Proving that the Scots have no sense of humor when it comes to matters sartorial, we have this example of woke groveling:
Can’t see why the NYfT would feel they have to apologize; I think it’s frigging hilarious. [makes note for future use]
Side note: the Times has Scottish readers? Who knew?
After the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, I’m led to ask a few questions.
If this was a serious attempt, why use an AK-47 (or SKS –there seems to be some confusion here*)? I’m a huge fan of the old Commie rifles, but it’s common knowledge that even scoped, neither is a serious “sniper” rifle. Hell, I wouldn’t use it past 200 yards, and I’m what could charitably called a “practiced” shooter with both the AK and SKS.
Which leads me to the next question.
Was this Routh guy just some deranged asswipe who wanted to kill Trump in principle, but like many nutcases, had little idea of how to accomplish such a thing? (I’m kinda leaning towards this scenario, by the way, because serious shooters never let their gun barrel poke out into plain view.)
Also in my mind: at what point, if ever, is the Secret Service going to get serious about protecting Trump? Supposedly, some eagle-eyed agent spotted Routh’s rifle barrel sticking through the fence, and the SS agent then opened fire on his position (but not hitting him surprise surprise). (Hell, at least this time, unlike in the previous attempt, they didn’t wait for the dickhead to start shooting before trying to suppress him.) Frankly, I’m starting to have serious doubts about their capability to protect Trump — which leads to the final, and most disturbing question.
Is there actually a conspiracy to assassinate Trump? I’m not going to get involved in who might be part of a conspiracy because I don’t know enough about the situation or the people who might be part of it.
Here’s what I do know: if there’s a third assassination attempt on Donald Trump, then it will take a great deal to persuade me, in the words of Auric Goldfinger, that this is not an enemy action. Once again, as to who the enemy is, I have no idea but many suspicions.
Right now, however, I have absolutely no doubt as to what is causing these deranged assholes like Ryan Routh and the late Thomas Crooks to act the way they are, and it can be found in the words of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris along with all their lickspittle colleagues in Congress and the media, words which describe Trump as being “a danger to democracy”, a “dictator”, and so on. (And I’m not the only one who believes this.)
If you keep on watering the ground, in other words, it’s an absolute certainty that some shoots [sic] are going to spring up.
*In terms of details about this business, the “fog of war” is a clear blue sky by comparison. See here for a series of contradictory statements.
I feel I need to give y’all fair warning:
Idiot: the French for “washing machine” is “femme”, so of course it’s feminine. And speaking of femmes:
More swimsuits, I heard you say? Oh, why not.
That’s the latest trend: completely transparent bikinis. More of these next week, unless someone complains.
This is an interesting development:
Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, prime minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and ‘onto the footy fields’.
Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, he said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a ‘scourge’.
The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.
The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.
Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.
Loath as I am to give any kind of credit to the OzGov, foul totalitarian nanny bastards that they are, I can’t help but wonder whether a) this can work and b) if it does work, will it benefit teens in any way? Given that teens nowadays appear to have absolutely no problem in accessing porn — even porn sites protected by “age walls” — I’m somewhat skeptical about it all.
It’s probably just the usual “We have to do something!” posturing so common among all politicians.
(Just an aside: Albanese’s “center-left” philosophy is somewhere around that of Bernie Sanders, politically speaking.)
So off we go:
To round things off, so to speak, I understand that bikini pics are quite popular in these parts. Well, you asked for it:
Okay, that’s not really a bikini…
So get out there and spread the knees… I mean news.
…and that means not only an order, but also the smell.
“Kim, WTF are you talking about?”
Some smart guy (Robert Graboyes, at the splendidly-named Bastiat’s Window ) decided that Teh Experts cocked it up (surprise, surprise):
Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. Some of the more ludicrous findings are summarized/caricatured in the graphic above. Several readers asked me to offer my own rankings. I can’t do a 1-through-45 list, but I can lump them into five tiers: (T#1) highly positive, (T#2) somewhat positive, (T#3) neutral, (T#4) somewhat negative, and (T#5) highly negative.
Go ahead and read it before continuing here.
My only quibbles are that Obama and Biden (the latter a.k.a. Obama The Much Lesser) didn’t end up in Tier 5, the absolute stinkers; and that Calvin Coolidge wasn’t in Tier 1 (although I will cop to being a yuge fan of Coolidge, so I may be biased).
I can’t fault Graboyes’s methodology, however, in that he refused to take into account what the presidents did when not in the Oval office (either before or after), which is good. His example:
Madison’s role in the Federalist Papers and Constitution make him a titan, but his presidency was mediocre.
He did include some non-Presidential material, though:
…Jimmy Carter, who has made himself a national pustule for over four decades.
By the same token, therefore Obama should be likewise excoriated because “national pustule” would be too kind a judgment on his post-Presidential shenanigans.
Feel free to discuss the observations of both Graboyes and mine, in Comments.