Germany’s new leader offers some introductory remarks.

… but the melody lingers on.

No indeed – God wasn’t mistaken when he willed four little girls to die agonizing deaths at the hands of a lunatic with a gun. Pastor Lange admonishes us not to think for a second that God’s hand wasn’t in Olivia’s tortured last days with a big bullet in her brain. We would be fools to think that God’s plan for this family didn’t involve the mother going mad and ripping four bullets directly into the heads of two girls and two babies sleeping in cribs, and then plugging herself. Faith means knowing that some day an event that looks like hell will turn out to be heaven.

'Bien sûr, Monsieur Bannon's salute
Was très déclassé - oui, sans doute.
He's not a nice fella,'
Said Jordan Bardella;
'I'm leaving to reread La Chute.'

A Harvard student argues that admissions based purely on the amount of money random parents give — and this sort of quid pro quo gift is typically, apparently, in the hundreds of millions — should be encouraged, and stuff like legacies and athletics not so much. Indeed, Harvard — laboring under a $53.2 billion endowment — would do well to increase the price of pure money admission, lest the school’s wealth drop by a perilous amount.

It’s an interesting model. There are currently 2,781 billionaires in the world, and let’s assume a healthy chunk of them (Musk has eight children and counting) want their kids to go to Harvard. Straightforwardly monetizing Harvard admissions – setting the price as clearly as countries offering citizenship, for instance, set prices – and taking a lot of billionaire kids every year, would top up that b$53.2 by a good amount.

Assuming Harvard’s goal is at least a one hundred billion dollar endowment (which I think most reasonable people would consider a pretty solid pile, plus a rainy day fund), and say they want to reach that goal in ten years (again, a reasonable aim) you could do the math with not much trouble and simply let billionaire applicants know what the winning number would be.

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

OTOH –Mr UD proposes targeting much-childed billionaires… oh, okay, here’s a partial list —

• Frank VanderSloot: Has 14 children.
• Farris Wilks: Has 11 children.
• David Duffield: Has 10 children.
• Jerry Moyes: Has 10 children.
• Nelson Peltz: Has 10 children.
• Richard Schulze: Has 10 children.
• Fred Smith: Has 10 children.

— and communicating to them that there will be an auction. Brilliant.

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

Update: Gevalt. My buddy Philip tells me the correct ‘number of Muskian progéniture’ is 13.

Update: 14.

We’re one of the most gun-violent cities in America’s most gun-violent state, and you’re telling us to return the six handguns and rifles that fell out of a stolen UPS truck? This is Shreveport!

“They are gone. They are gone,” comments one local. “Gone.”

… Thank God for Mississippi.

Even Alabama has heard of the First Amendment.

What, for example, would be the verdict on a [Harvard] panel discussing the recent bans on transgender women participating in women’s college athletics? The [Crimson] Editorial Board provides a clear answer (in the event that someone supports them): supposedly “bad-faith” attacks and pure political scapegoating — surely not anything worth reasoned debate.

It does not matter that a vast majority of Americans — and a plurality of Democrats — believe that people should only play on sports teams that match their birth gender; such strident language indicates a self-assuredness incompatible with even countenancing that reasonable people can disagree. Implicit in this arrogance is a belief that dissent can only stem from bigotry or ignorance.

And, you know, he hit this and that.

He was president of the North Orange County Bar Association (“Join us on Wednesday, October 23rd @ 5PM, at Madero 1899 (formerly Matador) in Downtown Fullerton for an in depth look at Restraining Orders.”), and his face still shines proudly from their Past Presidents webpage. Drinks like a fish. Took one of the 47 and shot his wife to death while watching Breaking Bad. Still a judge pulling down a salary but for some reason they’ve taken him off the bench.

According to police radio transmissions, a caller reported around 10 a.m. that a group of roughly 20 kids were fighting on the street in front of Chase Avenue Urban Park before they heard one gunshot, after which the group scattered… [A video shows]  two male teenagers fighting one another while other male teenagers watch. Other members of the group join the fight and begin yelling and hitting one another. As the group continues to fight, the teens move into the street. At one point during the fight, one person can be heard yelling to others to back up and another can be heard saying “it’s loaded.” A gunshot is heard, but isn’t seen on the video, and the group scatters.

Happened a couple of hours ago.

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

Update: The mob with at least one gun fired was largely made up of students from Bethesda Chevy Chase high school – a school that used to have a good reputation.

Update: Shooters arrested. Meanwhile, parents able to afford private school withdraw their kids from armed-gang-location BCC.

It’s been a hell of a long slog, but New York is finally beginning to defund private schools that fail to teach basic literacy and that say fuck you to state education staffers who try to work with them. Three ultraorthodox Brooklyn Yeshivas

will be cut off from all public funds — for child nutrition programs, transportation, textbooks and other services — in what advocates suggested was a new phase of a yearslong effort to ensure all students graduate with basic skills in core subjects, such as English and math.

Schools that guarantee to produce idjits who go right onto the welfare rolls is not what the state has in mind, and it’s a really old scandal getting older by the day.

LOL.

They gave this fucker four years for conspiring to commit female genital mutilation, but under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme it’s been increased to seven years. I trust England will deport him after he’s served his sentence.

It’s coming! Are you ready? Are you getting excited?

Now that Spring Break is all about guns, beach towns across America are mustering troops and building beach-adjacent jail cells (not kidding), plus preparing to reroute traffic, close beaches, charge $150 for parking, etc etc etc.

When even dinky Presidents Day has ’em shooting up a storm, y’all know that a whole week of Spring Breakoutthebullets is gonna be a challenge. The really big venues, like Miami Beach, have released a bunch of slick ads the last couple of years featuring younguns looking at the camera and wondering why everyone hates them and their Rugers. Even ultimate trash location Panama Beach is starting to say whoa.