Without getting too deep into the revolting details, let’s talk a little about the Cornell rape case.

I think we have been conditioned to think of gang rape in a certain way. Unless we’ve experienced it ourselves (shudder), we may think of it in a porn-y way (a woman held down by two or more men, who cries until she really gets into it, etc. etc.). Or we may think of it the way Jodie Foster and her colleagues acted it in “The Accused.” Again, a woman lifted onto a barroom pinball machine, assaulted by a series of men until she runs out, screaming.

We may have heard whispers of “gang bangs,” with the high-school slut or a prostitute, perhaps arranged for a party. She’s drunk — you’d have to be — and never says no.

Or we may be skeptical in general. The infamous Rolling Stone rape story about the University of Virginia turned out to be hooey. It’s unwise to believe everything before you know all, or at least some, of the facts.

There are men, and a few women, who are denying the claims made in the Cornell case by saying that she was willing until she wasn’t, and was she even unwilling, toward the end? She started out by saying yes to a threesome, then yes to a different arrangement, and it was only days later that she decided she’d been raped. So how can it be rape? How can you say no once you’ve said yes?

Simple: By saying no, but more critically, by men recognizing that a woman who is insensate or semi-conscious IS NOT CAPABLE OF GIVING CONSENT, EVEN IF SHE SAYS OK. We’re not talking tipsy or a little high. This woman reported being 10 drinks in before she even showed up at the frat house, then had more to drink plus ketamine.

Next week we’ll cover how to get her some help when no one else will. A big step, I know.

Let’s move on to an issue that really matters: Susan Dell’s face.

I’ve seen a million comments on it, and don’t really feel the need to add my own. She is entitled to do what she wants to her body, and I’ve reached the point I no longer trust photography. Here is her photo on her own foundation’s website:

And here’s a photo from Yahoo Finance:

I think I’ve told the story here before, when I was dating a news photographer and watched him printing and reprinting a photo of Jeane Kirkpatrick, burning and dodging to emphasize her wrinkles. He didn’t like her, and I’m sure the photographers who work the White House have no great love for the people they shoot there. But I’ve looked through a bunch of recent photos of her, and the second image seems closer to reality than the first. All I really have to say is: It’s too bad. She was so pretty once, and in what seems to be a misguided effort to hang on to pretty as long as possible, she…made some mistakes. It’s taken this long, but I am honestly grateful not to have been a knockout in my youth, or even much beyond average-looking, because the alternative seems to be the panic over its inevitable fading that leads to faces like this.

Also, Madonna looks terrible. Just gotta say that.

Plastic surgery seems to be a mixture of many volatile elements — the surgeon’s skill, the material s/he has to work with (bone structure, mainly), luck (will the skin stretch evenly?) and the most unstable of all, i.e., the client. Will s/he be satisfied with the result? Can s/he even see it? What do we see when we look in the mirror? That’s the real mystery.

Finally, Hoosiers: Jeff Gill tipped me off to these groyper pieces of crap the other day. If you spend any time online, you may recognize “heritage” as right-wing code for white, and Heritage Indiana does not disappoint:

We’re friends who realized the world we grew up in is being destroyed.

We each came to this in different ways. Maybe you went back to your hometown and it was filled with strangers or you’ve noticed kids don’t play outside anymore.

We asked: “Who represents Hoosiers who want to preserve our way of life?” No one. If we don’t, our home will be erased. We are banding together to take back our state. This is what thousands of patriots are waiting for.

Their current beef is that Fort Wayne’s biggest hospital has an internal-medicine resident class of 15, and 14 are FOREIGN. Why won’t the media cover this story? they ask. Maybe because it’s not new, and who gives a shit. You want your kid to become a doctor, ride them every day of their lives the way south Asian, Asian and Middle Eastern parents do their own.

Enough with these racists. Time to upload and get the week going.

Got the vaccines at noon Monday. That night I was shaking with chills, turned up the furnace, ate some Tylenol, slept badly (but stopped shaking, via the usual sweat bath), got up at 5:30 to do my early lifeguard shift, came home and went back to bed. Slept fitfully throughout the day, and today, Wednesday, I’m fully restored. It seemed a stronger reaction than normal, but we opted for the Moderna mRNA flu shot, said to be 27 percent more effective than the usual one, and so disapproved of by the current HHS secretary that it almost… well, let the NYT tell it:

Initially the F.D.A. had refused to even review Moderna’s application for approval earlier this year, but quickly reversed course after a public outcry. The flu kills more than 300,000 people worldwide each year and was particularly harsh in the 2024-25 season, with an estimated 45,000 deaths in the United States, including at least 297 reported cases in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new vaccine is authorized for people ages 50 to 64. The F.D.A. issued an accelerated approval for adults 65 and older, which allows widespread use and can be converted to a full approval if the results of a follow-up study are deemed acceptable.

If Bobby’s agin’ it, I’m for it. But it did kick my butt. Of course, maybe it was the Covid jab doing the kicking; who’s to know? I keep a record for no particular reason, and this is my 10th Covid shot. :::scattered applause::: Still a Novid, to the best of my knowledge. I/we test whenever we have a cold, and so far, no positives.

And I’m really glad no one needed to be fished out of the pool yesterday morning, because I was operating at something of a deficit.

Moving on! I’m starting to feel more confident about Abdul El-Sayed’s chances in the Senate race, although I refuse to get smug about it. One reason is, he seems to have caught the attention of the right-wing media, but in a way that inevitably makes him look better, in some way. He runs circles around Fox News questioners, and the more he does it, the more they keep inviting him back to drop bombs like, “My name didn’t cost Michigan families $5,600 last year because of tariffs.”

Funnier, though, is this New York Post story, which inevitably was laundered through the Gateway Pundit, i.e., the stupidest man on the internet. The headline alone is great:

Abdul El-Sayed farts in public, ex aide says — and blasts Senate candidate as immature ‘manufactured man’

My brotha! It so happens that I, and virtually every other human being on the planet, farts in public, because farting is part of having a human body, and we can’t be in private spaces all the time. Of course, what this “ex-aide” says isn’t exactly just farting in public. He farts as comedy:

“He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,” Domingue wrote.

“To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.”

Ha ha. Many well-decorated humorists would agree with Abdul, but honestly, who cares? His opponent is a Donald Trump rubber stamp, and that’s all that matters to me. Speaking of whom:

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers appears to be breaking with President Donald Trump on another key issue less than a month before Election Day.

“Drinking a Labatt and watching the Red Wings, man, it just doesn’t get any more Michigan than that,” Rogers said in a new video ad released on Oct. 7. “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war now.”

The statement marks the second time in recent weeks that Rogers spoke out — albeit without criticizing Trump by name — against one of the president’s unpopular initiatives. This time, Rogers is calling for an end to Trump’s widespread trade war against Canada, America’s biggest trading partner.

The Republican Senate nominee also split with Trump on the Iran war in late September, saying it “needs to end and end quickly.”

The ad was shot in a bar:

The 30-second spot features Rogers wearing a flannel shirt and sitting at a bar stool at Bigg’s Bar & Grill on Gratiot Avenue in Chesterfield Township.

That’ll get the blue-collar crowd, ain’a?

OK, then. Time for me to push this out into the world and start exploring how we might make our gas-log fireplace less of a pain in the ass to use. Happy Wednesday, all.

When Alan and I took the gun class we took back in whenever-that-was, the instructor was a chortling doofus who was unprofessional, but entertaining. Lots of jokes, and he frittered the all-day class away to the point that he had to rush through the required slides in about seven minutes at the end. But we all got our certificates, which I declined to parlay for a concealed-carry permit, because I’m just not a concealed-carry kind of girl.

At one point, he let slip the amazing (to me, anyway) fact that a loaded firearm is never more than a few steps away from any position in his home. He is always ready to defend it, and if I were an Amazon driver, I’d leave his packages at the end of the driveway and whistle for him to come pick them up. He also said he had three on his person at that very moment. Wow. It must be terrible to carry such paranoia around.

I thought of him when I read this jaw-dropping story in today’s Detroit News, which had me at the headline:

Cop, woman charged after toddler brings loaded gun to Canton Twp. daycare

You don’t say. More:

PLYMOUTH — A judge denied a Detroit police officer’s request to avoid surrendering the nine firearms in his home during an Oct. 1 court hearing in which he and a woman were charged with crimes after their 3-year-old son allegedly brought a loaded gun to a daycare center and passed it around to his classmates.

Detroit Police Officer Brandon John Ely, 28, and Rabab Ibrahim Al Zayad, 27, were arraigned in Plymouth’s 35th District Court in connection with the unsafe storage of a firearm. One of the toddler’s parents was arrested after the gun was discovered by an employee of the Childrens World Early Learning Center on Sheldon Road, Wayne County prosecutors said in a press release.

…According to prosecutors, the defendants’ 3-year-old son allegedly found an unsecured firearm in a backpack that had been stored in the classroom. The firearm was then passed to other students. A teacher observed the handgun, immediately intervened and removed it from the children.

Wow. There’s not much more to the story, except that the cop has already been “placed on restricted duty with no firearms, pending the outcome of the case,” and had to surrender the NINE weapons in the house, cop job or no cop job. I hope he loses it. What a maroon.

In other news at this hour, poor, poor Chief Justice John Roberts is having problems at his vacation home in Maine, where both the locals and the summer folk are giving him shit about his work. I mean, can you imagine?

For a long time, the chief justice’s life here was a story of potluck dinners and easy friendships, according to a summer of interviews with more than two dozen residents. Neighbors reveled in his position but kept exchanges with him about it brief or light. At a long-ago annual summer party, he used to participate in touch football, then call dinner to order by proclaiming: “Oyez, oyez, oyez, the lobsters are ready.”

But in recent years, as the Supreme Court has reshaped American life and handed more power to President Trump, a very personal form of anger has been rising here at the chief justice, transforming his getaways.

His summer retreats, long a well-known fact, are now a source of debate. Neighbors have taken to the water to protest him. Calling themselves “kayak-tivists,” they form flotillas facing his island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people in town give him the finger.

Yeah, fuck that guy. If it’s so bad, he can go back to the pleasant Indiana beach town that spawned his candy ass. No lobsters, but plenty of fellow travelers to buck him up. I’m sorry my late colleague Leo Morris, who boosted Roberts mightily when he was nominated for the court by George Bush, isn’t alive to see this.

Combined with the story about the botched execution in Tennessee, it’s been a WEEK, I tell you. I’m ready for it to end. How about you? Enjoy Friday.

A parking ticket for Kate’s car arrived at our house the other day. This has happened before, because her car is still registered to her dad. Normally it’s one of those high-tech meter-expiration citations, where the second the time runs out, the meter takes a photo of your plate and mails you the ticket. (I hate those. You should get a few minutes grace if you’re returning to your car. Damn surveillance state.) But this one was more troubling — parking in a handicap spot, which she swears she didn’t do. A $200 fine. It all happened in Hamtramck on Labor Day.

:::swimmy visual effects, harp glissandos:::

She does remember parking on the street, and a resident coming out to yell that she was in his spot. “It’s a public street,” she told him. “I’ll be gone in 30 minutes.” He continued to shake his fist from the front door, and she walked away. There was no ticket on the car when she returned. More than a week later, it arrived in a hand-addressed envelope, which was weird. Other things were weird, too — the color of the car was wrong, and not by a shade or two. The plate, make and model was correct, but it’s not a green car, not even close. I normally would have let her handle it, but she’s got a lot on her plate right now, so I took it on, because readers? I smelled a rat.

Called the Hamtramck PD. The officer allowed as it was unusual for a ticket to be mailed, but not unheard of, if say the officer was called away before it could be completed.

“Are there photos of the violations?” I asked. “She said she saw a handicap spot in front of another house, but she parked well out of it.”

The officer allowed as how there should be photos or body cam footage, available via FOIA request. I made one as soon as I hung up, then called the court to let them know I was seeking more information, and would either pay or contest when it arrived.

Today? It arrived:

I am reaching out on behalf of the City of Hamtramck’s FOIA Coordinator. The City of Hamtramck is in receipt of your document request pursuant to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, MCLA §§ 15.231, et. seq. After conducting a reasonable search of records in the possession of this public body, we have determined that no records exist that are responsive to your request.

Now I will roll into my November Zoom court date armed with Defendant’s Exhibits 1 and 2, a photo of Kate’s car showing its correct color, the FOIA response showing no photos of the alleged violation exist, and your honor, as the state is offering no proof beyond this :::shakes ticket derisively::: piece of paper, I am moving for a directed verdict of NOT GUILTY.

How did this happen? Parking is scarce in Hamtramck, especially the weekend of the Labor Day Festival, and likely this homeowner, who lives near one who has a legal handicap spot (I checked on Google Street View), called the cops and told them some snotty girl was parked in it. They probably let him offer the information over the phone. Whatever happened, I think I saved Kate $200.

This is my life in retirement.

Also, watching this dipshit senator from Missouri make an ass of himself, and be corrected by a woman:

Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.

In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.

Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.

It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.

Haw haw Hawkeyes!

OK, then. I have a big day Wednesday, so I’m going to get this checked off my to-do list. Later, all.

I read this story this morning in the Washington Post. Here’s the lede:

Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday.

The administration has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

I’m considering writing a letter. Not an email, but a letter that goes into an envelope with a stamp, hand-addressed to Major League Baseball, Office of the Commissioner, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. It will read:

Dear Commissioner Manfred,

Sincerely, etc.

I’ve always thought the open letter is the lowest form of column-writing, followed closely by The Speech He Should Have Given, but this isn’t a column and it’s not an open letter, just the current contents of my troubled head, so whatever.

I don’t want to be too much of a doomer about our current situation, but when I read stuff like this — and I hate everything about this story, including the obligatory quote from some national park advocacy group pointing out the obvious — I think we’ve gone around a corner that we won’t be coming back from. This is what happens when you stage a fucking MMA fight on the White House lawn. Every sport is going to want a piece of the action. One man, one man and his 70 million followers, every one of whom can eat a bag of dicks and then jump out a high window, brought this on. They broke this country. Who knew our big strong country was this fragile? Not I.

And don’t tell me this would be a temporary baseball stadium, to be disassembled afterward and the ground “restored,” or whatever. It crosses a line that says nothing in this country is as important as stupid spectacle, staged for rubes by despoiling something that was once thought sacred, or if not sacred, too important for this sort of thing. And to think, these are by and large the same people who had a stroke over Robert Mapplethorpe sticking a bullwhip up his ass.

I mean, in 18 months one man managed to ruin the premiere public-health agency in the world.
Measles is killing Amish children, but no matter — if they don’t survive, they weren’t strong enough to begin with, according to Bobby.

It turns out it’s easy work, destroying something that took decades, even centuries, to build. Just add Trump.

It’s been a quiet weekend. Cleaned bathrooms, swam, rode my bike down to the Ford House for their annual harvest fest, a big snooze unless you were in the market for trinkets, jewelry made from reclaimed tin, tea towels with the Detroit Lions logo or other crap. I spotted a local orchard’s cider-and-donuts stand and asked for one glass and one donut. “We’re only selling donuts in half-dozens, and cider by the gallon,” I was told. I guess the calories burned and sunshine enjoyed counted for something. Watched “Slow Horses.” Went to bed.

I hope yours was more exciting.

I refuse to sniff the Hopium, as they call it on the internet, but I’m allowing myself, at some moments, when the light is just right, when I’ve had a single drink, when I’ve slipped out of my bubble and into another, to feel some optimism about the upcoming elections.

This week, in the Michigan House, this is what happened (link probably paywalled):

LANSING — The Michigan House voted on Sept. 23 in favor of proposals to condemn socialism and to require an American flag be displayed in a prominent location in each classroom across the state.

…Michigan law already generally requires American flags to be placed in classrooms, under legislation that Republican then-Gov. Rick Snyder signed in 2012. But the new bill from state Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, aims to add a size requirement — two feet by three feet — and a standard that the display be prominent.

I feel so much better now, knowing the party that wants the government out of our lives will now enforce a particular flag size and placement. Comic relief, also likely paywalled:

Freedom Fest, a MAGA-themed Kentucky event planned for Sept. 26 that was to be headlined by Kid Rock and was slated to feature an appearance from Dog the Bounty Hunter, has been canceled by organizers after selling less than 10 VIP tickets, The Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Organizer Eric Deters announced the cancelation on social media on Sept. 21.

He said he had counted on VIP ticket sales funding the festival, which was previously held in 2022 and 2024. Past events featured guests such as Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Candace Owens.

“When I put together Patriots Day Freedom Fest, I put it together with the game plan and the idea that I could pay for it with VIP sales of $1,000 from these 100 people that I interact with on a regular basis,” Deters said on Facebook in a since-deleted message, according to the Enquirer.

Instead, only six people had purchased VIP tickets to the event, he said. The number of non-VIP tickets sold for the event was not disclosed.

“Rank-and-file Americans are the backbone of this country, (from) both political parties,” Deters said. “I want to tell you something: rich people, as a whole, suck.

“I am never ever, ever, ever, ever doing this event again. Ever,” he said.

The air may be hissing out of the balloon. We’ll see. I’ve had my hopes dashed too many times to get comfortable believing it, but all the indications are good.

And if Tubby pulls a fast one and cancels the election, the country will burn down and then? Problem solved.

Sorry I’ve been scarce this week. It’s been one of those weeks. Not busy, just uneventful. I made a list and handled some things. I went to a friend’s house and made some misshapen turnovers. The filling was great — pear, fig and gorgonzola — but the pastry was a mess. We decided there is NO SHAME in going for Pepperidge Farm puff pastry next time, and we will. I went to the library, in another attempt to distract myself from the current crisis. I was amazed to find an unread Thomas Harris book, and dismayed to learn, 80 or so pages in, that it’s terrible.

And other than that? It’s just been kinda dull, now that the thrill of traveling to the Hoosier state has worn off. I need another adventure.

It was a dry summer. We were watering our driveway garden every other day, and it would still droop on hot days, which were plentiful. So when I woke up yesterday to a cool, drippy world and again today, I was pleased.

Never more than a visitor to a farm, but once a Midwesterner, always a Midwesterner.

I checked out the brief discussion about third-grade reading in the comments of the last post. I understand that Mark was pointing out the grammatical mess of the original statement, and also Julie’s point that third-grade reading skills are important. They were talking past one another, but no biggie.

It so happens Michigan’s schoolchildren are doing abysmally, and have slipped precipitously in recent years. The GOP, in seeking to make this a campaign issue, are bringing up the so-called Mississippi miracle, in which that beleaguered state made tremendous gains in elementary reading accomplishment through the time-honored strategy of Getting Tough and Demanding Excellence, etc. I’ve been reading about this for a while, and it kept ringing a bell, because it sounded so similar to a plan that was briefly in place in Michigan, in which any kid who wasn’t at grade level in reading by the end of third, would be held back a year.

It didn’t last long. Schools hated it, teachers hated it, parents hated it, and when the Dems took a trifecta in the state legislature, it was promptly repealed.

I’m oversimplifying it to some extent. It wasn’t simply read or flunk; there were strategies for remedial support, etc. But the bottom line was the flunking part. Flunking isn’t just a disaster for children. It throws a monkey wrench into school administration, teaching plans and even student households. One or two failures in a year is one thing, but when a large cohort of children are facing retention, it has all sorts of ripple effects that were likely not considered when the law was passed, as “pass or flunk” reads better in a campaign speech than “reading comprehension is complicated and can be negatively affected by various factors, including…”

Here’s a blog by a Michigan teacher from 2019 that gets into the weeds, if you’re interested.

A friend who covers education pointed out that the Mississippi miracle shows its flaws within a few years. Sure, hold a kid back, cram them with remedial instruction, finesse the test scores and squeak them into the next grade level, a year older than their classmates. Then wait for the collapse, because within a few more years, certainly by middle school, those hard-fought gains are gone.

In fact, with the details changed, it’s exactly the argument conservatives make for doing away with Head Start — the gains achieved at preschool disappear by third grade, etc.

It’s almost as though teaching reading — teaching anything — is harder than it seems to a state legislature. It involves pretty much every factor in how education is structured in this country, including but not limited to home environments, household income, summer slide and everything else. I’m not a teacher, and I can’t even begin to know how to teach a kid to read. Kate basically taught herself, because she had an older, exhausted mother who was always happier to read to her rather than chase a soccer ball around the yard. Her teachers handled the rest of it, and today she has a library card. Happy ending.

I once visited a grade school in Grand Rapids. With “challenges,” as we say, including a large number of children of migrant agricultural workers, who might only be enrolled a few weeks before their parents decamp for another crop to harvest. The principal was heroic in his work to get these kids reading and supported for it. He stood at the door at dismissal on Fridays to make sure every kid was carrying a book to read over the weekend. There were regular staff meetings where students at risk of failing were discussed, with teachers huddling on what might work to get them making progress. It was a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month push, and they had the improving scores to document it. But it was never easy, or simple.

OK, then. What was the infuriating news of the weekend? It all blurs together after a while. But here’s a good piece on the destruction of the Kennedy Center, a gift link. (Note: Unless otherwise noted, everything I post is a gift link, or already free to read.) Lede:

A storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this month and its leadership sprang into action. One thing they did not do was repair the damage.

Instead staff members left the mess on the carpet for nearly two weeks, posting photos on social media with commentary like “the place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it.” They measured plaster shards and mapped the “debris field” like investigators after a plane crash, for a 55-page briefing for the center’s board about the building’s decay. No one was injured but Mr. Trump claimed online that a security guard had narrowly avoided “certain death.” Less than two hours later, his allies on the board voted to close the center, citing safety concerns.

I hate this era so, so much. Not a good way to go into the week, but here we are. Gird your loins; the midterms are still coming.

The trip to Fort Wayne was great. We saw old friends, met new ones, marveled at the evolving city, and saw a soccer — er, football — game, in the new stadium:

Yes, it’s nearly empty. But the season is almost over, and the stadium’s only been open since May. Parts of it are still under construction. But the tickets are reasonable, the design is thoughtful (there are picnic areas, children’s play places, and more) and I’m sure it’ll be an asset, going forward. Seating capacity of 9,000, and they expect to have concerts there eventually, so that capacity will grow with field seating.

We met with the mayor, who talked up the new park and this and that. Everyone is bullish on the Fort.

Now to the swag bag:

The Indiana tote bag I’ll use at the farmer’s market, the chocolate bar will be eaten, the zippered pouch will come in handy for something, the lip balm will live in the bottom of a bag. Which leaves the FW flag pin and the soccer scarf. Any FWFC fans out there who can use it? Or the pin? Brand-new, happy to share, free shipping.

Now I’m trying to catch up with stuff. A long car ride in the passenger seat leaves you with lots of links to share. So let’s hop to it.

A remarkable essay by Erick Erickson, a garden-variety wingnut, on the far-right lunatics who frighten even him:

Charles Haywood made his fortune selling shampoo. He sold his Indianapolis hair care company in 2020, and he has spent the years since writing out, at length and under his own name, what he would like to do with your country. Rod Dreher, who is no man of the left, read Haywood’s online ramblings and described Haywood as pouring out vile from “deep in his Midwestern Führerbunker”.

In a document he calls the Foundationalist Manifesto, Haywood explained that his preferred government “will not be democratic.” The state “will have unlimited means,” because “properly viewed, the state is not constrained externally.” Women “will not be permitted to choose career over family.” Men “will not be permitted to choose not to have a family.” The state will seize the assets of “any citizen who views himself as a global citizen.”

Hoo-boy. Yes, a strong streak of leopards-eating-faces, etc., but worth a read.

The Indiana connection made me wonder whether Haywood was throwing a few shekels at the Indiana Policy Review, a one-man sinecure for a former colleague of mine, but no. I did find a typically stupid column by that colleague, praising the Amish, and contrasting them, in a single paragraph, with Muslims:

An Amish recently explained his community’s success to the Guardian newspaper: “I can see the big changes they have come to society, which my children will never see. There is more independence on the individual level, but people have become more selfish – everything is for themselves. We value the idea of working for the betterment of everyone. Our goal is to show people that it works if we are honest in our dealings, respect people and go the extra mile.”

In the simplest terms, the Amish ask the question: Just because a Ford GT can go 215 m.p.h., do you need to jump in and put the pedal to the floor? More exactly, they back up a bit and ask the question of whether you really need a Ford GT — or any car, for that matter. The thought occurs that this general approach might be useful in considering our own community’s questions about birth control, artificial intelligence, data centers and such. And education? Give me a minute to think of something I learned important in school after eighth grade . . .

…You don’t have to be an expert on either the Amish or the Muslims to make a comparison based on their actions and words. The Muslims are living a mistake of the 7th-century where they conflate religion and conquest, the outcome being predictable and disastrous. The Amish, God bless their hearts, have chosen not to make that mistake.

Huh? I wonder what it feels like to be a man in his 80s, living off the largesse of two wealthy families, with the sole task of producing garbage like this.

RFK Jr., off the leash again:

The speaker before Mr. Kennedy was Mark Gorton, the president of the MAHA Institute, who called the success of the polio vaccine a “fraud,” priming the audience for the remarks of their former leader, who railed against vaccines for two decades. The speaker after him was Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British doctor whose retracted paper linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine with autism. Decades of research have proved that finding to be wrong.

…He promised the crowd that he would “be in this fight” to the end, and said the work he was doing was methodical. He added that his team was launching studies after which, he said, “we will take appropriate action.”

He also generated applause when he announced that he would be looking at the health effects of electromagnetic radiation and so-called chemtrails, the trails left by airplanes that the Environmental Protection Agency has said are actually condensation, not chemicals.

Chemtrails. Andrew Wakefield. Trashing the polio vaccine. Every week, it’s worse.

But that’s it for me today. Happy weekend! I blogged three times this week! Now off to bike the bridge again.

This has been the summer of the e-bike. Or rather, the summer of assholes and idiots on e-bikes. I get the feeling it’s the same elsewhere, too.

My community is generally described as “affluent,” and the first thing you learn when you move here is, if you’re looking for someone to blame for teenage bad behavior, it’s usually the parents. When I was compiling police reports, I lost track of how many alcohol-soaked teen parties were saved from a law enforcement breakup by a lawyer dad stepping onto the front porch and denying entry. There was a horrific fatal car crash a couple years ago, where the teen driver was known to routinely travel at insane speeds — thanks, tracking apps — and was still allowed by his mother to drive. (The crash was on a residential street with a 25 mph speed limit. The kid was going 105 when he lost control. The passenger died, not him.) And this summer, it’s 13-year-olds on Class 2 or 3 e-bikes, bombing down sidewalks without a care in the world.

I hate to play in-my-day, but in my day, I got around on a 10-speed bicycle and felt like I had pure freedom under me. I can’t think of the last time I saw a kid on a regular old bike; they all have at least pedal assist or more frequently, throttles. These bikes are capable of 20 or 30 mph, and they are menaces. It would be one thing if they were ridden in the street, where they belong, but no. Their riders prefer the sidewalk, and they don’t practice even the simplest courtesies, like making noise when overcoming a pedestrian. That no one has been injured is a miracle. I have yet to see a kid wearing a helmet on one. EDIT: I should have said here that there hasn’t been a serious injury here. In Birmingham, two 13-year-olds on an e-moto, on the sidewalk, hit a turning truck, and both are in the ICU, a couple weeks later.

Last month, it was an actual chase on e-motos, which are a step above even the Class 3 e-bikes. They’ll go 50 mph, and three Grosse Pointe brats were, once again, blasting down a sidewalk on them when they caught the attention of the police, who chased and arrested them.

Other communities report similar incidents. And once again, I blame the parents. In my time on the planet, I’ve noticed a phenomenon among the better-off — as soon as they complain about what something their kid does costs, you can check your watch, and within 30 seconds they will tell you exactly what it costs. To wit: “My kid’s hockey is costing me so much, I can’t even tell you.” Three, two, one: “Twelve grand a year, can you believe it?” Or 20 grand, or 25. They have to tell you. They’re compelled to let you in on just how much income they’re willing to commit to their kid’s recreation.

And e-bikes, and e-motos, are not cheap. You’d have to be a very dedicated teenage lawn mower to save up the money for one. They are very dangerous, though, especially on sidewalks. One went past me so close a couple weeks ago I felt my arm hair stir. And downtown, leaving the jazz festival on my own 50-year-old regular bike, riding in the street, two young men on e-motos not only rode on a very narrow sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, they looked at me like I’m the chump, hey check out grandma pedaling her antique.

Damn kids these days. They’ll learn.

In other news at this hour, are you noticing a spate of car washes being built near you? We have; they’re popping up like mushrooms, sometimes within a block or two of an existing car wash. Guess who’s responsible? You won’t believe it:

This legislation permanently reinstated 100 percent bonus depreciation for qualified property placed in service after January 19th of [2025]. This change represents a game-changer for investors looking to reduce their tax burden while earning passive income through commercial real estate.

…Bonus depreciation allows investors to accelerate their tax deductions by expensing the entire cost of eligible assets in the first year. In the context of car wash investing, this can provide an enormous benefit.

Consider the following example:

** You invest two hundred fifty thousand dollars in a car wash syndication
** You receive a $400,000 depreciation allocation in the first year
** That amount may offset your taxable income from the investment and potentially from other passive income sources
** Your effective after-tax yield increases as your tax liability decreases
** In practical terms, investors can reduce or eliminate taxes on their distributions from the investment. For many, this creates a win-win situation: the combination of cash flow and significant tax deferral or reduction.

And why car washes? They require a big capital outlay up front, but begin cash flow quickly upon completion, so “this means the depreciation can potentially be matched to real distributions.” How nice. I can’t wait until we reach total market saturation, and these ugly monstrosities are abandoned to sit vacant and become crack houses. Data centers, but flashier.

OK, enough. We’re off to the Fort later this week, for a quick drop-in visit. Hoping for good weather, hoping for friendly faces. Hoping for fewer e-bikes.

Hey, everyone. Just catching up on the comments from the last post, which are infuriating. Or rather, infuriating and sobering, and I’m speaking about Little Bird’s Medicaid issues and Sherri’s husband’s cancer care. Strength and courage to both of you. It so happens I just saw a social-media post by a friend and former colleague who works for Easter Seals in Indiana. It details the loss of services and benefits for a young woman with Down syndrome, one who lives in a group home and can’t take care of herself outside it. Down syndrome. I ask you.

All so that the Bezoses and Musks of the world can get a tax cut. Also, so we can wage a stupid, world-destabilizing war and build a ballroom. Well-done, America.

Sherri, best to you and your husband on this — and here I will deploy a term I despise — cancer journey. Everything is a journey these days. Your weight-loss journey. Your menopause journey. Unless it’s a season, which is also popping on those indices that track language. I hear it a lot from terminally online people making excuses for why they’ve decided to turn a blind eye to Tubby’s atrocities: It’s just that I have other things on my mind in this season. Ah, I see.

But all the good luck to Sherri and her husband. Immunotherapy is truly amazing. It’s why Jimmy Carter lived well past his announcement that he was receiving hospice care. My sister has a friend who’s lived so long (and well) on the immunotherapy drug Keytruda that she’s known as a Keytruda long-hauler.

OK, then.

Yesterday we went shooting.

I shot just OK, which I blame on the weather. I prefer to hit the sporting-clay range on warm winter days — around 40 degrees — when the walk between stations doesn’t feel punishing, and the sun, should it arrive, ditto. In my defense, I slept badly both Thursday and Friday nights and the humidity hit me hard. I was sweating so much my glasses wouldn’t stay up on my nose, which made my aim rather haphazard. Alan, on the other hand, worked out the rust on the first few stops and was hitting most targets cleanly by the end. Every time we do this I fantasize about getting a Browning over/under like Alan’s and practicing enough to get good, or at least better, at it. Then I consider the associated expense, and the cleaning, and the number of times I’d actually get out to a range, and think, nah. But it’s fun once in a while.

Also, I’ve watched enough cop shows and Tarantino movies that I kinda fantasize about one of those pump-action Mossbergs, decidedly not a sporting-clays gun.

Today we’re headed to a pool party, so I should probably pack a bag. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.

And let’s hope for a good week ahead, with lots more GOP missteps as the midterms approach.