Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 1, 2025, and National U.S. Postage Stamp Day. Here’s one worth over a million bucks! It’s the “inverted Jenny“, an airmail stamp printed in 1919. One pane of 100 stamps were printed with the image upside-down image of a Curtiss Jenny airplane. As Wikipedia notes:
The Inverted Jenny (also known as an Upside Down Jenny, Jenny Invert) is a 24 cent United States postage stamp first issued on May 10, 1918, in which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design is printed upside-down; it is one of the most famous errors in American philately. Only one pane of 100 of the invert stamps was ever found, making this error one of the most prized in philately.
The job of designing and printing the new stamp was carried out in a great rush; engraving began only on May 4, and stamp printing on May 10 (a Friday), in sheets of 100 (contrary to the usual practice of printing 400 at a time and cutting into 100-stamp panes). Since the stamp was printed in two colors, each sheet had to be placed into the flat-bed printing press twice, an error-prone process that had resulted in invert errors in stamps of 1869 and 1901, and at least three misprinted sheets were found during the production process and destroyed. It is believed that only one misprinted pane of 100 stamps got through unnoticed.
. . . Aware of the potential for inverts, a number of collectors went to their local post offices to buy the new stamps and keep an eye out for errors. Collector William T. Robey was one of those; he had written to a friend on May 10 mentioning: “It might interest you to know that there are two parts to the design, one an insert into the other, like the Pan-American issues. I think it would pay to be on the lookout for inverts on account of this.” On May 14, Robey went to the post office to buy the new stamps, and as he wrote later, when the clerk brought out a sheet of inverts, “my heart stood still”. He paid for the sheet, and asked to see more, but the remainder of the sheets were normal. The postal clerk who sold the sheet later said he did not realize the image was inverted because he had never seen an airplane before.
Robey, aware that the stamp would be worth more sold singly rather than as a sheet, broke up the sheet, and the fate of many of the stamps is obscure. But those that are sold fetch huge sums.
. . . . On 11 November 2023, another Inverted Jenny stamp was auctioned by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries for a new record hammer price of $1,700,000, with an 18% buyer’s premium raising the total cost to $2,006,000.
Here’s the depiction of July from one of my favorite manuscripts:the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416). I have seen reproductions, but the original is kept safely out of public view, stored in a museum in a beautiful château, the Musée Condé. I went there hoping to see something of the original, but alas, there was only a reproduction. Apparently July is a time for shearing sheep and reaping wheat.
It’s also Canada Day (note to Canadians: all Americans save Trump love you), International Chicken Wing Day, International Joke Day (see below for one), National Gingersnap Day, and National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day.
The joke (traditionally Jews never write out the full name of “God” or “Yahweh”):
A man goes to see his Rabbi in a panic, and he gets there and blurts out, “Rabbi you’ll never guess what! My son has run away to become a Christian!”
The Rabbi responds, “Well you’ll never guess what! My son has also run away to become a Christian!”
So the man asks the Rabbi what to do and the Rabbi says that they should pray to G-d. So they pray and tell Him of their plight; and G-d replies, “You’ll never guess what happened to me!”
Readers are welcome to contribute jokes or mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 1 Wikipedia page. Note again that as I’m leaving for three weeks on Saturday, posting will be tapering off this week as I prepare for my trip north.
Oh, and a new Google Doodle (click below) shows you it’s gone to “AI MODE”! You use it simply by typing a question mark into the Google search bar.
Da Nooz:
*The Big Beautiful Budget Bill has still not passed and appears to be languishing in the Senate. Trump has given the whole bill a deadline of July 4.
Senate Republicans were racing on Tuesday morning to lock down the votes to pass their sweeping tax and domestic policy bill, after an all-night session of voting and negotiating with holdouts left President Trump’s agenda hanging in the balance.
Debate on the package stretched into a third day as party leaders pressed to keep the legislation on track to meet Mr. Trump’s deadline of enactment by July 4. All day Monday and into the early hours of Tuesday morning, Republicans held firm against numerous Democratic efforts to challenge every element of the measure, particularly its cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs, as well as tax cuts for the wealthy.
But the bigger challenge for the G.O.P. was the nagging reservations in its own ranks over the bill, which polls have shown to be deeply unpopular with voters. Fiscal hawks upset that the measure would pile at least $3.3 trillion onto an already soaring national debt were pressing for bigger cuts to Medicaid to offset more of the cost. Moderate Republicans were agitating to scale back the bill’s cuts, fearing the impact on their constituents’ access to health care coverage and other government services.
The legislation would extend roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts enacted in 2017 that are slated to expire at the end of the year, and add new tax cuts Mr. Trump campaigned on, including for tips and overtime pay, while bolstering funds for national and border security. To cover part of the enormous cost, it would slash spending on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, as well as clean energy programs. And it would raise the federal debt limit by $5 trillion.
One would think that the tax cuts would make this bill popular, but the public also knows about the Medicaid cuts and, I hope, cares about what this will do to the national debt. I still predict it will pass the Senate, then the House, and then will go to Trump to become law. But I don’t like it.
*According to the WaPo, now the Republican Party is fracturing on the issue of Israel and the war (the Democratic Party fractured a long time ago about this).
. . . Stalwart support for Israel has been a cornerstone of GOP politics in recent decades. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to Congress at the invitation of Republican leaders, lambastingthe Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran. In a news conference this February, Netanyahu told President Donald Trump,who withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal, that he was “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
But views on the right are shifting.In March, the Pew Research Center found that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were more negative toward Israel than in 2022. Most of the shift came from Republicans under age 50. In 2022, 63 percent of Republicans under 50 had a positive view of Israel, and now they are roughly split, with 48 percent positive and 50 percent negative.
By comparison, the left’s generational divide on Israel is narrowing. The portion of older Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents who view Israel negatively increased by 23 percentage points since 2022.
The GOP’s rift was evident in the aftermath of the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities this month.A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University last week found that while 7 percent of Republicans over age 50 thought the United States was too supportive of Israel, 31 percent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 agreed with the sentiment.
“These generations perceive a different Israel — less heroic or righteous, and more controversial,” said Amnon Cavari, an associate professor at Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University in Israel. “What once were occasional news stories portraying Israeli strength in the face of threats have become a steady stream of reporting that questions Israel’s actions and America’s role in enabling them. Consequently, support for Israel is declining.”
Network exit polls in 2024 found that Trump won 43 percent of voters aged 18 to 29, a seven-point increase from 2020. The support suggests growing approval of his “America First” platform, which promotes a nationalist framework that prioritizes domestic interests over foreign policy. Despite Israel’s lockstep relationship with the United States, young Republicans who spoke to The Washington Post think it’s time for the U.S. to separate its priorities from Israel’s.
I’m not sure what Israel could do to regain the support of both Democrats and Republicans. The only thing I can think of would be a cease-fire. And that would mean that not all the hostages would be released, many Palestinian terrorists would be released for a few live hostages, Israel would have to withdraw from Gaza, and Hamas would remain in power. That would simply re-create the terrorism that started the war in the first place, and Israel would be forever imperiled. Do Americans care about whether Israel continues to exist? It would seem that many of them do not. They simply want the war to end, whatever it takes.
*Two big-name professors tell us in a WaPo op-ed “To save themselves, universities must cultivate civic friendship.” (Article archived here.) What’s civic friendship? First, the authors:
Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. They are co-authors of “Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.”
And their plan to fix universities:
As professors who have taught at institutions including Harvard and Princeton for many years, we have consistently encouraged universities to reject any demands or conditions that would compromise basic principles of academic freedom and freedom of thought, inquiry and speech. Nevertheless, as we have previously argued, elite universities themselves bear much of the responsibility for their current predicament. From fostering (or willfully looking past) campus intellectual climates poisoned by conformism, ideological homogeneity and groupthink to failing to take adequate action against harassment and other activities that undermine their core truth-seeking mission, universities have made themselves legitimate objects of scrutiny — and low-hanging fruit for an administration that is metaphorically out for blood.
We believe a fundamental reason for the decline of the pursuit of truth on campuses is the collapse in acknowledging the importance of civic friendship — which, following Aristotle, we understand to be the bond of mutual respect and willingness to cooperate for the sake of the common good, even across significant disagreements or divisions.
The cultivation and recovery of civic friendship must necessarily undergird any successful effort by universities to regain public legitimacy and the moral high ground. Here, we hope to provide some guidance for restoring campus cultures where faculty and students feel free to speak their minds and explore ideas, no matter how unpopular or controversial on or off campus they happen to be.
And then we get the usual. Granted, they’re right, and many schools, including mine, are trying this:
A university culture of civic friendship is one in which faculty and students recognize, and act consistently with the recognition, that reasonable people of goodwill can respectfully disagree about controversial — indeed, even the most important, life-defining, and identity-forming — questions. Does God exist? What constitutes living a good life? How should the Constitution be interpreted? How should policymakers go about addressing particular social concerns over which there is deep division in their communities?
When, for example, high percentages of faculty and students report that they regularly engage in self-censorship, or less than 3 percent of faculty on a campus say they hold conservative views, there are entrenched problems that demand the university leadership’s attention and redress. They require concrete efforts to increase viewpoint diversity, such as by ending discrimination on the basis of ideological commitments (whether explicit or unspoken) in admissions and hiring and doing better to reach out to those with underrepresented viewpoints and perspectives. They call for the principled defense of freedom of speech and the consistent enforcement of rules against speech-chilling behaviors such as harassment and the shouting-down of speakers, as well as any activities that disrupt core academic priorities such as teaching, studying, and research. And they demand a commitment by university leaders to ensuring that seminar rooms and lecture halls are not “safe spaces,” but rather Socratic Spaces, where students are made to wrestle with ideas that challenge their preconceived assumptions and deeply-held beliefs — indeed, ideas which may make them feel uncomfortable.When, for example, high percentages of faculty and students report that they regularly engage in self-censorship, or less than 3 percent of faculty on a campus say they hold conservative views, there are entrenched problems that demand the university leadership’s attention and redress.
Yes, institutional neutrality, freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity (but not, in my view, hiring faculty based on their political views), and “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech, as well as inculcation of the university community with the ability to engage with people having differing views. But all this has been said before; the authors simply give it the name of “civic respect.” Kudos, though, to the universities who are doing this (I’m dubious about the mandating of “viewpoint diversity,” though), including the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, founded with a $100 million donation from an anonymous benefactor. But this editorial says nothing new.
*I don’t know how Anthony Guerrero, an active-duty U.S. Army officer, can get away with writing this kind of op-ed for the NYT, and he didn’t (he’s quitting the service). Guerrero’s piece is called “I’m not the kind of person to oppose a ban on transgender troops” (article archived here). Another title given is “I’m a conservative evangelical, I’m done with the Army.” An excerpt:
I enlisted in the United States Army in 2006 and have been an officer since 2013, serving in a variety of leadership positions. I am proud of my service and I care deeply about the Army. But this month I began the process of resigning in protest of President Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from the military.
The president issued the order in January and the Supreme Court last month allowed the administration to start enforcing it. The order may be legally sound, but it is neither moral nor ethical. I believe that it is my duty as an officer to dissent when faced with such an order.
I may not be the sort of person you would expect to oppose a ban on transgender troops. I am a conservative evangelical Christian and a Republican. Though I have deep compassion for people who feel they are in the wrong body, I do not think that transitioning — as opposed to learning to love and accept the body God gave you — is the right thing to do in that predicament. But my views are irrelevant to the issue of transgender troops.
This situation is different. The ban on transgender troops is blatantly discriminatory. It has nothing to do with the policy’s stated justification of military readiness. The Department of Defense, when imposing the ban in February, claimed that the “medical, surgical and mental health constraints” on transgender people “are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
This is untrue, and the department should know it. A study from 2016 conducted by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that military policies in other countries that permit transgender people to serve openly have “no significant effect on cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.” The American Psychological Association noted in 2018 that “substantial psychological research” demonstrates that gender dysphoria does not itself prevent people from working at a high level, “including in military service.” Indeed, since 2016, when the Pentagon announced that transgender Americans could serve openly, transgender troops have been deployed to combat zones, provided vital support to combat operations and filled critical roles in the armed forces.
The executive order barring transgender troops is a legal command that provides cover for bigotry. It delivers hate in the guise of a national security issue, dressed up in medicalized language.
As I said, he took a huge risk publishing this, and at the end states he’s resigning from the Army, but even publishing this may subject him to punishment.
I have been speaking with my superior officers about my concerns since January. While they are allowing me to take the steps needed to resign, they have ordered me not to publish anything on this topic, arguing that doing so would be damaging to good order and discipline. Disobeying an order from a superior officer is punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by dismissal, loss of pay and confinement. But this issue is too important to me. I cannot remain quiet while the Army that I love ignores lessons that it should have learned long ago.
I agree with all he says. If a transgender person meets the requirements for serving in the military, I cannot see any reason save bigotry to keep them out. If there needs to be sex-restricted spaces in the military (and I can’t really think of any save women’s locker rooms—if they exist), then they can be taken care of with a few tweaks. But that is no justification for Trump’s executive order, which, as Guerrero says, is “neither moral nor ethical.”
*The National Review reports that the Administration has found Harvard guilty of creating an antisemitic climate that violated civil rights law, and is threatening to cut off all government funding to the University (article archived here).
Harvard University violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students, the Trump administration found after an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The administration is now threatening to cut off all funding to the university if action is not taken to address the violation.
HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found Harvard to be in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race and ethnicity. The university has been a “willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” the agency wrote in a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber. “Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government.”
The official finding and threat to cut off all funding represents a stark escalation in the administration’s ongoing war against Harvard, which has already resulted in significant funding cuts and a ban on the enrollment of foreign students. Harvard is currently suing the administration for making what is says are unconstitutional demands to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and increase ideological diversity on the faculty.
The Monday letter notes that a majority of Jewish students on campus reported experiencing discrimination, while a quarter of them felt physically unsafe. According to the notice, Jewish and Israeli students reported being assaulted, spat on, and having to conceal their Jewish identity from their classmates. One image circulated among the student body showed a dollar sign inside a Star of David. Additionally, anti-Israel stickers were placed around campus, including an Israeli flag with a swastika on it.
The letter also alleged that Harvard failed to respond to antisemitic protests: “The campus was wracked by demonstrations that flagrantly violated the University’s rules of conduct. The demonstrations included calls for genocide and murder, and denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces.” Students who participated in last year’s encampment received “received lax and inconsistent discipline.” OCR wrote, “By the end of the process, even accounting only for the students that were charged, only a fraction received some sort of discipline, and none were suspended.”
The Trump administration said Harvard did not dispute its finding “nor could it,” as “Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies—where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group identity and not individual merit—has enabled anti-Semitism to fester on Harvard’s campus and has led a once great institution to humiliation.”
Harvard has pushed back, issuing a report (based, as I saw, largely on individual, self-reported anecdotes), admitting it had a problem (even President Garber himself said he was a victim of antisemitism), and saying that it would fix it. But this is is now going to be resolved in court, as Harvard has filed a lawsuit. I expect Harvard will win, given that most of the people penalized did nothing wrong, but if it doesn’t, there will be no more federal grants given to the University, and that will take it down many reputational notches.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili bemoans the lacking of meaningful discourse with Andrzej, who has other things on his mind:
Hili: We never say everything.
Andrzej: And that’s a good thing, because hell would be even worse than it already is.
Hili: Nigdy nie mówimy wszystkiego.
Ja: I to dobrze, bo piekło byłoby jeszcze większe niż jest.
*******************
From The Dodo Pet:
From Things With Faces; are these Trumps?
From Jesus of the Day:
Masih is very quiet lately given what’s going on in Iran. So we have our default tweeter, J. K. Rowling, retweeting about the perfidies of the Iranian theocracy:
This is Captain Behnam Zarei who was called to a post office in February 2024 as a woman had complained of another woman not wearing hijab. He protected her. He gave his name while being filmed. Now he’s dead. Friends say he’d been severely harassed by the regime after this… pic.twitter.com/f6XWv9Unrz
— Omid Djalili (@omid9) June 27, 2025
And on JKR’s more usual topic:
🚨FIVE trans-identified males competed in the Pro Disc Golf Women’s Championships last week, taking home nearly $5,000 in prize money intended for female players.
One of the men announced he was monitoring women who chose to drop out after he registered.https://t.co/X02hV9dSLk
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) June 26, 2025
From Luana. I had no idea that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic Primary in NYT, doesn’t seem to have any Palestinian ancestry, but this is what Wikipedia says:
Zohran Kwame Mamdani was born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda. His father is Mahmood Mamdani, a former Indian expatriate in Uganda of Gujarati Shia Muslim descent who is a postcolonial studies professor at Columbia University. His mother is Mira Nair, an Indian-American filmmaker of Hindu Punjabi descent and a recipient of the Padma Bhushan award. His father gave him the middle name Kwame in honor of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana.
He doesn’t seem to have lived in Palestine, either. That makes this tweet quizzical, except that he is Muslim.
Zohran says that Palestine is “CENTRAL” to his identity.
I wonder why Ukraine, Tibet or Taiwan is not central to his identity.
Strange.
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) June 29, 2025
From Malcolm, a bouquet of kittens. Better than flowers any day!
A bouquet of kittens 💐 pic.twitter.com/HojLTRjOlg
— The Cats 𝕏 (@TheCatsX) June 17, 2025
From my feed: Olga Korbut performing a fantastic but dangerous (and now banned) move on the uneven parallel bars:
The banned “Dead Loop” of Olga Korbut in the 1972 Olympics. It was the first and last time the trick was documented. pic.twitter.com/WjTbQt1uVI
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) June 30, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy, dressed in a tux in this photo, was exterminated with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was 12 years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T09:59:21.990Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. Find the snakes (scroll down the thread to see the answer):
Let's play everyone's favorite game:"Find That Copperhead!"There are TWO (2) Eastern copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix) in this picture, doing their best to avoid being spotted or bothered.#StolenFromTheInternet
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T16:24:28.048Z
And a scowling kitty (again looking human-ish):
Scowling at you since 1663, dear human reader. #caturday #catcontent
— Daniel Bellingradt (@dbellingradt.bsky.social) 2025-06-30T08:45:29.542Z
“Only one pane of 100 of the invert stamps was ever found, …”
Is it me or does that sound like there’s more to the story…
“Do Americans care about whether Israel continues to exist?”
From my informal conversations, I’d say Americans do not understand that Israel’s struggle is existential. They do not pay attention to what the Iranians and the Palestinian terrorists tell the world.
Yes, Kurt. Not only are they unaware and disinterested if they DO actually look at the situation they’ll be “informed” by PBS, the BBC, NBC and the New Woke Times. So their view will be entirely inverted.
I think the youngsters are more interested but they’re even more misinformed thanks to woke “anticolonialist” lefty teachers and… of all horrors.. tik-tock. We have outsourced our children’s education to the CCP and trans genderwang NGOs. And so here the eff we are.
It is a disaster.
They should read my damn column. I sort the bastards out!
https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/
(variously syndicated, above without ads).
hehhe
D.A.
NYC
*Onwards Israeli heroes.
Disc golf is just regimented frisbee…not really golf. Not sure why separate women and men divisions are needed. Were the self identifying trans money-winners in the top places or simply mixed in among the female finishers? This looks a bit like whining.
Regarding Olga Korbet’s dead loop, after watching a decade of my granddaughter competing in usa gymnastics, I think almost every move these girls do on bars is dangerous and could lead to serious injury and just daily practice beats up their bodies.
This Meghan Murphy podcast with Jon Kay explains the problem of “transwomen” in disc golf pretty well.
https://www.meghanmurphy.ca/p/jon-kay-on-trans-players-in-disc#details
HA! I immediately thought of Jon Kay, Mike – he’s a big time disc golfer and antigenderwang journalist. Fine chap too.
D.A.
NYC
Having played quite a lot of Frisbee golf in my younger days, I can tell you that male physical advantage is a significant factor. The game does have parallels to regular golf in terms of distance + accuracy, windage, and terrain. The Frisbees used are quite different from the ones that you throw back and forth to each other, and you do not want to try to catch a tee-ing off frisbee without padded gloves.
There are sports where I do think there are no advantages for males, like corn-hole. And yet there are separate male and female categories in tournaments for that game as well.
Thanks. I stand corrected!
“I think almost every move these girls do on bars is dangerous and could lead to serious injury and just daily practice beats up their bodies.”
Surely the same can be said of many sports?
Interesting piece about RFK, Jr. on the Tucker Carlson show. Probably won’t see anything about this in MSM.
Junior open-loop is simply marketing of his beliefs, often filled by lies both of omission and commission. Any display by him needs the balance of a Paul Offit or Dr. Dan from TWiV to point out the obvious and sometimes subtle lies. Junior lies and makes up stuff with such self assurance and without batting an eye, he reminds me of my former boss, a retired general who could look me straight in the eye and lie without missing a beat.
I’ll remember that technically-accurate insult for my next description of some sub-clinically unhinged person.
(“Open-loop” is much more specific than the cliché “unhinged” which ISTM doesn’t add anything to “broken”, “inadequate”, “not playing with a full deck”, “a few fries short of a Happy Meal”, etc.)
The Trump Administration going after Harvard to defend civil rights? Talk about mind-warping hypocrisy.
T’is at least a bit Orwellian.
Hypocrisy: A Core Republican Value™
“If Hunter is convicted, would you accept that outcome and rule out a pardon?” Biden: “Yes.” The Biden coverup, “He’s sharp as ever!” Hypocrisy: A core value of the Democrats.
Hypocrisy in politicians doesn’t particularly bother me. If it did, there wouldn’t be anyone to vote for. It greases the gears of the art of the possible. I don’t like hypocrisy in my friends, unless they go into politics and become my cronies.
What I’d like to know is what examples you can cite of civil rights violations by the Trump Administration, leaving hypocrisy out of it entirely. (We can worry about Harvard separately.) To avoid pointless to-and-fro and accusations of goalpost shifting, let me specify that it’s not a civil-rights violation unless the Supreme Court says it is, and then only if the President were to press forward with Executive force in defiance. Since many orders have not yet been fully adjudicated, I would accept as a violation the President’s defiance (not just an appeal, obviously) of a lower-Court injunction against his order.
Finally, since many accusations of civil-rights violations stem from the Administration’s actions to deport undesirable or illegal aliens, I’d suggest to review U.S. immigration law. You’ll find that aliens enjoy much thinner due-process rights against deportation (and the attendant detention) than they enjoy (along with citizens) against fines and imprisonment for criminal offences. It’s not a civil-rights violation to take an executive action that the law permits, even if one might wish the law forbade it.
Here’s another tribute to Malgorzata, including a short bio, from her husband (free to read):
My Malgorzata–Her Husband’s Tribute in Full
https://phyllischesler.substack.com/p/my-malgorzata-her-husbands-tribute
Thank you for sharing that, it was lovely.
Thank you so much for posting that. How lovely. I keep wanting to say something to Andrzej here, but don’t know if he reads Jerry’s blog. I wonder about him every day when I look at Hili’s picture. I hope he’s okay and eating enough and I just wonder how he’s getting on. I love their suicide pact.
Yes, it sounds like they were very close. He must miss her a lot.
Regarding the approval numbers on Israel. Antisemitism and anti-Israelism go hand in hand, with one reinforcing the other. This is a potent concern for Jews and for Israel. Effecting a cease-fire in Gaza might help, but the die has been cast. Eventually—probably fairly soon—the war in Gaza will come to an end. One can only hope that Hamas ends up out of power and that the hostages return home. The end of the war might keep American and world opinion from getting worse, but there is nothing in a peace deal that will cause public opinion to improve. For Jews and for Israel, a great deal of ground has been lost.
I found one Copperhead, but perhaps the two are intertwined.
Even using the one that I found (probably the same as yours) as a search template, I could find no trace of a second snake at all.
Very effective camouflage.
Edit – found it – just above the more obvious one, above the main spar of that slender three-branched stick crossing the field of view, to the left of the insertion of the upper side-branch. Practically invisible, I had to up the magnification to 200%.
Of course, one of the purposes of these amendments is to get the Republicans on record as being for/against the provisions of the bill, individually. And good on them, it’s one of the very few powers that the Dems have now. Bludgeon the GOP with it. Make them say that they want to cut Medicaid. Most “red” states have more Medicaid recipients than “blue” states.
I’m pretty sure I live in the “reddest” (and most rural) congressional district in Washington state. It has the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in the state (about 40% of the population). I wonder what they will think about their nursing homes and hospitals closing in those rural areas? They will probably believe the GOP lies, as fed to them by Fox, OAN, etc.
The other night, we had the TV on briefly and a GOP ad came on showing an old couple getting all excited because, “The Budget Bill will give them a tax break on Social Security!” A lie of course.
Transgenderism is fundamentally a lie or a mental delusion. And it’s a falsehood that, once adopted by the military leadership of a disciplined force, must be adopted as truth by everyone else. Trans troops: it’s not about you. It’s about all your colleagues, underlings, and superiors who must, on pain of military punishment for disobeying orders, give obeisance to your unvetted claim about yourself that they know not to be true. (If they believe it to be true, then they have been brainwashed.) For this reason, demanding to be accepted as trans is incompatible with military service. You can be trans in your head but the military must see you as the sex you are. It ought not to use military orders to enforce an untruth on its members.
For the record, female locker rooms (the host’s one acceptable exception to trans acceptance) do exist, called barracks. Commanders under the Biden-era inclusive policy were ordered to tell female troops dismayed about having men, er, women with muscles and penises, seeing them naked in their latrines and shower spaces to suck it up. (Restricting access to showers at certain times — on the basis of what, though? — was one suggestion in Dept. of Defence policy documents.) These troops had enlisted as women and were, under the Pentagon policy, to be regarded as women in every respect. As far as the military which means everyone in it was concerned, they were women. A penis, as Chase Strangio says, is not a male organ, just an unusual female one. Theoretically the military wouldn’t even know how many trans soldiers, sailors, and airmen it had, because everyone enlisted with his own unchallengeable choice of M or F on the intake form and that was the end of it.
There is another integrity issue: To be enlisted or commissioned, everyone must make the grade, but everyone must also be seen to be doing his/her individual best. What I was never able to ascertain from my reading in the public domain was how a woman who was obviously a man would be expected to perform. If “she” just barely met the female physical standard which didn’t include being able to carry a simulated male casualty to safety, even though “she” was obviously from “her” build capable of doing so, this would surely have earned “her” the silent contempt of “her” drill instructor. Yet if “she” really put out, “she” would be like Lia Thomas in the pool: Ho-hum for the men but the most outstanding female soldier I have had the privilege to train! Small wonder some transwomen complain about being booted out despite consistently top-rated fitness reports. (Yes I know physical fitness isn’t the only component.)
And how did the obvious women who enlisted as men get judged? There is no way any but a rare few would have met male standards. Yet the military was under pressure to accept them. How did the instructors know this “man”, but not that man who couldn’t meet male standards was to be given a passing grade if “he” could meet female standards? Maybe the “other” men in the platoon were voluntold to share out “his” kit so “he” could keep up with them on the route march and feel like one of the guys. It’s only to get through Basic, right? Once in, I’ll go to a non-combat job like Signals or Logistics, freeing up a cis-man for Combat Arms. (In the Canadian Army, the transman drives the signals truck while the men march. We have DEI-training modules about how to rat out out the transphobic sergeant who expresses exasperation to his corporal about the brass sending girls to his squad who can’t pull their weight. So even though this now seems to be a settled non-issue in the U.S. military, it is still in play here.)
This by Lionel Shriver in The Spectator captures the vibe shift ~perfectly. [edit to add: Trigger warning that the essay can be read as quite mean-spirited]
https://archive.ph/K2tDv
That trigger warning is a selling point to me Mike! Lionel is one of my favorite living writers – both in her excellent novels (and I NEVER read novels except hers now) or her column. She’s OG.
Interestingly she recently decamped from her 30 year inner city (in the UK sense) London home as it became a tad diverse so she’s moved to Portugal. Her next novel is about immigration.
cheers Mike!
D.A.
NYC
Whoa! That was good. 💣
I swear I didn’t plagiarize it.
The mysterious spread of transgenderism represented a category error: the idea that imposing (on the army, sports institutions, law, society) a few individuals’ subjective delusion is some kind of human right. The trick of grafting delusion-accommodation onto human rights is how transgenderism got into the conventional “liberal” category. Had a neurodivergence movement been more active, there would now be learned discussions of how the army should accommodate soldiers who identify as Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte, or a kangaroo.
Yes Jon – it is indeed a category error. Seems it is pretty easy to have that initial error compound, and quickly.
I’ve listened to literally hundreds of hours on this, read thousands of pages.
Obviously it is multi-causal but I see a few “tipping points” to the error: Time Magazine’s “NEXT HUMAN RIGHTS: TRANS RIGHTS” cover in 2014 gave the mania a large boost.
As did that Bruce Jenner (Kardasian? I don’t follow celeb scumbags closely) being “a beautiful woman” mid decade, according to all of prole media.
And…WAPTH’s ascendency and Big Association’s (pediatrics, psych., endo, etc.) acceptance of their insane model. I see these as the big 3 that caused the category error. (I bet the great Mia Hughes and Stella O’Malley agree though I haven’t asked them. I will. Plan to go to GENSPEC in NM in September.)
D.A.
NYC
And if the Navy had been obligated to accept Lt. Maryk’s self-identification as the skipper of the U.S.S. Caine during that typhoon, there would have been no court-martial for Henry Fonda to star on Broadway in.
I don’t see any difference between locker rooms and barracks. Why should women have ever been told to “suck it up”. In neither location is that acceptable. The military is the last place anyone should be asked to deal with that nonsense. I don’t understand how Jerry can see it as wrong in female locker rooms, but agrees with everything the fellow wrote. That strikes me as being inconsistent, indeed.
“One of the men announced he was monitoring women who chose to drop out after he registered.”
Ah, the surveillance of Big Brother or, in his case, Big Sister?
Happy Canada Day