unicorns liked to tunnel? Doppler synthetic apetootude ground permeating sonar with LIDAR functionality, that’s what they used? And they also found a bridge in Brooklyn. Detected, in fine resolution structures a mile deep you say? Did they also find Jimmy Hoffa?
Philip Sells: “Do you get back there at all?”
The final visit to Winterset was in 1994 shortly before my last surviving 1st cousin passed, and a few months before Eastwood started filming “Bridges of Madison County.” The family farm had long ago been sold to become the Lakeview Country Club which is next to the Cedar Covered Bridge and just up the road from the cemetery. Since then the Cedar Bridge has been burned down twice, and restored twice. From what I read the replica is the only bridge left that you can drive through, and has a small park at one end.
P.S. Over the centuries the great Pyramid has been a subject which has fascinated a number of brilliant minds, who have tried to puzzle it out.
Although it is often spoken of as the tomb for a Pharaoh, no body of a pharaoh have ever been found in it.
Moreover, I have yet to see a convincing explanation as to how the Great Pyramid was actually constructed.
The accuracy with which a construction so huge has been constructed is amazing, it is apparently oriented to the cardinal directions, and to certain stars, and some mathematicians have found that it’s dimensions seem to encode several basic values like the circumference of the Earth.
Current ideas about the actual function of the Great Pyramid include speculation that it was used to create some sort of chemical process, or that it’s function was to generate or to store some form of energy.
The very theatrical Dr. Zahi Hawass is in charge of all archeological excavations in Egypt, and he has kept a very tight rein on such explorations, particularly on the Giza plateau.
If anyone knows what is actually under the Great pyramid, it would very likely be Dr. Hawass.
Wasn’t having an unnoticed pregnancy and delivery an unstated (but somewhat implied) subplot to Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”?
Wasn’t having an unnoticed pregnancy and delivery an unstated (but somewhat implied) subplot to Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”?
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Don’t think so.
@Snow on Pine:Moreover, I have yet to see a convincing explanation as to how the Great Pyramid was actually constructed.
“I’ve already decided the ancients couldn’t possibly have a built a pyramid, so I will be never be convinced of any explanation of how they did it, I won’t learn anything about their construction techniques, and I will declare that it was therefore done by aliens.”
It’s architecturally a rock pile.
The accuracy with which a construction so huge has been constructed is amazing, it is apparently oriented to the cardinal directions, and to certain stars, and some mathematicians have found that it’s dimensions seem to encode several basic values like the circumference of the Earth.
Not this horseshit again. You can, post hoc, literally “discover” any number of “coded values” in any number of building, just by endlessly doing calculations and measurements until you get something you like. As for the accuracy, it’s only “impressive” if you are ignorant of what the ancients were capable of doing with simple tools.
Accurate right angles are easily made with a 3:4:5 triangle. Accurate verticals are easily determined with a plumb bob, and that was the primary tool for verticals up to the mid-19th century. (Was the Crystal Palace or the Eiffel Tower built by aliens?) You can use channels of water to determine the flatness of a surface, or you can use wood, water, and plumb bobs.
If you have wooden stick and plumb bob technology you can build anything the Romans built. Were the Colosseum and the aqueducts built by aliens too?
Anyone who talks about the “accuracy” of the measurements of the Great Pyramid cannot possibly have seen it close up.
It’s jagged, broken stones. It looks reasonably regular from a distance. If someone tore off all four edges of a piece of paper you could not say from measuring the ragged edges how accurate its dimensions may have originally been, and it is the same with the Great Pyramid.
I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive effort, but it’s not so impressive you have to invoke a hallucination to explain it.
Hmmm detailed tracking says my delivery driver’s name is Billijo [sic]. Must be synchronicity or aliens or something.
Comment from Matt Taibbi:
“The JFK don’t unmask a killer, but they do reveal a spy state out of control.”
And it hasn’t gotten any better since then.
Art Decco,
Any thoughts on what “…she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge” might have been? Or when she spends ” a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge and drop(ping) them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge” is she perhaps tending the graves of her baby and Billy Joe?
In 1967, people were already speculating that she and Billy Joe had an unplanned pregnancy and threw the baby off the bridge, causing Billy Joe to suicide from grief and remorse.
One promising idea about the pyramid building using an internal spiral ramp is from French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin. This video is not the one I was thinking of that explains it in detail, but it may present the core idea (which you may also know of already?). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlnMs616Z0
Updating the Great Pyramid Internal Ramp Theory [36 minutes] [2 years ago].
On our Nile River vacation in 2004, I ended up with two thoughts:
1) after you have seen a temple or three, you have seen them all (at least if you don’t read hieroglyphics).
2) the most astonishing thing for me that we saw was the presumed method of extraction of the very large obelisks from granite quarries. Supposedly this was done by pounding out holes next to the material to be extracted to make a slot or groove that could then be used to break the rest of the “stone” out (perhaps by pressure from expanding water absorbent materials?). I almost cannot understand the level of patience, manpower, noise, coordination, etc., needed to do that!
Snow on Pine: “… using synthetic aperture radar doppler tomography, which apparently has disclosed a network of vast and complex structures, descending downward into the earth for almost a mile, where they connect with a network of other structures which extend beneath the two other smaller pyramids.” My first thought was “oh, a gravity wave modulator!” Perhaps physicsguy can fill in the details for us.
Niketas Choniates on March 21, 2025 at 11:46 am said:
“Anyone who talks about the “accuracy” of the measurements of the Great Pyramid cannot possibly have seen it close up. …
I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive effort, but it’s not so impressive you have to invoke a hallucination to explain it.”
Yes, as off the top of my head I seem to recall something like 4 inches of accuracy within 400 feet? But it turns out when my new neighbor had our common property line (re)surveyed, they found using GPS (vs. prior tape and transit measurements?) that one point was off by 4 inches and the other end 1200+ feet away was off by about 12 or 16 inches. Go figure!!
One of the aspects of pyramid building that I still have not seen explained was just how they finished it off! To put the final gold on the tippy top, etc., you would have to be outside on the nearby (pretty smooth?) sloped surface (possibly on some support deck or structure? which would then be dismantled afterwards?) and then get off of the structure, either through some self closing tunnel or all the way down the slope or ????
A fun mystery for Friday night!
@R2L:I seem to recall something like 4 inches of accuracy within 400 feet?
The Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem, described in the Old Testament, was started by teams working at both ends, separated by 1.3 mile, meeting in the middle.
Roman aqueducts would have accurate slopes over miles…
Supposedly this was done by pounding out holes next to the material to be extracted to make a slot or groove that could then be used to break the rest of the “stone” out (perhaps by pressure from expanding water absorbent materials?). I almost cannot understand the level of patience, manpower, noise, coordination, etc., needed to do that!
When the Nile was in flood I think those guys had nothing but time.
To put the final gold on the tippy top, etc., you would have to be outside on the nearby (pretty smooth?) sloped surface
Work from the the top down, I guess. By the time they made the Great Pyramid they’d been building them for at least 200 years, so I’m sure they had the procedures down pretty well. There is a papyrus logbook recording moving stones for the Great Pyramid by water, and there’s some wall paintings showing them moving huge statues, but they didn’t document the process thoroughly. The work gangs left graffiti, which sounds very human.