When I was a lad I served a term
As leader of a US veterans’ firm.
I spent all its money and I shtupped the gals
And I polished off the liquor with my army pals
I polished off that liquor so thoroughly
That now I am America’s Defense Secret’ry!

(He polished off that liquor so thoroughly
That now he is America's Defense Secret'ry!)

… running through this defense of the politicized humanities.

 [A]dministrators — in thrall to university donors at private institutions, and who at public ones serve at the whim of state governments — represent the beachhead by which the academic Trumpism [William] Deresiewicz lusts for will arrive on campus.

Orwell, in “Politics and the English Language,” couldn’t have found a better example of a sentence squirrely with militancy (lusts? beachhead?), and intellectually lost in a strange old world. “Academic Trumpism” might as well be Revisionist Menshevism.

It’s a big story when the CEO of the country’s largest, massively successful, health insurer (Les UDs have used it for years) is ambushed entering his New York hotel early in the morning and shot to death. Right there on the broad daylight streets of the big city, hit in the chest. Masked gunman at large.

So. What’s all this about? Let’s speculate.

For some reason, UD wants to go ahead and put it out there that this was personal. Not corporate villainy, not terrorism aimed at American capitalism, but one nut with a grudge against this guy. We’ll see.

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

Thompson had recently received several threats, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. The police are still investigating the source and exact nature of those threats, the official said. Chief executive officers of health care companies often receive threats because the nature of their work.

In America, you could have two opposing armies exchanging fire in a nightclub and no one would ever dream of revoking its license.

In England, just one wittle gunfight and BAM. Down comes the iron fist of the state!

Looks awfully serene – and it is.

But don’t forget the MARC, Amtrak, and CSX trains chuffing through.

H is for your Horny jigs with strippers
E is for inEbriation WOW
G is for repeated Gross malfeasance
S is for your Shout: KILL MUSLIMS NOW

E is you’re inEbriate again
T is Take your drunk paws offa me
H is I’m a Holy man amen

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

UPDATE: Rats. He’s already outgoing.

I’m a high-ranking, highly-paid congressional staffer with a responsible, sensitive, job, and I forgot that I put four ammunition magazines and eleven rounds of ammunition in my bag.

A fawning portrait of Annie Leibovitz in the Financial Times finds the fact of one room opening to another in her house remarkable.

Police are investigating a quadruple shooting at a Hollywood baby shower that left two people dead and two others hospitalized early Sunday morning.

The alarms are beginning to go off — “With the increase in vaccine hesitancy that has been going on since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re seeing [whooping cough] outbreaks occurring in kids who are not vaccinated.” — but no one’s listening, and with our incoming HHS secretary we can expect the return of a rather wide spectrum of painful and sometimes lethal childhood disease.

Essentially, our country is about to assume the ethos of ultraorthodox Jews – no or few vaccines, and if you have a problem take it up with yahweh – in its approach to contagious illness. What to do?

Remember this mantra: NOTHING BUT NORTHEAST. The northeast states have the highest rates of vaccination; the death-adoring dummy states in the south and west have the lowest. If they don’t kill their kids via the Beretta left on the bed, they’ll do it bacterially.

But you and your kids don’t have to live in Disease Vector RFD. The entire northeast territory of this vast land remains polio and rubella free. Get thee thither.

This one’s from Oklahoma. A driver got pissed when a woman in front of him was kind enough to let another vehicle go in front of her, so the driver drove up next to the woman and aimed his gun at her.

As you see, he explained to the police that he only wanted to intimidate her — maybe she’ll think twice in the future about letting other drivers into her lane — not shoot her to death.

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

Oh. This one’s also OK. How do you go on a retreat in Oklahoma?

[S]everal people saw [a local football coach] point a gun at [another coach], who was in a hot tub at the time. The affidavit says [Forrest] Mazey fired a shot outside of the cabin the coaches were staying at in McCurtain County.

… The affidavit says several witnesses heard Mazey making jokes while pointing the gun at the victim.

“Kind of made fun of the situation, laughed about it, made fun of him for being scared,” said [one source].

You pussy!

Thanksgiving poems stink of kitsch.
I search in vain for even one which
Leaves off redemption and the kids
The wife who saved me from the skids
The mom whose deep abiding love
Gave my rear a needed shove...

Instead of thanking friends and God
I'll thank the books that showed me Odd
Kafka, Beckett, E A Poe
Their twisted landscape helped me know
That sentiment is fine and good
But most of life's in darkest wood

Both tykes and leaf blowers look like yellow-jacketed aliens.

Benjamin Allen Wemp … is not a student at [Clemson] University.

[Officers on campus] handcuffed Wemp and took [a] loaded revolver off of Wemp’s hip … [They also] removed a fixed blade hunting knife from Wemp’s possession. [University police also] found that he was wearing body armor, an ammunition belt containing several rounds and … was keeping a second loaded revolver in his pants pocket…  Wemp was at Mell ​Hall with “Visions for the World,” a religious group…