“We think of ourselves as in the same basket as the top ten worst health care states, like Mississippi and Alabama,” says Strom Courtland, member of the Idaho House, and chair of its Health and Welfare Committee. “As of now, we’re ranked something like 26th worst, but aspirationally we see ourselves much higher than that. The current list is dominated by the deep south, yet with our high rates of vaccination refusal, hatred of all forms of local and federal government presence, anti-abortion laws so lethal our docs are leaving and we can’t get any to replace them (plus of course several of our hospitals have closed their labor and delivery units!), and, finally, with a statewide disbelief in empirical science, our ranking can’t go anywhere but up.

And I’m particularly proud to announce today that, because so many of us don’t vaccinate our children, rates of WHOOPING COUGH – yes, you read that right, a painful protracted children’s disease eradicated in the nineteenth century! – have exploded in our state! Like KAAAPOWWWW!!!! Sit tight, Idaho, and watch all our babies cough up blood!“

It’s The Audacity of Mope:

Lashing out against a world in which they are unhappy, [JD Vance, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Vermeule] seek the sources of their discontent in an amorphous and carelessly defined liberalism.

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Hungary under raving illiberal V. Orban is really the only place acid haters of liberalism can thrive.

I mean, they can analyze the sources of their gnawing misery forever; but at some point, shouldn’t they stop whining and act? Shouldn’t they want to model for their children a happy parent, who lives in alignment with his deepest values?

If you had a choice between moping about in a free liberal democracy or frolicking in fascism, wouldn’t you frolic?

If health authorities look away while subcultures largely refuse to vaccinate their children, eventually sick and dying children will not be confined to those subcultures.

Covid, measles — these have run rampant in vaccine-resistant ultraorthodox communities. In New York, one young ultraorthodox man recently contracted polio.

In Israel the attitude seems to be it is not worth it to rouse the wrath of the violence-prone ultraorthodox by insisting… Here in the States, we haven’t done much better.

Now look what we’ve got.

Gaza’s Polio Outbreak Won’t Spare Israelis

The country’s unvaccinated ultra-Orthodox population is at risk of contracting the disease

We should be terrified by the polio outbreak in Gaza, another mark of the unspeakable suffering and degradation of the innocents in that conflict.

And because Israel has allowed its primitives to reject modern science, all of its efforts to defend its population against enemies may come tumbling down via warfare directed against a group so absolutely lost that it doesn’t even believe in the germ theory of disease.

… Harvard’s own Rector of the Upcoming Cathophate, Adrian Vermeule. Here’s his latest press appearance:

[JD Vance] spoke in 2022 at a New Right academic conference alongside Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule, who believes conservatives should legislate morality by allowing judges to rule against marriage equality and abortion laws for the “Common Good.”

Watch for Vermeule’s stock to rise as his brother in theocracy strides like a colossus across the length and breadth of this our land.

Whether Yeshiva University favorite Bernie Madoff, super-pious Philip Esformes, or any number of other super-Christian or orthodox Jewish shits, these people — every bit as overdrive-devout as Malaysia’s recent PM (see post below) — are convinced that crosses and prayer shawls will make Letitia James and her ilk take their eye off the ball. LOL.

The antidote.

Peter Wehner:

… Public opposition to abortion is collapsing. Pro-life initiatives are being beaten even in very conservative states. The GOP has jettisoned its pro-life plank after having it in place for nearly a half century. And Trump himself is now saying he’d be great for “reproductive rights,” a position that pro-lifers have long insisted is a moral abomination.

This is not a surprise. Betrayal is a core character trait of Trump’s. He’s betrayed his wives, his mistresses, his friends, his business associates, people who have worked for him, and his country. There is no person and no cause he will not double-cross. The pro-life movement is only the latest thing to which he has been unfaithful, and it won’t be the last.

… How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will “be great for women and their reproductive rights”? Especially when that person has cheated on his wives and on his taxes, paid hush money to porn stars, and been found liable of sexual assault?

… Much of the evangelical world has validated many of the worst indictments of the secular world. There are so many scandals, so much cynicism and hypocrisy, so much to grieve. Much of what evangelicals and fundamentalists have claimed to stand for, certainly in the realm of politics and culture, turns out to have been an affectation, an illusion.

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So much to grieve?

Let me not be hypocritical: If you’re looking for grief about any of the above, find another blog.

The repulsive ultraorthodox refusal to sit next to a woman on an airplane is met with repelled refusal in turn on many flights, UD is happy to report.

I mean, it’s an old story, and we’ve followed it for years on this blog. Crews now have clear instructions to tell sexist shits to sit down or leave the plane, and I’m guessing quite a few do leave, and they try their luck on another flight. Most I figure put up with sickening proximity to a female for the duration of their flight.

Some of course decide to fight, holding up departure, upsetting fellow travelers, etc. A group like this was recently thrown off a flight and they’re suing because religious freedom anti-semitism yada yada. The case will be thrown out, and the VERY slow learning process (of course it’s slow; ultraorthodox children get virtually no education) of these ridiculous people will move forward by an inch.

‘The faces of Afghan women are erased, obliterated by the burqa, or, if they are mannequins, by plastic bags or strips of adhesive tape…

The darkening of faces is a metaphor for the condition of women, victims of liberty-killing measures that in a patriarchal society like that of Afghanistan do not arouse much horror, such as the reintroduction of stoning for adultery. …Most government bans are aimed at mothers, wives, daughters, who are forbidden from any action: from walking alone in the street, to attending schools and universities, to participating in active life.’

It was only a matter of time before Harvard Law’s double hater (liberalism and democracy) emerged from the scholarly shadows to join his soulmate JV “Junior Varsity” Vance in the Trumpian spotlight. Damon Linker puts Adrian Vermeule at the heart of an emergent “politics of reactionary negation,” in which not even the fanatic Catholicism people like AV sashay around with has any real meaning to them. Rather, disgust at modernity altogether – a disgust as deep as the Mariana Trench – seems to propel world-loathers into Trumpworld.

Specifically, the double haters hate the “personal existential emptiness … the meaninglessness and inertia” with which contemporary secular American life oppresses us all. Only a Catholic theocracy (UD calls it a Cathophate) will smash a country where “liberalism is the great enemy that must be fought and defeated so that something more wholesome and spiritually invigorating can take its place.” The American government will be run by priests and their acolytes, and will graciously rid us of our personal existential emptiness.

There is no neutral ground on fundamental questions of God, good and evil, and the purpose of human life. Political conflict entails conflict about these ultimate things… Accordingly, [radical rightwing Catholics] view public institutions, social structures and religion as an integral whole. Nothing is truly private. Everything affects the common good; there is no private life or private conscience. The resulting vision is of a hierarchical society with concentrated power, close coordination between church and state, and public regulation of religious orthodoxy… [In short,] the Catholic Church should strategically co-opt the American state. The result would be a return of state-sanctioned religion and a politics that is at once socially conservative, statist and economically populist… [The ultimate goal of all human life] is heaven, and the integralist means of getting us to that destination is to subordinate politics to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church.

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So here’s a modest policy suggestion from UD: Before fully committing themselves to the overthrow of American democracy, Vance and his army of reactionary negationists should ask themselves whether their sensation of personal emptiness and inertia has more to do with excess ejaculation than modernity.

It’s quite possible, in other words, that they are mainly reacting to the post orgasmic, post coital tristesse that tells you you’ve gone and emptied yourself of sperm yet again.

These men after all are America’s most prominent pronatalists, led ultimately by the hyper-childed, always depleted-looking, Elon Musk. Wouldn’t they all feel silly if the miserable hollowed out feeling they ascribe to the rest of us is an epiphenomenon of their excruciating coital self-coercion?

It’s important to remind ourselves that semen retention has a distinguished spiritual history:

• karezza (Italian)
• maithuna (Hindu Tantra)
• sahaja (Hindu Yoga)
• tantra (Hinduism and Buddhism)
• cai Yin pu Yang and cai Yang pu Yin (Taoist)

Every one of these traditions recognizes coitus reservatus as providing benefits in terms of focus, a greater sense of purpose, and overall harmony. I would urge Vance and his followers to give this a try before extending their own sense of emptiness to everyone else.

Remember: Our side is known as The Happy Warriors.

In case you’re hankering for an update on higher ed in Iran.

She could have applied for Bangladeshi citizenship until she was 21, but did not, and the South Asian country has said there is “no question” of her obtaining citizenship now.

The UK Home Office stripped her of citizenship when she was 19 years old, meaning she still had time to file for Bangladeshi citizenship…

Plus Shamima Begum was married to a Dutch guy, so she might see whether that country would take her. Plus if it’s true she’s harmless now, let’s have her apply for a golden passport. She can set up a Go Fund Me page. She needs to raise about $20,000.

I don’t want to sound indifferent to the fate of this former terrorist who has possibly made an authentic and complete turnaround. I’m fully aware she languishes in a Beckettian hellscape where insane burqabis attempt every day to kill non-burqabis. (Begum no longer wears a burqa.) But she had options, which she rejected. She still has a few, but seems to be doing nothing about them.

 I’ve been sort of involved with some of the recruitment efforts and interviewing of some of the potential candidates. Last year, we had five potential candidates, and … all five decided to go elsewhere. Idaho used to be a state that attracted OBs for the outdoors, for the family values, the recreation — it’s a good place to live. But I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade had an impact…

What I heard from others was that those who were interviewed in the last year expressed concerns regarding the legal climate and concerns of prosecution, which led them to not take our offer of employment. 

A doctor at Idaho’s third shuttered obstetrics unit talks about why the total abortion ban is also becoming a total birth ban.

Sing along.

I Command Cat Ladies in The Name Of The Lord

I command Cat Ladies in the name of the Lord
Drop your weapons and flee
For the Lord has given me authority
To stomp all over thee.

Crypto pastor gets it said.

The Division of Securities is not fighting against me, they’re fighting against God, and they will lose… I had to give $500,000 to the IRS for some tax debts, then the Lord said to start remodeling our house… People trusted the Lord with their money. As we said, pray about it and then do what you want and they bought in. It’s no different than Moses leading the Israelites out of the wilderness. So, no, I don’t feel bad, because I know what God is going to do. Now, does it look bad from a natural perspective? Of course it does, it looks like death. But that’s how God works.

You read dat right. Gambia’s had just about enough of babies crawling around with their clits on.