Lawyers for Remington Arms, the now-bankrupt gun-maker being sued by nine families of those killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., have subpoenaed the academic, attendance and disciplinary records for five slain students.

And in the case of Roger Cohen’s anemic New York Times profile of Anne Hidalgo, I have to conclude it’s sheer snobbery. Plus bait and switch.

Hidalgo represents the currently pathetic to the point of invisibility French Socialist party. Their candidate eked out six percent in the last presidential election, and, even so, Cohen wants us to entertain the possibility that Hidalgo – a possible candidate only – will do far, far, …. far……………. ffffaarrrrr better.

Yet why, since Hidalgo’s chances hover at around … six percent, should we entertain that possibility? Because, like your Visa card, she’s everything that you – New York Times reader – want her to be. You want the first woman president of France to exist, and “HERE COMES ANNE HIDALGO,” announces Cohen’s headline. Subhead: She’s “CHARISMATIC.”

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Okay, so I’m on board for this! I, UD, will settle in and read this entire article because I am a snob (I love to speak French!), and like many snobs have a strong interest in many things French. So let’s go!

I was easy to bait, wasn’t I? I mean, given its nullity, its total lack of reason to exist, it occurs to me as I read that the Cohen piece has rather the same status as a lushly illustrated essay in the Sunday NYT Magazine about how to make onion soup. Yet I keep reading.

And as I read, Cohen’s bait – charismatic! maybe she can do it! – gradually shifts to switch. ‘The once-proud “gauche” is in tatters.’ Oh.

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But wait!

Ms. Hidalgo has clout and international recognition. Michael Bloomberg is a friend.

Oh, okay, I’m back up on the horse! And what a spectacular electability advisor Bloomberg would be.

‘[A]s Philippe Labro, an author and political observer, remarked, “France today is squarely on the right.” Terrorism, insecurity, fear and perceptions of unrestrained immigration pushed the country there. The left has had no clear answer, not Ms. Hidalgo, not anyone.’

Cohen’s list is curious, suggesting as it does that things like, I don’t know… how to run the economy have nothing to do with the right’s current strength. No, it’s all reactionary stuff: insecurity, fear.

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Is it a story worthy of the New York Times that a relatively obscure woman, with zero chance of making it into the second round of an election she might not even enter, recently enjoyed an enthusiastic reception at a gathering of French socialists?

Nope. But it’s a story worthy of UD, New York Times reader. Bait; switch; pander.

Cher is “wondering when [the] Texas Senate will start mandating burqas,” and UD is thrilled.

Between the Taliban and the Texas Senate, these are heady days for burqa haters like your blogueuse. Anti-burqa brigades have hit the Afghan streets, their bravery absolutely stunning. People are talking about the burqa, actually looking at and thinking about the burqa, not doing that thing where they look away and shrug and talk about diversity and piety. The women of Afghanistan are again making the absolutely plain absolutely plain: The deepest bottom of the deepest barrel for women anywhere on the globe is the nihilating burqa; and women in Europe and the United States who wear it proudly – and, even more revoltingly, make their young daughters wear them – ought to be ashamed.

Back in 2008, UD was quoted in Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen (he’s no longer associated with the organization) on the corruption of medical schools by pharma lobbyists. Pleasant, so many years later, to discover that.

The weapons Americans buy to protect their loved ones are the weapons that end up being accidentally discharged into a loved one’s leg or chest or head. The weapons Americans buy to protect their young children are years later used for self-harm by their troubled teenagers. Or they are stolen from their car by criminals and used in robberies and murders. Or they are grabbed in rage and pointed at an ex-partner.

… Above all else, guns are used for suicide. In any given year, twice as many Americans die by suicide as by homicide. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults, behind only accidents. The good news is that suicide is highly preventable. Most suicide attempts are impulsive, an act of depression or panic. If a person survives an attempt, he or she will almost certainly survive the suicidal impulse altogether. A gun in the house massively raises the likelihood that a suicide attempt will end in death.

… Guns everywhere engender violence everywhere.

… The gun you trust against your fears is itself the thing you should fear. The gun is a lie.

UD‘s great-uncle, Nathan Rapoport, settled in Ocean City in 1912 and built some of its first boardwalk businesses. UD‘s father graduated from Ocean City High School. She follows the sad fortunes of that resort closely.

Like notorious Myrtle Beach, OC has over decades allowed large stretches of itself to sink into squalor, with resulting high crime rates, guns, drugs, fights, and even riots. Both of these locations might have done something to discourage their takeover by sleazy motels, cheap bars, ugly and dangerous city thoroughfares, and many other marks of civic degeneracy. But there was money in degeneracy.

Until there wasn’t. Non-degenerate locals and visitors are leaving.

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Now an established low-life magnet, OC is trying, late in the game, to de-magnetize. It banished, for instance, the annual vile H20i gathering of assholes with loud cars; but scofflaws don’t exactly care whether you banish them, and year after year thousands keep coming, turning OC, for a week in September, into a wasteland of smoking squealing crashing hulks circled by drunks recording the fun on their phones. After each year’s debacle the town revisits and revises its laws in hopeless, increasingly police-state, measures.

This month’s tweak, described in my headline, involves real surveillance state stuff, with, what, drones? satellites? tracking the movements and collecting the identities of the asshole brigade.

On the streets and even highways leading from the Bay Bridge to Ocean City, wall to wall police will engage in constant arrests, and, with those crowds no doubt pushing back, we can expect lovely results. Rumble strips will be everywhere. City officials have been having nice chats with the proprietors of the dumps that house the crowds and nicely explaining to them that if they keep housing overflows of people the town will put them out of business. Cars will be impounded, and, in an interesting twist, owners can no longer just come and claim them but must hire companies to drive them out – at no doubt great expense.

Oh – and next year:

In 2022, Ocean City hopes to hold a three-day concert during the weekend of H2Oi. Additionally, the town wants to host a sporting event that weekend.

“For the last 10 years when the pop-up rally was here, we’ve kind of been on the defense,” [the OC mayor] said. “I think we all feel it’s time to go on the offense and set our own destiny.”

Try to imagine what it’s like to live in Ocean City. You get to witness a yearly actual reversion-to-barbarism event. And you get to look forward to next year’s raid, which will add huge numbers of pissed off (what’s with all the police and those car assholes?) sports and country music fans. Where do I sign up.

Child abusers from a British religious community should not be reported to the police, one of its leaders has argued.

Paltiel Schwarcz, a leading rabbinical authority among ultra-Orthodox Jews, said informing statutory authorities in the UK of a suspected Jewish child sex offender was generally “a severe sin”….[I]t is forbidden to report child sexual abuse to “gentile” authorities, [argued Schwarcz, a Jewish religious court judge]...

[He argued that it] was not permitted to report an abuser to police if the victim was a girl aged 12 or older or a boy aged 13 or older.

UD‘s house and garden are major mantis-attractors. This one – a Chinese Mantis – is as we speak on one of our screened windows.

Look at the way it’s looking at me.

I love what it’s doing with its brown/green color scheme. The eyes are amazing.

… in my frog.

… when first we practice to deceive ourselves about ignorant religious cults among us.

Look what Israel, of all places, has achieved: So many civically useless children that

Some 50% of Israeli children from the country’s fastest-growing sectors are getting a third-world education that will not be able to support a first-world economy, without which there will be no first-world health, welfare and defense systems, according to a new report published by the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research.“The absence of a first-world ability to defend itself in the world’s most violent region will jeopardize the State of Israel’s very existence,” Prof. Dan Ben-David, who authored the 2021 report, told The Jerusalem Post. “This is an existential threat.”

For decades, Israeli governments have let the burgeoning ultraorthodox opt out even of the basic – required! – national curriculum. And behold the Kafkaesque result: A massive brain drain, because smart people don’t want to live in a country being taken over by stupid people; and a remaining, enormous, absolutely hopeless population. Worse than hopeless, because many of these people revile Zionism and would never think of taking up arms to defend it. Well done!

I’m not good at remembering very old days, but I do recall a picnic lunch at the country house of Brigid Balfour, a scientific colleague of my father’s in London and, yes, related to the Balfour of the Declaration. She was also related to Gladstone! It was a sunny day, and we ate out on the grass, on a very big blanket.

… all six Rapps camped through Europe in a VW camper van.

We’ve finally gotten around to updating our ancient glass slides to the twenty-first century, so here are a few images from that time. Thanks go to my sister for getting this done.

Six years ago, I filed a complaint with the New York City Department of Education (DOE) alongside 51 others because there are dozens of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Yeshivas in our city that do not provide their students with an adequate secular education, as required by law.

As a result of the complaint, the city announced an investigation on July 28, 2015. Yet now more than six years later, despite findings from the investigation that backed up our complaint, no concrete actions have been taken. The lack of action by the city means that approximately 40,000 students today continue to experience educational neglect.