Trump torches Mar-a-Lago as the feds move in.

The numbers are out. As you’d expect, many prospective college students seem likely to avoid Ensouled Zygote states.

OTOH: If you’re a teenage girl for whom rape, drunkenness, berserk athletes/frat boys, gun and gang violence, self-righteous Christian/sexist administrations, and absolutely no abortion in the state, sounds like the ideal higher ed environment, UD (who has followed these schools for years) recommends the following:

Baylor University

Florida State University

Jackson State University

Louisiana State Baton Rouge

As with all lists, not all of these schools will feature all of your desiderata, though Baylor comes closest to ticking off all the elements you’re looking for.

“Based on feedback from counterparts in other major cities with similar legislation, [Indiana’s passage of a radical anti-abortion bill] will have a negative impact on tourism... Exactly how significant remains to be seen. We know there were a handful of conventions already closely watching the Indiana Statehouse over the last few weeks, including Gen Con, who wraps up its annual gathering tomorrow (Sunday),” said Senior Vice President for Visit Indy Chris Gahl.

A subcommittee of the Indiana legislature is already at work trying to counteract the effect of new anti-abortion legislation on convention business. One idea being floated is to keep Gen Con’s computer game annual convention in the state by offering them, gratis, new game ideas/rights.

“The most promising one at the moment,” said Rep. Slade Bryant, “revolves around a heroine named Zygotha, who must protect her zygote from godless zombies. Pursued and menaced relentlessly by anti-government-mandate forces, Zygotha undergoes manifold challenges as she makes her way to the promised land of Mississippi.”

… shuttering the University of Kansas. Inspired by their leader Viktor Orban’s shuttering of one of Europe’s best universities because it was educating Hungarians, Kansas Republicans will argue that as the epicenter of independent thought in the state, KU must shoulder significant blame for the recent landslide electoral victory for individual rights.

“Something has to happen here,” said Republican legislator Patrice O’Neill. “We have footage of zygotes screaming in agony, and you’re never going to be exposed to that at KU.”

“We know that support for abortion rights correlates closely with level of education,” commented representative Mike Walsh, “and it’s a no-brainer – haha – that tertiary schooling is the core of the problem here.”

“We’d be killing two birds with one stone,” added another legislator, Marnie McCoy. “KU’s curriculum is a toxic stew of gender studies and devil worship. It’s time to pull the plug.”

As Les UDs prepare to leave for Big Meadows at Shenandoah National Park, the way they do every August, to mark the twin celestial events of the height of the Perseid meteors and UD‘s birthday, some sources warn them to trim their expectations. Meteor-shower and fire-ball-wise, what you’re after, in the words of the great jazz standard, is No Moon At All; but this year what you’re getting is a great big ol’ moon.

Howsomever.

We are instructed by a raft of astronomers to go for it anyway.

Despite the light bath, there’s still hope for a good show for a couple of reasons. First, the shower is prolific — Perseids flash by at the rate of more than one a minute. Even if you reduce that by more than half due to moonlight, that’s still around 25 per hour. Second, this famous annual shower is the undisputed king of fireballs …

Indeed, when I’ve seen fireballs at Big Meadows it’s been indescribably exciting.

Just as exciting, now that I think about it, have been the full moons in clear skies that I’ve seen at Big Meadows. Here’s a birthday post of mine from three years ago.

August 15, 2019

A MOON UNLIKE ANY UD HAS EVER SEEN

The irony was that we were there for the perseids; but sitting on our rickety beach chairs at the Big Meadows clearing last night, the real show turned out to be an absolutely full brilliantly lit moon that insinuated itself as a silver glint among horizonal clouds and then raised itself up to surreality right before our eyes. UD grabbed her binoculars and attempted to make credible the massive and intricately legible orb, its hollows and craters so blatant… When it climbed to higher clouds, they made a golden aura together, the moon now and then blindfolding itself with a black ribbon of atmosphere, and I sat there thinking about my mother who loved the night sky. And of course immediately came the thought that has so often for so long come to UD: We are here to experience the terrestrial wonder that our dead don’t get anymore. We’re doing it for them.

… and kisses the modern world goodbye. Eli Lilly and Cummins are the first major employers in the state to announce that if they’d WANTED to move to Mississippi, they would have done so. They’re initiating the withdrawal method.

Other corporations located in the state will follow.

Happily, there will be new jobs opening up for the unemployed Hoosiers they’re leaving behind — in knitting needle, coat hanger, crochet hook, and arsenic factories.

Over the years, I struggled with what came to be characterized as “major depressive disorder,” and took a cornucopia of medications. Nortriptyline, paroxetine, venlafaxine, buspirone, sertraline, citalopram, pregabalin, mirtazapine. None worked. Optimistically, I tried lurasidone, bupropion, and vilazodone, followed by aripiprazole, amitriptyline, and zaleplon, which also made no difference. Then Restoril, protriptyline, desipramine, escitalopram. Nothing. My psychiatrist began to talk ominously about “treatment-resistant depression.” Nonetheless, I carried on with fluoxetine, temazepam, triazolam, and trazodone.

This piece in the Atlantic is an astringent little take on lethal sadness.

In the worldview most folks in the anti-abortion movement have, abortion is murder. It’s worse not only in the sense that it’s certain death, but that it’s intentional. From their standpoint, if some women die because they’re refused care, that isn’t a certain death, there isn’t intentionally going to be a death, so that’s the lesser of the evils in that situation.

… take a bow! Look what the refusal of many of you to vaccinate your children has brought back.

… we gotta start talking stoooopid “exceptions.” Gag me.

It’s all the fault of that ten year old vixen who made that guy keep raping her. If she’d just quietly hemorrhaged giving birth as God intended, no one would have been the wiser.

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

I mean, did I say “That baby deserves a right to life whether it is conceived in incest or rape or there are concerns otherwise for the mom.” ?

HAHA I WAS JUST KIDDING. I MEAN OKAY LET’S UH… LET’S … LET THE MOM LIVE!! HOW’S THAT? YOU HAPPY?

… of the race.

Navarro says something mean about Kushner.

What an impressive achievement for the Jewish homeland.

Dick Cheney is certainly right; and it’s not just Trump. Sometimes the entire Republican political establishment looks like cowards.

But at least they’ve got Josh Hawley: The man who stood up to Finland and Sweden!

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.): “It was a quite a gut punch. [Kinda like an illegal abortion, Senator.] Yes, I’m shocked, absolutely shocked. [Guess you’re spending too much time in DC. Maybe you should visit your state occasionally and get to know the people who live there. Or maybe Kansans should vote for a Senator not liable to be totally shocked by lopsided electoral outcomes in the state.] But regardless, I respect the process. .. That’s not what I was expecting, not what I was told the polling showed, and I thought it was gonna be a tight race. But it is what it is. And, again, I respect the process. I don’t have an explanation. [What a telling confession. You really have no explanation at all for this result? … Let’s start real slow for you. Are you able to come up with any explanation at all for why a person might vote in favor of abortion rights? Take your time.]“