A seventh Russian general

A seventh Russian general

Was dealt with yesterday.

Much excitement this morning as a huge whale circled in front of the beach, accompanied by dolphins and spouting like mad. Faithful readers know UD a few years ago practically walked into a seal relaxing on this shore. That was more than enough excitement; but now there’s her first whale-sighting. Gevalt.

But since Meadows and Thomas did it all under orders from Jesus (their texts are shot through with Good v Evil), we can only join the editorial board of Compact (see post below) and applaud these servants of the Lord. Satan stole the election, but they fought the good fight and will be granted sainthood by President Waldstein in the Cathophate to come.

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Meanwhile, Justice Thomas has been hospitalized with Lying Low Syndrome.

Ben Burgis:

Compact’s founders seem to believe that the ruling class is imposing social liberalism on an unwilling majority. But the majority of our society is wildly socially liberal by historical and global standards — or even by recent American ones.

According to a recent Pew poll, fewer than 10 percent of Americans think that marijuana should be illegal, for example. Almost three quarters agree with the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage assailed by [Compact writers]. Two-thirds oppose laws that limit trans rights. As young conservative Nate Hochman recently acknowledged, polling shows that even young Republicans are “more liberal than their older counterparts on everything from diversity to LGBT rights to immigration to climate change.”

Few European countries have been as historically friendly to the kind of laws [Compact‘s editors] might support to defend “familial and religious” communities against “libertine” encroachments as the Republic of Ireland — and within the last decade, abortion and same-sex marriage were both legalized there by popular referendum. And they were playing catch-up. At least until some unforeseen cultural shift dramatically realigns public attitudes, any scenario by which neo-medieval traditionalists succeed in wielding state power to smite gay people who want to get married and women who want to control their own bodies and drag queens who want to read to children at the library is a scenario by which social conservatism is imposed against the will of a large majority of the American populace.

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In the words of Eric Levitz, Compact‘s editors share “the delusion that their own esoteric misgivings about liberalism reflect those of a silent (or latent) majority.”

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Compact calls itself “radical,” and UD‘s heart goes out to it. She knows radical – the smell of it, the sweat of it, the aching sweetness of it. Her radical lover, David Kosofsky (brother of radical Eve), massaged her feet after their long march together on the Pentagon and it all went directly from UD‘s feet to her head. Started feety, ended heady. She was swept up in the edgy epater les bourgeois truth of existence, and her sense of excitement, clarity, and superiority was … she could taste it, man. UD remembers attending a John Cage concert around thirty years ago at Harvard – it was put on by a group of undergraduates – and, you know, some affectless madwoman drags herself forward onstage and begins chewing her violin – and, bored out of her gourd, UD began glancing around, and there entwined on the floor behind her were two students involved in the staging of the show, and the way they looked at each other! The certainty, the arrogance, the excitement! Tell me about it, babes, thought UD, smiling at them. Tell me about it.

Right rads got the same thing going, only they’re clenching in the back row of a heretic getting burned at the stake. As I say, my heart goes out to them.

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Update: Thanks go to my friend Rita for telling me about the phrase RAD TRADS — “young Catholics who prefer traditional liturgy, including the Latin Mass, and subscribe to more conservative political beliefs and religious practices.” UD was reaching for this when she wrote “Right rads,” but Rad trads is double-plus-good! Rad trads are like the Rad rois Lucien Goldman recalls encountering when he first arrived in France in 1934:

There was a very strong royalist movement among the students and suddenly a group appeared which was equally in defense of royalism, but which demanded a real Merovingian king!

By Д. Хеллер.

‘Two Russian soldiers have been caught venting about Putin’s “bullshit” war against Ukraine in an intercepted phone call as devastating losses reportedly led one soldier to drive over his colonel with a tank.

“Basically, it’s a shitshow here, I’ll put it that way,” an unnamed soldier near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine can be heard telling a colleague in a recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service late Tuesday.

After telling his friend that Ukrainian forces “tore apart” a column of Russian forces sent along with his own unit, he described complete disarray among the Russian military, with 50 percent of the unit suffering from frostbite on their feet…

“It’s such trash here… our own plane dropped a bomb on us,” he said.

“They couldn’t even send off the 200s here,” he said, using a Russian military term for dead bodies. “They rode with us for five days.”

“Even in Chechnya, there was nothing like this,” he said, describing the situation as a “madhouse.”…

[T]wo tactical groups of Russian soldiers in Makarov, in the Kyiv region, lost at least half of their men in battles against Ukrainian forces.

One of the Russian soldiers “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” [a Ukrainian journalist] wrote on Facebook.

“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs.”‘

A long overdue reckoning with this country’s shameful history of miscegenation has been inaugurated by Indiana Republican Mike Braun. Indiana will apparently be the first in the nation to introduce a Population Registration Act, in which all Hoosiers will be classified as one of the following

1.native

2.colored

3.Asian

4.white

They are hysterics. Their emotions overwhelm their ability to make sense of things.

This scene – from the American Senate – is a real embarrassment for the country.

And as for Ted Cruz…

She thought … of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches.

Spring Break, USA!

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Look at ongoing spring break in Miami Beach.

Compare it to last year’s spring break in Miami Beach.

As you know, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” and at some point gun-mad, cheap hotel and booze-mad, no-government-interference-mad states like Texas and Florida are going to have to get sane, which UD thinks in this case means accepting the fact that when you proudly broadcast your gunny rummy scummy ways to the world, the world will respond. If you build tacky, they will come. And as the violence gets worse year after year, you’re going to need police-state-quality surveillance, which UD is sure your permanent residents are going to love. They bought their five million dollar condo for sunny, carefree Florida, after all.

Now, Florida – all shot up and beaten and exhausted – is grandly claiming that it never wanted spring breakers. “We don’t ask for spring break, we don’t promote it, we don’t encourage it, we just endure it, and frankly it’s something we don’t want to endure.” Fine words, Mr Churchill, and, now that it’s not just a source of revenue but a human and public relations disaster, you will fight it on the beaches etc. But of course you have promoted it; yours is not just a party city, but a mega-club party city, and a warm, longtime home for drug and gun dealers.

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Note what an even more sleaze-friendly city – New Orleans – did before last year’s Mardi Gras:

[The governor put] a statewide mask mandate in place as well as occupancy limits on bars, restaurants and other businesses.

New Orleans Democratic Mayor LaToya Cantrell, also a Democrat, went even further by closing bars completely in the city, even those allowed to operate as restaurants. City officials also closed iconic Bourbon Street to cars and limited pedestrian access for the final weekend of the season.

Next thing you know they’ll be confiscating weapons!

“If you take away those two shootings, which of course are major, then it [is so far] vastly improved over 2021,” said resident-activist Matthew Gultanoff…

Police chased and caught a man who they said threw a 9 mm handgun into some shrubbery. The man told police he fired in self-defense. Video surveillance seemed to support his claim and Derrick Antonio Mitchell, 19, was charged only with three weapons violations, carrying a concealed firearm, tampering with physical evidence and possession of an altered firearm.

The “only” is priceless. Miami Beach has declared martial law. I mean a state of emergency/curfew.

… an allusion to disgraced plagiarist Paul McCrory, who we have covered on this blog, and who has today jumped from far-off Australia to the New York Times. The cause of making the world safe for sports concussions will have to be passed to another creep.

So Early in the Spring

Sunrise Rehoboth

Psychedelic ocean and the gulls slate gray

A man prepares his tripod for blastoff

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Backstage the moon shot through with blue

Bows to the sun and gives way

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Where’s the pilgrim fellowship chanting in the sand?

The mournful Scottish bagpipe band?

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This morning all worship comes down to me

Godless, with sacred symphony

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A young woman, walking on the boardwalk with a friend, suddenly shouted this yesterday. Mr UD was walking behind her, and reported the event back to UD.

We didn’t know the president would also be here, but, sitting on our balcony yesterday, we saw the tell-tale coast guard boats.

As for last evening, we looked up from our cell phones a little after eight to see an enormous clear golden moon casting a long silver line on the water. Later, as it whitened, the moon was bright, like the sun.

This morning was all pastels over the water, and UD walked the few steps to the new Cafe Reho, where she got breakfast to bring home to Mr UD. She also checked out CoWork Reho next door, where you can rent your own office with enormous ocean views.

With the spring come all the paeans to the spring, especially to the spring garden; and while UD – an enthusiastic gardener – likes to read all the regeneration-swoons, she’s also partial to the Bronx cheers — like the above comment from a New York Times writer. Or, you know, the famous first lines of The Waste Land, etc.

I mean, who has not watched Prince Charles sidle among his manure stocks and kind of wanted him to say “Mind you, it’s all rather a stinking bloody mess.”

Here are Mr UD and the dog enjoying our just-mulched layout.