I’m off to an asthma/allergy appt at a new place. Not BigHospCorp, but a practice franchise, so that I’m not screwed again if one particular doctor disappears.
There’s the worst version of “Scarborough Fair” I’ve ever heard playing on the driver’s radio. Like an extra-soft metal version, combining the silliest affects of folk, metal, and soft rock.
Another step completed in Son F's enrollment at community college. Once the paperwork from today cranks through the system, he'll be able to sign up for gen-ed, science, and automotive classes. Maybe by next week.
I asked Fang if he wanted to come with us when we did this paperwork, and he said no, but I'll keep working on him.
ETA: The young person who helped us with the paperwork was an elf. She wasn't even doing that great a job passing for human: way too elvish.
My anniversary to Katie is tomorrow. I ordered two quilter t-shirts for her. One reads 'I am a piecemaker" with 4 quilt blocks on it, another says "I still play with blocks", and has several quilt blocks on it.
I almost bought her one, but it could be viewed as a criticism so I didn't. It reads "I rescue fabric trapped in the quilt shops. I'm not a hoarder, I'm a hero!".
Katie is off to pick up the quilt she is making for Quaker Haven's 100th anniversary in August. It's a t-shirt quilt. Those of you unfamiliar, here's what one variation might look like (from Amazon).
Katie cuts the message from the t-shirt, sews it to a square panel, then pieces the panels together. She then adds a border about it, and backing. She also matches colors in ways I cannot understand (before we dated, I wore all black because it was the only color I knew how to match). And of course being modest, she added the name of the "Quaker Haven Quilting group", rather than her own, even though she did 100% of the work. She is having a friend with a long arm do final bit (the sewing that looks like groovy patterns to keep the front and back tight together).
Quaker Haven will raffle it off. She had enough squares left she made a second, smaller one as a wall hanging. She's giving it to Quaker Haven as well.
I told Daughter B that I'd get her a quilt made from her camp staff t-shirts, and she said she'd think about it, but she never got around to a decision. Daughter D wears some of the old t-shirts sometimes, especially the one that says "Keep Calm, It's Just a Snake!"
It sounds beautiful. Going through my mom's stash I found a bunch of vintage local beach T-shirts that I am sure she was hoping would end up in a quilt.
I agree, actually, it wasn't my favorite. But I had meetings this morning and didn't have time to search for a better example. I just searched for 10 minutes, and only found one example, and I couldn't get a good URL for it. 😡
In a simplest t-shirt quilt each square is sewn directly to another. Slightly more complex is to add a "ribbon" border of fabric between each square. Katie adds another step, where she has 2-4 colors of squares, and then sews a piece of the t-shirt into that square, then attaches that to the "ribbon", then adds a border around the entire quilt. Once nice thing about Katie's style is the emblem from the t-shirt can be slightly rotated, not a full diagonal, but still rotated a bit. It makes it look better. It's hard to do that without the back square due to the size of the emblem.
One of my co-authors, his wife is a quilter and she loves katie's work. He wants Katie to schedule a week long vacation, so he and I can work on research while his wife and katie do one or two projects. My co-author's wife has a long arm.
When it goes live for the auction, I'll add a photo of it
Well, Marque, one might say this is off topic for today, but I confess I didn't get around to reading it until this morning, and today's subject does involve a reptilian life form...
Nice piece, btw... and nothing I'd really argue with, being as I have a helix or two of classic liberal DNA wound into me here and there.
So, I'll just try to make you and everyone else here feel a little better regarding the state of our administrative state and its work in the foreign policy arena, especially regarding the state of affairs vis a vie some of the folks working inside the State Department at the moment while under the direction of D.C. insider Marco Rubio, under whose foreign policy leadership the threat of the precipitous and ongoing decline of America's standing in the world authored by his boss in the White House is anything but what I'd describe as *little*. But that's just me. Anyway...
Meet one Darren Beattie, appointed as State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs back in February and who's axed the department's office that countered disinformation from Russia. He wanted to take a chainsaw to it, but I've heard Elon's not very good about sharing his toys.
Here's the U.S. State Department's official announcement from February and its Beattie bio...
This is just the sort of guy I'm more than comfortable with as a member of the American Administrative State (AAS). I mean, what's not to like, eh Comrades? The following is all no doubt just another Russian-branded hoax perpetrated by those legions of DTDs (Donald Trump Detractors) suffering from TDS and claiming ETTD!!:
< A senior official who dismantled the US government’s Russian disinformation unit is married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin... [her] uncle has taken several roles in Russian politics and once received a personal “thank you” message from Vladimir Putin.
[Beattie] has been noted for his focus on destroying the agency tasked with tackling Kremlin propaganda [and] in the years before joining the government, Mr Beattie wrote social media posts suggesting Western institutions should be “infiltrated” by Putin, while he also attacked what he described as the “globalist American empire”.
Many of Mr Beattie’s social media posts also concern China, repeatedly calling on the US to surrender Taiwan to Beijing, and labelling Britain a “poor and pathetic kingdom” that would be “far better off under Chinese dominion”.
State Department sources expressed skepticism over whether he had undergone security vetting, a process which has been relaxed under Mr Trump. >
This article says Beattie was a member of Trump 1.0 until being let go in 2018 for allegedly going to a white nationalist conference. But what a difference a few years can make, especially after everyone realizes there are very good people on both sides and when everyone also learns to just *relax* about Deep State security vetting. I mean... the guy's an *American*, isn't he? So just how much more qualified as to security does he have to be? 'Nuff said.
Except maybe...
< He has also praised Putin as “brave and strong”, and claimed the Russian leader had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican”. He also declared: “Nato is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was.”
“The funny thing is just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin,” he wrote in September 2021. >
Full disclosure: Mr Beattie described the allegations herein as “malicious defamatory trash that is beneath the standards of even the British tabloid press”, and I suppose Mr. Beattie's time spent as an alt-right mouthpiece writing for and speaking on Revolver News after departing Trump's employ the first time does speak to his acquaintance with "malicious defamatory trash".
However, whatever one's thoughts on The Telegraph, these other Brits aren't exactly producing a grocery store checkout line product. Sorry, it's paywalled. But what's visible (and the date it was written) speaks to the credibility of the reporting above, I do believe, as actually does most anything a little googling produces about this guy...
I know that I for one will sleep much better tonight knowing Mr. Beattie's now embedded deep in the State Department and helping his little corner of its vast bureaucracy within the AAS to leverage those government public diplomacy $$ into many times their worth in military hardware. And I hope all of you will as well.
If you do, no need to thank me. Glad to be of service.
But if you don't, don't blame me. I didn't hire the guy who hired the guy who hired this guy.
I remember the rise of revolver.news as part of the rise in the crazy. People'd start linking to it, and I'd wonder why – why find such obviously propagandistic slop compelling?
I remember (God help me) the tweet mentioned in this Forbes article,
Come on now, Midge. We all know Lauren Sanchez doesn't use that Succulent Karoo brand lip-plumper strictly for its cosmetic effect. Its high SPF value is a genuine necessity to protect those pouty lips from the sun's damaging rays while she's making her way by sea to receive an award for being a climate activist promoting environmental conservation...
It's fresh bamboo season in China. In the countryside, one sees lots of people walking around with a fresh bamboo stump on their shoulder, and every house has sliced bamboo drying. It's very tasty, kind of like heart of palm. It absorbs the flavors of what it's being cooked with.
Here’s a breakdown of the nutritional content of raw bamboo shoots (per 100 grams):
Macronutrients
• Calories: ~27 kcal
• Protein: 2.6 g
• Carbohydrates: 5.2 g
• Sugars: ~3 g
• Dietary Fiber: ~2.2 g
• Fat: 0.3 g
Micronutrients
• Potassium: 533 mg (high)
• Phosphorus: 59 mg
• Magnesium: 3 mg
• Calcium: 13 mg
• Iron: 0.5 mg
• Zinc: 1.1 mg
• Copper: 0.2 mg
• Vitamin B6: 0.24 mg
• Folate (B9): 2 µg
• Vitamin C: 4 mg
• Niacin (B3): 0.6 mg
Other Components
• Low in fat and cholesterol-free
• Contains phenolic acids and lignans (antioxidants)
• Rich in dietary fiber, supporting digestion
• Contains cyanogenic glycosides in raw form (which can produce cyanide), so must be cooked to make it safe to eat
Summary of Benefits
• Low calorie and fat content makes bamboo shoots ideal for weight management
• Good fiber source for digestion
• High potassium helps regulate blood pressure
• Antioxidants contribute to anti-inflammatory and immune-supportive effects
> Contains cyanogenic glycosides in raw form (which can produce cyanide), so must be cooked to make it safe to eat <
This is one of those things gained from generations of cultural learning. Another one is cassava, the New World tuber the Europeans spread to Africa—without the cultural learning about cassava’s cyanide content. It took several centuries before the source of the illness outbreaks from cyanide poisoning were understood. New World aboriginal populations already had that knowledge as a series of tribal rituals for preparation. Importing the food without importing the cultural learning about how to prepare the food led to lots of suffering and death.
If all those positive nutritional values of bamboo were widely known among fishermen, would they be more or less likely to eat their poles and rods as opposed to continuing to fish with them?
The leaves, stems, and shoots...which is what I meant when I said the sprouts and stumps. There's a part that has to be hacked or clawed out of the base, and it's kinda like the inner leaves of an artichoke. That's not precise, but it's the only comparison I can think of.
Good morning. 68 degrees here, but predicted not to get out of the 70s due to weather systems that will bring rain later.
The mothership has gotten around to reporting on Trump’s “Big Beautiful BIll” prospects in the Senate, On a more somber note, the FP has an account of the Colorado antisemitism attack.
After Iowa Senator Joni Ernst's sarcastic and dismissive reply to a townhall constituent's concerns about the Medicaid cuts in the bill, some folks have started referring to it not as Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" but rather as the "We're All Going To Die Bill".
Good thing for Ernst that she's not my Senator and that I wasn't there. I'd have been absolutely compelled to ask her in return if she were really so stupid as to think a throwaway meaningless line like that had any relevance to the discussion at hand or did she simply believe that all the rest of the people there were stupid enough to think so?
And I'd have shown her just as much respect in the way I asked as she did to the person to whom that inane piece of self-righteous, dismissive arrogance was directed.
That is accurate, Phil. But I think a bit too polite. However, politeness toward politicians like Ernst is definitely not my forte.
But wait... just like a TV commercial for the cheapest of goods, there's more... in the way of this cheap shot from the latest challenger for the title of champion cheapskate in the respect department...
I'll only note that as a person of faith, I'm more than offended that she'd cheapen the teachings of Christ by flagrantly attaching his name directly to this piece of asinine partisan political dreck.
I'll also note that I describe Ernst as only a "challenger" in the area of electees' clear disrespect and contempt for those they're elected to represent because I'm pretty sure Indiana Senator Jim Banks holds the championship bona fides in that area at the moment and likely will for some time to come. But he'd better be prepared to defend that title against up 'n comers like Ernst...
Edit: I'll also note Banks's raw courage in making that statement not face to face with his questioner but from the confines of the back of that elevator behind a group of men twice his size, making his changing of his profile pic on Twixter to "his smiling face through the crack of the elevator door" more than apropos in my book.
Never have seen a guy quite so proud of behaving like a coward...
I’m off to an asthma/allergy appt at a new place. Not BigHospCorp, but a practice franchise, so that I’m not screwed again if one particular doctor disappears.
There’s the worst version of “Scarborough Fair” I’ve ever heard playing on the driver’s radio. Like an extra-soft metal version, combining the silliest affects of folk, metal, and soft rock.
I hope your appointment went well.
You have my sympathy on the music.
I hope the appointment is a huge success and they're able to help you with your symptoms.
Turns out a death-metal croon isn’t physically impossible, but it is rather silly sounding.
Another step completed in Son F's enrollment at community college. Once the paperwork from today cranks through the system, he'll be able to sign up for gen-ed, science, and automotive classes. Maybe by next week.
I asked Fang if he wanted to come with us when we did this paperwork, and he said no, but I'll keep working on him.
ETA: The young person who helped us with the paperwork was an elf. She wasn't even doing that great a job passing for human: way too elvish.
My anniversary to Katie is tomorrow. I ordered two quilter t-shirts for her. One reads 'I am a piecemaker" with 4 quilt blocks on it, another says "I still play with blocks", and has several quilt blocks on it.
I almost bought her one, but it could be viewed as a criticism so I didn't. It reads "I rescue fabric trapped in the quilt shops. I'm not a hoarder, I'm a hero!".
Katie is off to pick up the quilt she is making for Quaker Haven's 100th anniversary in August. It's a t-shirt quilt. Those of you unfamiliar, here's what one variation might look like (from Amazon).
https://www.amazon.com/Project-Repat-Custom-T-Shirt-Quilt/dp/B07Q3HJCXM/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1IE56MTHGWFQE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.C2rJmq3JsYGcXHqh1ELDu7XnDbg3mj0Cdaj15DJn4dlkuI6IzTOxoZMxakxOsPi1tpFGmwAJch1D6_ZOGYG0vyJiaHMjg8Sl4CuKDtunCGnNXNttBA1MRhPtesdVqkNjumeTbUuJaXK9D4Zkgr6CjML7az0oQVA9wrM2iXXajTAW1AjJZwS2GcWBwtwOvShzOYgcFnOolblIWLXjL44U8JYUj_zPK0a_Mw2Ay545GJ2yDHin9FEdMvsmxGzjL6GetLUgN_3R0XmLg_MmweLuVhlHZISRz0fGtZ0EiYC0TZY.fHUeDTwaLyq7KHz_Vx6ojIHF4GV0x6UAbGsykutvW5A&dib_tag=se&keywords=t-shirt%2Bquilt&qid=1749139394&sprefix=%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1
If that's too hard just search "t-shirt quilt".
Katie cuts the message from the t-shirt, sews it to a square panel, then pieces the panels together. She then adds a border about it, and backing. She also matches colors in ways I cannot understand (before we dated, I wore all black because it was the only color I knew how to match). And of course being modest, she added the name of the "Quaker Haven Quilting group", rather than her own, even though she did 100% of the work. She is having a friend with a long arm do final bit (the sewing that looks like groovy patterns to keep the front and back tight together).
Quaker Haven will raffle it off. She had enough squares left she made a second, smaller one as a wall hanging. She's giving it to Quaker Haven as well.
I told Daughter B that I'd get her a quilt made from her camp staff t-shirts, and she said she'd think about it, but she never got around to a decision. Daughter D wears some of the old t-shirts sometimes, especially the one that says "Keep Calm, It's Just a Snake!"
It sounds beautiful. Going through my mom's stash I found a bunch of vintage local beach T-shirts that I am sure she was hoping would end up in a quilt.
Fancy! But the linked quilt was a little Hokie.
Ha ha. :-)
I agree, actually, it wasn't my favorite. But I had meetings this morning and didn't have time to search for a better example. I just searched for 10 minutes, and only found one example, and I couldn't get a good URL for it. 😡
In a simplest t-shirt quilt each square is sewn directly to another. Slightly more complex is to add a "ribbon" border of fabric between each square. Katie adds another step, where she has 2-4 colors of squares, and then sews a piece of the t-shirt into that square, then attaches that to the "ribbon", then adds a border around the entire quilt. Once nice thing about Katie's style is the emblem from the t-shirt can be slightly rotated, not a full diagonal, but still rotated a bit. It makes it look better. It's hard to do that without the back square due to the size of the emblem.
One of my co-authors, his wife is a quilter and she loves katie's work. He wants Katie to schedule a week long vacation, so he and I can work on research while his wife and katie do one or two projects. My co-author's wife has a long arm.
When it goes live for the auction, I'll add a photo of it
🤩🤩🤩
…methinks I got one over on ya! VT style.
You got me! 😀
RE: Deep State Insider Confessions
Well, Marque, one might say this is off topic for today, but I confess I didn't get around to reading it until this morning, and today's subject does involve a reptilian life form...
Nice piece, btw... and nothing I'd really argue with, being as I have a helix or two of classic liberal DNA wound into me here and there.
So, I'll just try to make you and everyone else here feel a little better regarding the state of our administrative state and its work in the foreign policy arena, especially regarding the state of affairs vis a vie some of the folks working inside the State Department at the moment while under the direction of D.C. insider Marco Rubio, under whose foreign policy leadership the threat of the precipitous and ongoing decline of America's standing in the world authored by his boss in the White House is anything but what I'd describe as *little*. But that's just me. Anyway...
Meet one Darren Beattie, appointed as State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs back in February and who's axed the department's office that countered disinformation from Russia. He wanted to take a chainsaw to it, but I've heard Elon's not very good about sharing his toys.
Here's the U.S. State Department's official announcement from February and its Beattie bio...
https://www.state.gov/biographies/darren-beattie/
Here's a slightly different take...
https://www.semafor.com/article/02/02/2025/maga-intellectual-darren-beattie-will-fill-key-state-department-role
This is just the sort of guy I'm more than comfortable with as a member of the American Administrative State (AAS). I mean, what's not to like, eh Comrades? The following is all no doubt just another Russian-branded hoax perpetrated by those legions of DTDs (Donald Trump Detractors) suffering from TDS and claiming ETTD!!:
< A senior official who dismantled the US government’s Russian disinformation unit is married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin... [her] uncle has taken several roles in Russian politics and once received a personal “thank you” message from Vladimir Putin.
[Beattie] has been noted for his focus on destroying the agency tasked with tackling Kremlin propaganda [and] in the years before joining the government, Mr Beattie wrote social media posts suggesting Western institutions should be “infiltrated” by Putin, while he also attacked what he described as the “globalist American empire”.
Many of Mr Beattie’s social media posts also concern China, repeatedly calling on the US to surrender Taiwan to Beijing, and labelling Britain a “poor and pathetic kingdom” that would be “far better off under Chinese dominion”.
State Department sources expressed skepticism over whether he had undergone security vetting, a process which has been relaxed under Mr Trump. >
This article says Beattie was a member of Trump 1.0 until being let go in 2018 for allegedly going to a white nationalist conference. But what a difference a few years can make, especially after everyone realizes there are very good people on both sides and when everyone also learns to just *relax* about Deep State security vetting. I mean... the guy's an *American*, isn't he? So just how much more qualified as to security does he have to be? 'Nuff said.
Except maybe...
< He has also praised Putin as “brave and strong”, and claimed the Russian leader had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican”. He also declared: “Nato is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was.”
“The funny thing is just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin,” he wrote in September 2021. >
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/06/03/trump-official-shut-russia-propaganda-unit-kremlin-ties/?utm_source=substack&utm_med
Full disclosure: Mr Beattie described the allegations herein as “malicious defamatory trash that is beneath the standards of even the British tabloid press”, and I suppose Mr. Beattie's time spent as an alt-right mouthpiece writing for and speaking on Revolver News after departing Trump's employ the first time does speak to his acquaintance with "malicious defamatory trash".
However, whatever one's thoughts on The Telegraph, these other Brits aren't exactly producing a grocery store checkout line product. Sorry, it's paywalled. But what's visible (and the date it was written) speaks to the credibility of the reporting above, I do believe, as actually does most anything a little googling produces about this guy...
https://www.notus.org/policy/darren-beattie-state-department?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I know that I for one will sleep much better tonight knowing Mr. Beattie's now embedded deep in the State Department and helping his little corner of its vast bureaucracy within the AAS to leverage those government public diplomacy $$ into many times their worth in military hardware. And I hope all of you will as well.
If you do, no need to thank me. Glad to be of service.
But if you don't, don't blame me. I didn't hire the guy who hired the guy who hired this guy.
I’m guessing Laura Loomer would approve…
I don't know how to get ahold of her to confirm that, but then I wouldn't get a hold of her with a pair of 10' long foundry tongs anyway.
Maybe JD could enlighten us, since she seems to have his ear at the moment...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5330694-loomer-meets-vance-white-house/
And he has her mascara?
They probably just met to share a few makeup tips.
The Trump Goth Club.
An 18-memory-hole championship course...
Oh, well played!
"Meet one Darren Beattie"
Aw, c'mon, do I hafta?
I remember the rise of revolver.news as part of the rise in the crazy. People'd start linking to it, and I'd wonder why – why find such obviously propagandistic slop compelling?
I remember (God help me) the tweet mentioned in this Forbes article,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/09/24/revolvernews-a-right-wing-website-endorsed-by-trump-calls-for-shooting-protestors/
and thinking, that's not going anywhere good.
Fun fact: Lizards in the Smaug genus also give birth to live young.
Gorillas in the mist, lizards in the Smaug...
The Succulent Karoo might be a good name for a band.
Succulent Karoo brand lip-plumper –
Get that Bezos'-girlfriend pout by smearing the finest natural Euphorbia irritants across your mouth.
Come on now, Midge. We all know Lauren Sanchez doesn't use that Succulent Karoo brand lip-plumper strictly for its cosmetic effect. Its high SPF value is a genuine necessity to protect those pouty lips from the sun's damaging rays while she's making her way by sea to receive an award for being a climate activist promoting environmental conservation...
https://substack.com/home/post/p-163710828
(Kristi Noem, being a landlubber, had no comment.)
I suppose those lips stick out far enough they’re hard to shade with a hat — and also far enough to obscure the fact she has a name from me.
Eeeeew.
Or an appetizer.
Love the lizards! I have a couple of types in the barn.. 70F and windows and doors open..fans a blowing!
The bamboo eating panda does not well digest the bamboo! They are omnivore! And their gut hasn't fully evolved to digest cellulose... ckaaalaaazi !
https://earthsky.org/earth/meet-the-red-panda-not-a-real-panda
It's fresh bamboo season in China. In the countryside, one sees lots of people walking around with a fresh bamboo stump on their shoulder, and every house has sliced bamboo drying. It's very tasty, kind of like heart of palm. It absorbs the flavors of what it's being cooked with.
Here’s a breakdown of the nutritional content of raw bamboo shoots (per 100 grams):
Macronutrients
• Calories: ~27 kcal
• Protein: 2.6 g
• Carbohydrates: 5.2 g
• Sugars: ~3 g
• Dietary Fiber: ~2.2 g
• Fat: 0.3 g
Micronutrients
• Potassium: 533 mg (high)
• Phosphorus: 59 mg
• Magnesium: 3 mg
• Calcium: 13 mg
• Iron: 0.5 mg
• Zinc: 1.1 mg
• Copper: 0.2 mg
• Vitamin B6: 0.24 mg
• Folate (B9): 2 µg
• Vitamin C: 4 mg
• Niacin (B3): 0.6 mg
Other Components
• Low in fat and cholesterol-free
• Contains phenolic acids and lignans (antioxidants)
• Rich in dietary fiber, supporting digestion
• Contains cyanogenic glycosides in raw form (which can produce cyanide), so must be cooked to make it safe to eat
Summary of Benefits
• Low calorie and fat content makes bamboo shoots ideal for weight management
• Good fiber source for digestion
• High potassium helps regulate blood pressure
• Antioxidants contribute to anti-inflammatory and immune-supportive effects
> Contains cyanogenic glycosides in raw form (which can produce cyanide), so must be cooked to make it safe to eat <
This is one of those things gained from generations of cultural learning. Another one is cassava, the New World tuber the Europeans spread to Africa—without the cultural learning about cassava’s cyanide content. It took several centuries before the source of the illness outbreaks from cyanide poisoning were understood. New World aboriginal populations already had that knowledge as a series of tribal rituals for preparation. Importing the food without importing the cultural learning about how to prepare the food led to lots of suffering and death.
I did not know that.
If all those positive nutritional values of bamboo were widely known among fishermen, would they be more or less likely to eat their poles and rods as opposed to continuing to fish with them?
That's not the part of the bamboo that's edible. The tasty part is the fresh sprouts and stumps.
Which part do the pandas eat?
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves
Edith "Edit" Burton nods.
The parts they don't make fishing poles and rods out of, apparently.
The leaves, stems, and shoots...which is what I meant when I said the sprouts and stumps. There's a part that has to be hacked or clawed out of the base, and it's kinda like the inner leaves of an artichoke. That's not precise, but it's the only comparison I can think of.
Also, on first glance, I thought you'd gotten a panda.
I learned that when I researched the pandas. They're a weird animal.
From CSLF member John M:
Worth Your Time II: 'Selfishness Is Not a Virtue' --David French
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/opinion/ernst-apology-christianity-evangelicals.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Mk8.TqnG.k3_e7jCl1ic1&smid=url-share
'Ukraine’s Valor is Reminiscent of Britain’s in 1 940'--George Will
https://archive.ph/fpckd
I haven't read the article, but in general enlightened self interest is amoral, but leads to a healthy society. That goes back to Adam Smith.
George Will...my hero. Thanks for the links.
Good morning. 68 degrees here, but predicted not to get out of the 70s due to weather systems that will bring rain later.
The mothership has gotten around to reporting on Trump’s “Big Beautiful BIll” prospects in the Senate, On a more somber note, the FP has an account of the Colorado antisemitism attack.
Those lizards are — interesting.
RE: Big Beautiful Bill
After Iowa Senator Joni Ernst's sarcastic and dismissive reply to a townhall constituent's concerns about the Medicaid cuts in the bill, some folks have started referring to it not as Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" but rather as the "We're All Going To Die Bill".
Good thing for Ernst that she's not my Senator and that I wasn't there. I'd have been absolutely compelled to ask her in return if she were really so stupid as to think a throwaway meaningless line like that had any relevance to the discussion at hand or did she simply believe that all the rest of the people there were stupid enough to think so?
And I'd have shown her just as much respect in the way I asked as she did to the person to whom that inane piece of self-righteous, dismissive arrogance was directed.
That was an unduly snarky answer from Ernst.
That is accurate, Phil. But I think a bit too polite. However, politeness toward politicians like Ernst is definitely not my forte.
But wait... just like a TV commercial for the cheapest of goods, there's more... in the way of this cheap shot from the latest challenger for the title of champion cheapskate in the respect department...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joni-ernst-posts-sarcastic-apology-video-following-comments-that-we-all-are-going-to-die/ar-AA1FQO60?ocid=BingNewsSerp
I'll only note that as a person of faith, I'm more than offended that she'd cheapen the teachings of Christ by flagrantly attaching his name directly to this piece of asinine partisan political dreck.
I'll also note that I describe Ernst as only a "challenger" in the area of electees' clear disrespect and contempt for those they're elected to represent because I'm pretty sure Indiana Senator Jim Banks holds the championship bona fides in that area at the moment and likely will for some time to come. But he'd better be prepared to defend that title against up 'n comers like Ernst...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-senator-defends-telling-man-fired-hhs-deserved/story?id=120430268
Edit: I'll also note Banks's raw courage in making that statement not face to face with his questioner but from the confines of the back of that elevator behind a group of men twice his size, making his changing of his profile pic on Twixter to "his smiling face through the crack of the elevator door" more than apropos in my book.
Never have seen a guy quite so proud of behaving like a coward...
It's rainy here, too. I'm going to the dentist later this morning.
Do lizards have teeth? I’m up early today to get on the road to babysit the grandson before pickleball at noon.
Best wishes for safe and successful pickleball!
This lizard's teeth are quite small, but they have a powerful bite force. Some lizards, such as many monitor species, have tear-you-apart teeth.
One hopes that they will nip at the folks who consider them a 'trendy herpet'.
I almost stepped on a Gila Monster on my doorstep the other day. They will bite and not let go. He hissed at me and we avoided each other.
Love our occasional Gila monsters here in Tucson!
And they're venomous. I'm glad you saw him before he bit you!
Good morning. The title makes it sound even weirder than it is.
Good morning. Click here!
Done!