… that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world.”

And beating him.

‘Oh fine ten million.‘

A New Republic writer condemns as unpatriotic cowards the three Yale professors leaving Trumpian America for Canada. “[T]hey have decided to check out of their own communities long before they face actual state violence… [There is a difference between a person] who chooses to face down oppressors and one who ignores or betrays the call for solidarity in the face of oppression.”

Yet the author himself is here only because his father betrayed India, his native country. Does he also condemn his father’s preference to live in a freer, less corrupt, less tyrannical country? My grandfather hadn’t yet faced state violence when he left Cherkasy for the US. Should he have girded his loins and stayed?

Is the writer familiar with the excellent book, excellently titled Exit, Voice, and Loyalty? “In 1989, in the GDR it was the escalating dynamic of out-migration that led those who wanted to stay to take to the streets to demand change. Exit triggered voice, and both worked in tandem.” Many variants of exit and voice exist, and it’s quite possible that a powerful rejection by powerful intellectuals like the Yale Three will turn out to be far more galvanizing among protesters than their staying home.

The writer also overlooks the positive gesture toward Canada that their resettlement represents. Humiliated by the territorial rhetoric and economic targeting coming from the Trump administration, our far more democratic (at the moment) neighbor deserves as much support as we can give it, and few gestures of support are as powerful as actually going there and contributing, in this case, your prestige and institutional strength to a legitimate democracy under threat.

So the basic narrative, as I sit watching the garden from my bed, is this: One dove bobs pecks and pokes among the stalks I’ve been cutting off to make room for spring growth. Sometimes he finds one that’s too big, gets it almost to the nest, drops it. Mainly he finds the right length, and I follow him with my eyes as he flies ten feet up into a tree bordering the garden and with mucho flutter hands it off to the architect.

While it’s fun to watch the gathering and building and then of course the babies, it’s also true that for a few weeks we will deal with paranoid dive-bombers coming at us whenever we’re anywhere near the nest.

… everything.

[B]anning candidates from running for office due to financial crimes is highly dubious. The damaging effect on the democratic choice seems out of proportion to the crime in question, and (even coupled with a €2 million fine) is ineffective in punishing the party… [T]he idea that the party is being stifled by politically motivated “lawfare” — a claim likely amplified from the heights of the White House and Twitter/X — seems well-designed to galvanize its base… [T]he Rassemblement National can, even now, be beaten. But not like this.

Its greatest fame is the 2012 theater shooting; but in smaller ways it keeps its hand in the gun massacre game, as in the mother who puts a loaded weapon in her elementary school-aged child’s backpack.

[T]he child was showing the gun to classmates when another student notified an adult… Aurora officials announced the 39-year-old mother of the student, later identified as Zoe Cherelle Cantrelle, was issued a summons for child abuse and failing to safely secure a firearm. Both are misdemeanors.

… (it’s long since over, the murderer put away for life) features the testimony of Cynthica Schulz, a lost soul who has lived rough for the last six years, and who believes cell phones are poisoning her.

Despite her mental frailty, she was a sharp and articulate witness — before she fell apart, she was a school teacher in California.

Schulz lives alone in a remote state park sometimes, and she had the terrible misfortune of discovering the murder victim in one of them. More trauma for an already traumatized person.

To which we can add giving lengthy testimony about the body. She wept quietly throughout.

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But okay here’s what got to UD.

As Schulz took the stand, the judge said We know you have difficulty with certain devices, so I’ve already asked everyone in the room to turn phones, etc., off, and I’m repeating that request now for anyone who didn’t hear my earlier request. Please everyone turn all your devices off. Thank you. We can proceed.

Schulz thanked her, and UD teared up, thinking about human vulnerability and human kindness.

Like others in the European parliament, France’s most popular politician embezzled from it. Transferred money meant for administrative staff to her party. Just got four pretend years in prison (two suspended, and for the rest she has to don some hardware), AND can’t run for office for five years, so that means she can’t be in the next presidential election.

With wonderful French hauteur, she left the courtroom before the judge finished announcing the sentence. I burst my pimples at you and call your be punished for breaking the law request a silly thing.

Greedy Nicholas Sarkozy, another bigtime French politician, is as we speak trying to avoid his own jail sentences for multiple financial crimes. It’s un petit peu grody over there à ce moment-là.

… Catholic integralist Adrian Vermeule invokes his triune Godhead: Giuliani, Eastman, and Clark. Where, he asks, was the rule of law (which his colleagues worry about in their letter) when those great and good men were trying to make the world safe for Donald Trump?

And as to what Vermeule means by the rule of law – listen as he lays out his law-ruled ideal state:

Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.

Yup. Right outta 1984. ‘He loved Big Brother.’ This is the rule of rulers, not the rule of law.

Another feather in Wharton’s financial criminals hat!

Background on this remarkable school here.

Weawy? How good a fit is that? A hijab/chador body/head covering Iranian doesn’t shout ‘gender equality’ to ol’ UD: She shouts modesty for women but not for men. Yet she ran a gender equality project at Yale. Kinda funny.

Less funny is her reported affiliation with the naughty sexist pigs at PFLP. Yale asked to talk to her about this; she said fuck you; so out she goes.

“Knowledge must be in the service of the oppressed,” she writes. I trust part of Doutaghi’s intellectual portfolio is in the service of her Iranian sisters sweltering under viciously imposed hijab/black robe mandates.

Since she writes that she “stands with” Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, I guess not.

Pretty little street of half million dollar houses in Tacoma, Wash., including a senior living village! Sweet how old and young (one of the dead was sixteen) meet on this all-American bullet-riddled court. “Several shell casings are scattered throughout the street and two weapons have been located.” In the autumn, scattered leaves; in the spring, scattered casings…

And Granny just stumbled over an AK47!

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A 27-year-old man repeatedly discharged a gun on a residential street in his home community of Charleston, authorities allege.

Nicholas Scozzari was arrested three days after the episode, which lasted about a half hour starting around 4:15 a.m. on March 9 in the vicinity of his home on Sonia Court near Bloomingdale Road, according to the criminal complaint and police.

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Oh, what a beautiful mornin!