[E]vangelicals and Catholics… have presented themselves as these very strict arbiters of what your morality should be….. [T]his morality is used as a shield to hide from everyone else the … power that they want to have…

[T]hey don’t care about morality for themselves. This is why Herschel Walker gets a pass for two abortions; he gets a pass for beating women. He gets a pass because he’s forgiven by God. But the rest of you have to follow the rules …

GenZ wants nothing to do with these hypocrites.

UVa remains sheltered in place; a football recruit killed three and injured two. UD will go ahead and guess that this was some sort of weekend party/drunken fight that got crazy, but it’s of course too soon to know much.

[Update: The shooting took place in an on-campus parking garage, so the motive might have been a dispute between drivers. Road rage…?]

The Idaho details suggest the shooter (if this was about shooting; it certainly sounds like it, though a different weapon might have been used) is dead at the scene. (The Virginia killer is at large and since he’s heavily armed, with his photo in every paper, and everyone in the world is looking for him, UD’s gonna guess he’ll kill himself.) This one sounds more personal – a nutty vindictive ex-lover? – but we’ll see. Someone reported seeing an unconscious person and called the police, which maybe means at least one of the bodies was outside the off-campus house. Trying to flee? Or the body of the killer?

Both events could be as simple as someone turned away from a party, pissed about it, and returning with one of his big ol’ guns.

My blog post title comes from NPR‘s coverage. It’s America, so we have to bundle these stories.

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UPDATE: He killed this UVa football player.

UPDATE: He also killed Lavel Davis, Jr., another player.

UPDATE: The third person killed, Devin Chandler, was also a football player.

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Virginia shooter is in custody. Could his motive have been resentment? He’s apparently never been an active player; he killed three active players.

Sounds as though some sort of fight broke out, or words were exchanged, on a bus returning to campus from a class field trip to DC to see a play.

… Michael Moore.

Of course Trump helped; normal Americans finally, in the aftermath of the January 6 committee hearings, really felt, and feared, his movement’s cruelty and stupidity.

For the next several weeks, Trump’s social media statements will confirm his madness; he will almost certainly try to whip his Proud Boys up to some serious violence. So while this particular moment is about celebration, we have to start doing some cold consideration of the fact that his remnant nihilists will obey his orders to burn everything down.

But it was the Clarence Thomas brigade, with their vile denial of an important established right, that fucked up the Republican party but good. The medieval cruelty of denying raped ten year old girls abortions drew the attention of all enlightened and humane souls. UD believes the graphic barbarism of this behavior, especially in the context of ongoing highly publicized barbarism against girls and women in benighted countries like Iran and Afghanistan, has so shocked people with normal moral instincts that the abortion issue will not go away, but will continue to bedevil the Republican party as much as Le Monstre Trump has. Behind no exceptions anti-abortion lies precisely the bizarre religious fanaticism and coercion against which this country was established. I can think of nothing more anti-American. When the Supreme Court went there, it activated basic American instincts in millions of us, and now it can do little other than sit back and enjoy the fruits of its idiocy.

The country I love, the country I recognize, has spoken. I am intensely proud.

[T]he right-populist surge is retreating somewhat everywhere. Boris is gone in Britain, just a few years after a landslide win, replaced by a mainstream non-white Tory. Bolsonaro was just dispatched in Brazil (and is not protesting the results). Putin and Xi increasingly look like tin-pot tyrants, incapable of adjusting to events, adopting insane policies — invading Ukraine and imposing zero-Covid madness — and grabbing more and more power to protect them from the consequences. 

Cook Political Report.

In the unlikely event that one of their clueless terrified sex slaves actually even comes to understand the nature of what’s happening to them, and then actually has the courage to complain to someone about it, all of the other cult leaders will hush it up and let the abuser keep abusing. Their cult leader friends in the government will cover it up further if it needs further covering up.

Maybe when one of the many abusers- like Zvi Tau – gets to be 85 years old, enjoying the deep sexual satisfaction of decades of raping children, one of his victims finally decides to give complaining about it another try. She does embarrassing things like stage solitary protests in front of the Knesset, which only shows how insane she is and how her claims are pathetic delusions poor woman.

But then other similar psychos come forward with the same story and a few respectable rabbis back their claims and call for an investigation. Here’s one woman describing the esteemed sage in action:

“I was a new immigrant, my parents were abroad, I was all alone,” she said, explaining that she met the Taus through social gatherings and friends. She became close with Tau’s first wife, Channa Tau, and practically became part of the family, according to her testimony.

‘“One day I was in the kitchen, putting things away when he came in and closed the door behind him. He grabbed me, pulled my underwear down, and undressed,” she recollected.

“At one point, I woke up, I realized what was happening and kicked him in the groin. I ran to the balcony because he had closed the door and managed to escape without my underwear,” she said.

“I got home and just froze. I think I stayed like that for two days,” she said.’

What wisdom. To go after the most vulnerable.

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But look at Israel’s current government, folks! Nobody’s going to get in the way of all the wise eminent rabbis who rape! The Israeli authorities are going to let Zvi go to his well-deserved heavenly rest.

And remember: It’s not criminal. It’s not child abuse. In a cult it’s godly. It’s only the disgusting dirty secular world that doesn’t understand this.

Apparently Trump plans to start down this road as early as his presidential campaign announcement (expected, in the powerful wake of his Red Wave, any day now), where a PowerPoint of parallel Melania/Casey photos will accompany his remarks.

Aides have been attempting to convey to Trump that sometimes things that work in one political cycle might fail to work in others; and that while sexualizing your wife for votes might have worked well when Melania was, er, younger, it is unlikely to work against the still-nubile and spectacularly beautiful Casey DeSantis, who can also write and deliver her own speeches in English, does not need to lie about having graduated from college, etc. etc. etc.

So far the only response Trump has given advisors has been to triple down on his plan. He will contrast images of Casey DeSantis with all three of his wives – Ivana, Marla, and Melania.

“Mr President, Ivana will remind people of your age, since she got old enough to die. Marla will remind them that you traded Ivana in for a younger model. Please do not do this.”

On top of that, another Republican insider with access to top Trump advisors claims that Trump is “fully aware” he’s unelectable, and that he regards the upcoming campaign as primarily a “personal rejuvenation” project. “He’s feeling his years. Mentally and physically he’s really dragging. He’s convinced the gladiatorial aspect of campaigning will give him a new lease on life.” He has already asked his exploratory committee to consider a tweak in the MAGA hat: MAKE MY PROSTATE GREAT AGAIN.

‘House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy had been expected to take the stage of his election-night party at a D.C. hotel as early as 10 p.m.

• But come midnight, the main venue floor was empty as a small group of aides and staffers mingled near the open bar.’

Guys and gals, lad. Guys and gals.

We took a look at Yesli Vega here.

In a blow to moral degenerates everywhere, she, like so many Republicans this morning, has lost.

What will their parents do, now that The Prince of Intellectual Darkness, that fervent ignorance-advocate Lee Zeldin, has been defeated?

As you know, UD has been predicting that if Zeldin’s defeated, many of New York’s ultraorthodox will do the obvious thing and enjoy life under the orthodox/ultraorthodox theocracy that is contemporary Israel.