The Wall Street Journal (!) editorial board goes there. Of course if you’ve been reading University Diaries you already know that a profound resurgence of American anti-intellectualism, coupled with violent infantilism — see our most recent ex-president’s fantasy-super-powers playing cards, or the fixation with loaded, openly carried guns among several congressional Republican nitwits/coup plotters — accounts for much of the cultural degradation the WSJ‘s been noticing.

The establishment Republicans at the paper are dismayed, to be sure; but lurking just below dismay is fear: Not only are the gunny dumdums ungoverning and ungovernable. Quite a few of them are barking mad.

Stupid, crazy, and fully armed.

*****************************
PS: Too meshugah even for the Vatican. Trumpies who pose fetuses on church altars lose their collars.

‘Momma told me to give her the gun, so I gave her the gun. Momma shot the cops and momma was shot. Her eyes are open and she is breathing a little bit. Are you going to hurt me? Momma told me people are trying to kill us. Is momma going to be OK?’

… a witness protection program.

But my psychotic nineteen year old deserved a bunch of massive guns.

The hijab for me exemplifies fear and humiliation. It symbolizes a system based on misogynist ideology trying to eliminate women from society. 

As an Iranian woman, I’ve worn a piece of cloth on my head for years, which served not only to cover my hair and body. I viewed it as a tool to suppress, control and turn women into second class citizens. 

And that’s just the beginning. Ain’t no viler football program than U Nebraska’s, and today it’s busy gilding the lily again with … the coach himself!

 [Mickey Joseph is] accused of putting his hands around a woman’s throat, pulling her hair and punching her during a domestic dispute Nov. 30, according to a police affidavit. He was charged on Dec. 1 with assault by strangulation or suffocation.

For decades of Nebraska football, go here.

After a fully dreary day yesterday, the sun was out in force today; and UD’s sister, who scans maps for interesting green spots in Montgomery County, found the Tridelphia Reservoir. We got there exactly at noon, and as we walked the path along the water, the sun warmed our backs. The air was chilly enough to keep people away (we were alone), but actually, in the event, very pleasant. Dry, fresh, clear. The clarity of the entire setting was astounding.

The feel of the place was… eerie. Aesthetic abandonment: no birds, nothing but twigs in the muddy lake, disused canoes on the banks. For a few moments we heard a jet pass, but it barely registered.

We spoke some words, mainly about the wind, which was also high and very much part of the eerie sweetness. It was easy to hear the wind, shaking the dry leaves that still, in mid-December, hung on elms that overlooked the water. The sun cast a shadow of their branches on the lake surface.

The phrase ‘perfect moment’ has been hijacked by advertising; but everything really was in breathtaking, mystical, alignment.

… go ahead and say FAAAAACK you to America, with its absurd independent judiciary and disgraceful separation of church and state … Get thee to Jerusalem, where no one’s going to get between you and queer-hating orthodoxy.

I mean, you can waste your time and money appealing, but I’m gonna guess that even our pious Supreme Court’s gonna disappoint you. Realistically speaking, your options are Israel, Hungary, Iran, Afghanistan, and Vatican City, and I’m thinking Israel is your best option.

[E]veryone thought that shifting the battle on abortion to the states would help anti-abortion groups. But in fact, what we’re seeing is that abortion rights groups are starting to rack up victories ...

[B]allot initiatives are turning out to be a real point of success for abortion rights groups...

[I]n Vermont and California, voters approved ballot initiatives that would explicitly establish a right to abortion in those state constitutions...

[Michigan] voters overwhelmingly said we want our state constitution to protect a right to abortion...

[T]here were three red states — Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky – [where] anti-abortion groups thought that voters of those red states would come out and say absolutely not. We do not want abortion. And in fact, in all three of those states those [anti-abortion] measures failed...

[B]ecause of the abortion issue, Democrats are actually making some gains in state legislatures…

Democrats now control the Pennsylvania legislature. That’s enormously important for access [to abortion], not just for Pennsylvania, but for women in West Virginia and in Ohio, where abortion is banned, because women from Ohio and West Virginia have been flooding into Pennsylvania to seek abortions...

In another example, look at Minnesota. There, the state Senate flipped the Democrats. They have control of both chambers of the legislature, plus the governor’s office, for the first time since 2013. And Democrats are really taking that as a mandate to achieve their legislative priorities. And that means they could do a mini Roe, essentially putting the protections of Roe into the state constitution...

[In Utah,] language written to defend polygamy is now language that is being used to defend abortion, and it’s working…

… I don’t think it’s what anyone expected when they wrote that constitution…

Republican legislatures may want to oppose abortion, but Republican voters, as in Wyoming, often have sort of a libertarian streak and think like, you know what? A decision to have an abortion is really up to the woman. I don’t want to interfere with that...

[W]hat we’ve seen in the last six months is that when you take abortion away or threaten to take it away, voters are going to come out to protect access to it…

[B]e careful what you wish for when you overturn Roe because [advocates] actually have something that might be even stronger up [their] sleeves...

[W]hen you put the right [to an abortion] into a state constitution, in most cases, it’s less contorted because when that right goes into the state constitution, it’s generally much more explicit than in the federal constitution. And when you put it in the constitution, you can make it much more expansive...

So take Michigan for an example. The right to abortion that was established by that ballot initiative that passed is far more expansive than anything that was in the US Constitution, far more expansive than Roe. It gives women control over the entire spectrum of choices in their reproductive health. That’s huge...

That’s not just sort of inserting the language of Roe into a state constitution. It’s not some sort of mini Roe. This is like maxi Roe. This is Roe on steroids..

… in that most-American way.

Grieve for the two police who had not yet gotten the memo: Every American, including fragile little middle-aged ladies, is likely to be packing heat. And be highly trained in killing multiple people.

And it’s Mississippi. Of course. Might could be it’s time to change police training down there.

… all stand steadfastly with their much-admired Rudy Giuliani, a man so fine as to have been given honorary degrees from them.

Three of these schools are Catholic, and Catholics tend to be YUGE Trump supporters, so don’t hold your breath waiting for them to revoke the honor, even after he’s disbarred in total disgrace, imprisoned, etc., etc.

Middlebury College in Vermont, Drexel University in Pennsylvania, and the University of Rhode Island have all revoked honorary degrees that each school, in a moment of madness, conferred upon America’s close-to-highest-profile anti-semitic (Look ye to Soros, oh Blind Ones!) insurrectionist. These are godless public or private schools, lacking the spiritual perspicacity to see the Christlike miracle that is America’s Mayor.

And then there’s godless Syracuse, which is as we speak attempting to work RG out of its system. That school, too, fails to perceive the way in which Rudy acts as a vessel of the lord. The three Catholic schools sure as hell do, though, and when Rudy’s carted off to jail they will speak of his having been burned at the stake just like Saint Joan.

Figure it this way: If, for decades and decades, the most laureled person on your campus was Theodore McCarrick, ol’ Rudy don’t look too bad.

Just down the street from UD (well, 23 miles away) live the stubborn couple who changed state law so that if you want to keep a pollinator garden in front of your house around here, you can.

A [2021] bill was drafted that forbade homeowner associations from banning pollinator plants or rain gardens, or from requiring property owners to plant turf grass.

They had a long hard tussle with a neighbor, but they made such a fuss it went all the way to Annapolis.

One of their neighbor’s bitterest complaints involved the deer their natural garden attracted.

Welcome to UD‘s garden.

(The post’s headline is taken from the thousands of comments the article has received, most of them agreeing with the statement’s strong anti-lawnism.)

… women.

These corruption hotspots have generated a corruption scandal, and the response of the Euro Parliament is “shock.”

We are “shocked.” SHOCKED. We are “reeling.”

Scusi, but UD doubts the EP’s shocked. Do they think that if you name your organization No Peace Without Justice, or No Impunity, that makes you a good person? These organizations (now known as No Justice Without a Piece of the Action, and No Punity) are simply names, and any set of values might in actuality be attached to them.

Do you know of any country that calls itself The Democratic Republic of that isn’t a tyranny? Do we really need to review these notes?

Similarly, we are supposed to be shocked because in this scandal all the greedy mfs are socialists?

I mean, let’s not be naive.

*********************************

While this scandal has rocked Brussels, the allegations have come as no great surprise to those who know the European institutions, especially the Parliament.

“The Parliament has tolerated a culture of impunity for years,” says Nicholas Aiossa, deputy director of Transparency International EU, an anti-corruption organization. “There is virtually no oversight or repercussions for the way that MEPs spend their allowances and we have seen those funds misused so many times.”

Aiossa believes that institutional corruption is only a small part of what would make an MEP such an inviting target for those seeking to influence European politics.

“The Parliament collectively has a lot of power over the direction of policy that provides access to an enormous market of over 400 million citizens. The MEPs themselves, however, often have a very low profile outside of the Brussels bubble, which probably helps avoid scrutiny.”

U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman is facing pressure to resign from Democrats in his South Carolina congressional district after a string of text messages revealed the Rock Hill Republican called for a military takeover in order to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.

In response to this report in the Post and Currier, as well as to the White House comment, Bates has issued a statement:

You wanna talk “disgusting“? Disgusting is the president of the United States choosing a day sacred to people like me, people unafraid to stand up for the right of all Americans to arm themselves with Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifles, on which to attack my patriotism.

It will be my pleasure, as leader of the South Carolina Milisha, to blast the brains of the entire Eggzecutive Branch to a pulp. Just watch me.