D.E.I. Official at University of Michigan Is Fired Over Antisemitism Claim

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She’s gonna sue all those rich fucking Jews.

… and Ours!

 James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, proposed two highly restrictive gun control bills in the Virginia legislature banning the carrying of guns outside of their owners’ property. They didn’t pass, but the effort indicates that Madison believed such laws were entirely allowed by the Constitution.

And this is not surprising. Madison was a smart guy, and regulating possession, sale, and use of deadly weapons is about the most legitimate activity imaginable for any state. For instance, Ancient Rome had strict rules about when and where weapons could be carried. Indeed, in Weberian terms, establishing control over the instruments of violence is part of what it means to be a state in the first place. The idea that a government scheme to, say, simply regulate the concealed carry of handguns is a priori illegitimate would have been regarded by all the drafters of the Constitution as staring madness. No idea so crazy would have even occurred to them.

… [T]he current American gun cult has little or nothing to do with either history, the Constitution, or plain common sense. 

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Then what’s it got to do with? The writer doesn’t specify.

UD thinks that whenever America births yet another insane gun baby, the handiwork of insane gun parents, the country is afforded an opportunity to gain focus about what many observers term the gun death cult here.

You often see the simpler formulation, gun cult, as if what’s going on in the nation is tens of millions of super-enthusiastic hobbyists buying and futzing with gun collections. Indeed, while the author of this piece uses the shorter phrase throughout, he titles it THE GUN DEATH CULT, which is the correct formulation. The word death deserves pride of place because Americans both delectate death and realize that, on a practical level – as with the enthusiastically applauded assassination of a representative of a disliked insurance system – guns solve or help solve many, many problems. They are the magic wand which makes people and organizations you don’t like go poof.

If you don’t like yourself, they remove you. American rates of suicide, especially in gunny states, astound. The love of death, wedded to our famous American pragmatism, extends to a delight and fascination with your own debraining.

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We can’t get enough of the bloody pragmatics of the gun. When mass shooting isn’t really mass – see the timid Madison psychotic who gunned herself down when she heard police and therefore only had time to kill two (maybe more – two children are currently trying to survive) – we feel cheated; whereas the bold Vegas shooter who kept going until he murdered 58 and injured 500 is far more satisfying.

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Take a town like Jackson Miss. The state has by far America’s highest gun violence rate, and Jackson has the state’s highest rate of same. It’s all made possible by a fantastic synergy between white Republican politicians who don’t seem to mind an 85% black city killing itself with guns, and a black population willing to kill itself with guns. White and black may have their differences, but all embrace the cult.

… mass shooting at a funeral home. (Introit, Missa pro modulus duae carbine, etc.)

Exsanguinatus in Pace Amen.

An X account believed to belong to Rupnow included a post shared within minutes of the time she opened fire featuring a person flashing the “OK” sign with their hand, a gesture linked to other school shooters, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The account also shared video from the 2015 Trollhattan, Sweden, school stabbing attack, and another disturbing post days before the Madison slayings includes a video of somebody committing suicide at a gun range …

An account on social blogging platform Tumblr also believed to be connected to Rupnow features images of guns and other school shooting-related content, including a profile picture showing what appears to be a screenshot of surveillance footage from a shooting, authorities told ABC News.

The account also posted a picture of Parkland high school shooter Nicholas Cruz, and other posts mention a deadly 2007 school shooting in Jokela, Finland.

A CashApp account also reportedly linked to Rupnow features a picture of the Columbine shooters.

Her father, asked by a Facebook user if that was “Kiddo’’ in his shooting-range snapshot, replied, “sure is!!!!

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We have so many insane gun babies in this country that there’s no way we can really see them coming anymore. Most of their parents of course know all about them. But they don’t care.

… in UD‘s woods.

… boasts a DA who learned everything she knows from Chesa Boudin. Durham’s DA doesn’t typically prosecute felons with violent pasts who are found with guns cuz it’s just so not nice.

It’s always good to remind ourselves that America’s daily butcher bill is brought to us courtesy of the political left as well as the political right.

O give your fucked up kid a gun, a gun
Let her practice neath the setting sun
And then when inner sounds command
She'll traverse o'er this gunny land.


Because she feels a little riled
She'll kill a teacher, kill a child
Tis what you raised her up to be
Your psychotic mini-me.

… UD likes the name so much she’ll go ahead and use it to identify the stuff she found on a branch during this morning’s walk.

I’m not saying there won’t be moments of levity in the next few years.

Gevalt. When the concept of personal liberty makes its way into the mullah population, you can bend over and kiss your theocracy goodbye. All self-respecting religious states want to lead people to paradise by force — it’s what they do. Going to paradise isn’t, like, a travel choice, one destination among others, in theocracies… It’s not like people in theocracies read Conde Nash Traveler and say hm Bali yes Melbourne no Paradise maybe… It’s more like Gershwin —

I’ll build a stairway to Paradise
With a new step ev’ry day!
I’m gonna get there at any price;
Stand aside, I’m on my way!

Any price! Which definitely includes the price of your basic freedoms. It’s an effing theocracy!

But now it begins to look as though the Iranian government is losing its commitment to forcing paradise down peoples’ throats, which means among other things it’s actively considering not beating non-hijabis to death.

Little tyke w/ a handgun kills two and injures more than that at Abundant Life Christian School.

Wonder how the – what? – fifteen year old got the guns. She had two. Thinking it has to do with maw and paw. Who probably should be preparing themselves for their involuntary manslaughter trial.

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Female shooter.

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While her parents look for a defense lawyer, the school prepares itself for a big ol lawsuit from the parents of dead and injured students.

 [C]ameras in the building [are] regularly monitored, but the school [does] not have metal detectors. [S]tudents who attend the school [are] “visually scanned” as they arrive on campus each day. 

A party whose base consists of culturally liberal, largely well-educated white Americans and a shrinking share of voters of color is almost by definition going to find it impossible to defend American democracy…

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[The future] requires a flexible Democratic Party platform that is willing to compromise on various social and economic issues (immigration, trans rights, tax policies) in the short run to protect democracy in the long run. It requires an ideological pivot toward more moderate voters who may not always agree with socially and culturally liberal whites.

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One theme that repeatedly emerges in the comments of political analysts is the need for the Democratic Party and its candidates to regain the center and to avoid the adoption of more extreme cultural and social policies that alienate the middle and working classes.

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From the comments section on this opinion piece:

The problem now is Democrats never have found a successor to the New Deal policies to mitigate wealth inequality and, as a result, leaned into the more successful cultural element until it literally became self-parody, possibly cresting in 2020 with calls for free health care for illegal immigrants and taxpayer paid …. gender affirmation treatment for prison inmates.

Until the Democratic party recenters on cultural issues to a simple, non-strident goal of fair and equal treatment for all self-identifying groups and finds its voice, and policy prescriptions, addressing the growing economic disparity, they won’t have a viable philosophy of governance – just an amalgam consisting of a combination of radical cultural advocacy groups and lawmakers passively supporting the economic status quo with small tweaks that fall far short of what is needed.

Yup, and it’s what UD‘s always saying: Read Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country. It’s short. It’s a terrific elaboration on this comment, and, for UD‘s money, remains the best account of the suicidality of the left.

What shouldn’t be in dispute, however, is that the status quo regarding crime, mental health, and homelessness is intolerable… [P]eople suffering from severe mental illness are, in fact, more likely to commit violent crimes…

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Bring back involuntary commitment.

I understand that some varieties of this exist in some states. But look around. They are too lax, too complicated.

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When I look at Goya’s picture of institutional life in 18th century Spain, I see human beings haunted by terrifying delusions, left to waste away in the dark, the dank, and the cold—but this resembles nothing so much as the current state of affairs in our subways, underpasses, and public parks. Contrary to the medical reality of Goya’s day, or the imagined setting of Cuckoo’s Nest, we do have the power to beat back severe mental illness in a patient’s brain, in an environment that is safe, clean, and calm. Not every patient will get better, but many will, and every single one deserves that chance. The bottom line is that inside of treatment, some of these people will get better. Outside of it, almost none will.

Sing it.

Along the trail you'll find me lopin'
Where the hospitals ain't open
In the land where there ain't no OBs.

Mid the sagebrush and the cactus
Don't got no one to practice
In the land where there ain't no OBs.

I will flee the bleed-out halls
Where the cruelty appalls
I will leave the land of no OBs
So forward all my mail
I don't want to go to jail
In the land where they got no OBs