The things we do for our kids

I’m back! We went to Madison, Wisconsin for our granddaughter’s 7th birthday, and also for brats (vegetarian style) and cheese curds and the fall colors and Kwik-Trip and all that Wisconsin stuff, but also, unfortunately, for a 7 hour drive each way, which was not fun. It was worth it, though, we wish we could see our kids more often, but most likely we won’t be seeing any of our children for another year, since winter is about to clamp down and trap us at home for a while.

Next weekend, we have closer plans. The No Kings rally is taking place right here in Morris on Saturday. You know, that communist antifa plot? The administration has it’s own characterization of the event.

n criticizing the rallies, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government.

I guess we’ll be poor if we don’t have any kings.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated separately that the expected millions of attendees will be part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question (of) who’s funding it.

Except that we’ll be paid for protesting! Or will we? I didn’t get a check for the last one.

I don’t think it’s at all a question who’s funding it. Even far-right wackos have noticed some data.

The name, on its face, is unobjectionable, even vaguely noble: “No Kings.” Americans, after all, did declare independence from one. But the historical overtones here mask something more recent and considerably less authentic. For all its revolutionary rhetoric, the ‘No Kings’ protest movement is not a spontaneous uprising of civic-minded dissidents. It is a coordinated, well-funded, tightly stage-managed campaign, backed by nearly 200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks, many of which are directly tied to the Democratic Party’s power infrastructure. It operates not from the street, but from the spreadsheet.

200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks? Why, that sounds like a distributed grass roots network with many donors. The organization actually lists all their donors, and doesn’t pay protesters.

I didn’t use a spreadsheet to figure out that I have to oppose this president and his incompetent cronies. I’m doing it for my kids.

He wants us all to die

It’s my granddaughter’s birthday this weekend, so yesterday we spent 7 hours traveling all across Minnesota and Wisconsin, and boy are my knees sore. We’ve got a party to go to tomorrow.

He looks like death already

In more interesting news, David Gorski tears into RFK jr with his teeth — it’s transparently clear that RFK jr is rabidly anti-vax and the he’s definitely coming for all of your vaccines, since he’s now denying that they have any efficacy at all.

Let’s take a look at how RFK Jr. demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt in this video that he is, in fact, antivaccine. I will repeat what I’ve been saying for months now: RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines; he’s coming for all vaccines, in fact. It’s just that he’s strategic enough to know that he can’t do it all at once, which is why he purged the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replace the fired members with antivaxxers and the antivax-adjacent, only one of whom has any significant experience in public health or vaccine policy. Personally, I’ve been saying that the only thing that’s saved us (thus far) is the inexperience and incompetence of RFK Jr.’s ACIP. In the meantime, President Trump has embraced Andrew Wakefield’s old grift about separating the components of the MMR vaccine as somehow being “safer,” even as he talks about adding autism to the list of table injuries for the Vaccine Injury Compensation System, a move that would certainly bankrupt and destroy it.

Yes, things are grim out there.

Fortunately, my granddaughter has responsible parents who have kept her vaccination status up to date, which is why I get to go hang out with her and watch her open presents and celebrate her 7th birthday. It’s absolutely insane that we have a director of health and human services who is committed to killing young children with disease, while our Secretary of War favors more direct execution of children. This really is the death cult coming into fruition in our federal government.

Reminder: we have a podcast this afternoon!

Portland is burning?

The Oregon GOP posted this image on Twitter.

Oh my goodness. I had no idea the anarchy was so bad.

On all three platforms, the statement was illustrated with an image that seemed designed to support Trump’s false claim that protests against immigration sweeps in Portland are so out of control that the city is “burning to the ground”. On one side of the image, a line of police officers held riot shields; on the other, a crowd of young men held up flares that lit up a night sky filled with red smoke.

Except…the police on the left side of the image are Ecuadorian, and the photo was from 2008.

And the fiery protest is a photo from Brazil in 2017.

Do you realize what this means? South America has invaded the United States! The spearhead has been driving up the West coast for the last 17 years, and we’re only finding out now! MAGA was right all along about the Hispanic invasion.

Or, I suppose, it’s possible that Republicans are terrible liars.

The president is insane

He just posted this.

Bonkers. Certifiable. Loopy. Totally nuts.

I’d say it’s 25th Amendment time, except that amendment is useless.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

So it’s up the the vice president to call out the president? Vance is as demented and vile as Trump is. We’re stuck with this incompetent dingbat.

Nazis will be prosecuted

The Seattle Times covered the story of that Nazi who crashed a University of Washington psych class. A couple of new details: he invaded the class twice, once at the beginning when he ran away when campus security was called, and then at the end, which prompted the mass uprising by the class. And now we know a little more about his fate:

In a statement, the university called the classroom disruption “completely unacceptable” and said the individual is not a UW student. “The instructor and several students from the class followed the person until UWPD (University of Washington Police Department) personnel arrived and took him into custody,” the statement read. “We will be issuing a ban from campus.”

UW said the case remains under investigation, with criminal charges pending. The matter will be referred to the King County prosecuting attorney’s office.

University campuses are fairly open places — you want to visit the student union and buy an ice cream cone? Go ahead. You want to stroll through the hallways and see what students are doing? You can. You want to walk into a classroom and listen to a lecture for an hour? Entirely possible, although if you disrupt the class we will have zero tolerance for that nonsense. I’ve had visitors to my classes, and it’s never been a problem. Of course, they haven’t been Nazis.

The country is being run by snot-nosed, immature teen-aged man-children

I didn’t know this until now — universities don’t make these, I guess — but there is a class of memorabilia called challenge coins. Usually, these are given out by military organizations to commemorate specific events, ranging from a visit to a major victory, but there are many other organizations that hand them out for all kinds of reasons. I’ve never received one, or given one out, and I felt briefly left out when I discovered that the FBI is also handing them out, especially this one that Kash Patel is proudly giving people.

The challenge coins being handed out by @FBIDirectorKash. Seems someone put a lot of thought into this.

A skull with guns for teeth, and oh my god, it has spiders in it’s eye sockets, based on the Punisher logo? It’s just cartoonishly evil.

“Looks like a nerd stuck forever in puberty designed a challenge coin while being on 15 cans of Monster,” one user commented on the design.

Others quickly pointed out that the Punisher symbol might not be the best choice for an FBI director.

“The Punisher is a symbol of “law and order” failing. It has very little business in the office of the FBI Director,” one user posted.

The use of the Punisher logo by law enforcement and the military has drawn criticism from the character’s creator, Gerry Conway, who told Forbes: “It always struck me as stupid and ironic that members of the police are embracing what is fundamentally an outlaw symbol.”

The Battle of Chicago has begun

It is not bringing glory to the fascists.

In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building near 75th Street and South Shore Drive, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The DHS said that 37 individuals were arrested and that the operation involved the U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF.

The agency claimed the building and surrounding area were tied to activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and that those arrested included people allegedly involved in drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations.

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the building, told WBEZ Chicago that she saw federal agents dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. She said the children were separated from their mothers.

Assaults on apartment buildings to tear naked children from their mothers is not very photogenic, especially when the assailants are armored up and masked. Were the children members of Tren de Aragua? Were they armed and selling drugs? I could believe that there were a few individuals in that building who were suspected of “drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations,” but that doesn’t warrant harassing and harming and terrifying the innocent people who lived there.

Follow the rule of law or GTFO, ICE.

So proud of my alma mater

A Nazi barged into a class, Psych 210 (The Diversity of Human Sexuality), threw Nazi salutes, and called everyone there “degenerates.” He got more than he expected — practically the entire class rises up and chases him out, and pursues him across campus. It’s hilarious. There’s a moment in the video, which is focused on the Nazi running away, in which the camera briefly turns back and you see this huge boiling mob of students marching forward.

The students look like they’re having a good time.

They don’t beat up the Nazi, though. They surround him, and eventually the campus police show up to handcuff him and escort him away. That’s how you do it. It’s how I’d hope our students would respond if a similar incident occurred.

I hope Trump doesn’t use this as a pretext to invade the University of Washington with his stormtroopers.