“The point at which your business plan requires divine intervention is the point at which you have a solvency problem,” said prosecutor Andrew Mark Thomas in closing arguments…

LOL. Scenes from America’s latest edition of Elmer Gantry.

Very broad field lately for old age jokes.

… here. The fancier the neighborhood, the scummier your neighbors. How many times must I tell you this?

You’re finally able to afford a 60 million dollar mansion in LA’s fanciest neighborhood of them all – Holmby Hills. But you forgot Fran Lebowitz’s famous reminder: “No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million.”

Example: Your next door neighbor used his position as Armenia’s minister of finance to take as much money out of the country as he could through bribes; and now you get to watch the feds gather on his driveway and go through all of his possessions.

I mean, if you wanted to watch the police remove your neighbor’s furniture right there in front of his house, you could have saved money and moved to South Carolina.

But maybe you don’t care that more than a few of your neighbors are domestic and international criminals. You’re probably one yourself.

You can read years of frat atrocities on that campus here, if you’ve got the stomach; but if you just want the very latest —

A frat that had recently had its wrist slapped by this infinitely indulgent school seems to have killed a guy. (“Beta was on alcohol probation at the time of [Won] Jang’s death, following a suspension in the fall, winter and spring terms.”) Hazing, mucho booze, and a nearby river seem to have been the classic ingredients in this most recent case, and we can expect all the usual worthless responses – suspending the frat, offering a settlement/being sued by the poor babe’s parents, possible charges against the sadists of Beta Alpha Omega, blah blah. Ecoute: Dartmouth’s the school of choice for the children of wealthy sadistic alcoholics. Booze is its brand, and that ain’t gonna change. A little rape/carnage is the cost of doing business.

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Update: Of course, Dartmouth can’t hold a candle to Oklahoma State.

 If you pick Oklahoma State — and if you’re regarded as someone who can help the [football] team win — you can have six or seven beers and get behind the wheel of a car and you won’t get punished by the coach.

Gotta admire Iran’s “Cap and Pray” economic policy: Shut down all businesses where women don’t wear a scarf. Absofuckinglutely brilliant.

Chase Garvey faced a felony charge two years ago that could have put him behind bars for years and barred him from carrying a gun.

But early Saturday morning, police say, Garvey was free and armed when he walked into a home in Florence and opened fire on a crowd of people gathered for a birthday party, killing four.

Garvey, 21, was on probation after pleading guilty to the felony charge in 2022 that accused him of having sex with a 13-year-old in the parking lot of a Fort Mitchell apartment complex.

The plea was to a lesser charge than the rape charge Garvey initially faced, but it carried a possible sentence of up to five years in prison. Though he was sentenced to probation instead, he still could not legally possess a gun because he was a felon.

Good ol Kentucky.

Update: Free and armed to slaughter everyone he knows. “We haven’t heard yet how he got a gun but it’s not like it’s hard to do around here.” Rumor has it his father bought him one illegally. If true, this should be another Crumbley trial.

Ooch. Ouch. Eech.

In the Mea Shearim area, there are [illegal] signs advising visitors not to enter if dressed “indecently”. Despite complying with the community’s dress code, [female journalists] were still targeted with degrading accusations and insults, being called “impure (unholy)” and receiving death threats.

Noticias Cuatro TV broadcast footage that showed a group of men throwing bottles, trash, posters, and other objects at the journalists. 

Wowsa. Mike Bloomberg, a Hopkins grad, goes to town.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s PM, pithily summarizes the situation after the French vote.

Do you know how many mass shootings are cuz bouncers wouldn’t let a guy in a club, frat bros threw someone out of a beerfest, or celebrants barred the door at a birthday party? Today’s atrocity was probably the last one on the list: Li’l Chase Garvey, just 20 years old and already boasting an impressive sex offender record, blasted into a local gathering and shot everyone in sight. The house was a McMansion, Garvey drove a Lexus, and I’m guessing the tyke shouldered an expensive assault weapon. Rich country.

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Update: Rap sheet for violent crimes and not yet 21. Took multiple selfies proudly holding immense guns. A really, really dangerous person; but Kentucky!! You’ve got no gun control in your state. Own it, babe.

Kentucky’s gun laws are among the worst in the country, and the state has one of the higher rates of gun violence in the nation. Kentucky has none of the foundational policies in place—after legislators repealed its concealed carry permitting requirement in 2019.

The entire state apparatus is set up to make the world safe for Chase Garvey. Own it.

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As an adorable fifteen year old. [facebook]

The just-elected Iranian president seems to have a pretty good grasp of basic human decency, which certainly sets him apart from the ruling theoapparatchiks. We shall see whether he’s able to call off the mad dogs of the Morality Police.

“We are clear that the fact that FGM is considered appropriate within such cultures can be of no relevance to the seriousness of the offence. The practice is criminalised by UK law.”

And with that, a British court tossed out a mutilator’s attempt to shorten her seven year sentence for taking a THREE YEAR OLD overseas to have her clitoris sawed off.

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And see the reason the judge’s comments went to culture is that the woman’s attorney said you know I mean in her culture I mean it’s absolutely fine to do this to babies! She had to or she’d have been ostracized! It’s that important.

So if it’s that important you shouldn’t mind spending a few years in jail for it. I mean, you must be really popular in your baby clit slitting culture now.

You shouldn’t be surprised when people start monetizing the vast empty mcmansions all around you. You yourself may be happy rattling about in your own bankrupting domestic structure with no domestic life in it — because after all, here in the US, conspicuous consumption is the last sense to go.

Indeed ethically and emotionally you may be quite content to live inside a desolate, energy sucking, cave; but that doesn’t mean your neighbors think the same way. Having emptied their accounts in order to act rich, they now seek ways out of their financial dilemma, plus out of the depression that settles upon them when, morning after morning, they fetch up in an Alaskan King bed they can’t afford.

Lotsa desperate capitalists around your neighborhood is what I’m saying, and some of them are going to start cannibalizing their whale fall. They’re gonna rent their pools. They’re gonna rent their outdoor grills. They’re gonna rent their driveways. And – don’t know how to break it to you – they’re gonna find commercial uses for their nine bedrooms.

If you’d thought about your setting – hidden away cul de sacs with acres of parking and beyond that flat treeless land for more parking – it might have occurred to you that the whole setting was absolutely crying out for supermassive sex parties. That there would be more and more and more of these (“We have, you know, 200-400 strangers coming into our small, seven-house community, drinking, littering, peeing, defecating, we have people that are just screaming at the owners. We live here, I mean, my neighbor’s dog ate a condom this morning, so is that something you want your children to deal with?”) and that they might not make you happy.

Happy? You thought spending money on a house whose nihilism crushes your soul would make you happy. You thought ruining yourself financially would propel you to the land of classy rich people, and it landed you in the lap of 24/7 bullet-spewing trash. Dumbdumb.

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update: uh oh.

Having successfully seeded the United States with weapons, our gunvangelicals are moving overseas, carrying their arms through airports and onward all over the world, so that all may know the joy of gun ownership.

While going through the TSA (Taurus Shotgun Ammo) Pre-Check, some of these people are caught by security (here’s today’s high-profile case); some of those who make it onto the plane are subsequently jailed by countries that have the gall to apply their own gun-control laws to, like, us??? WTF. We’re the ones with the tourist dollars keeping pathetic places like Turks and Caicos afloat. WTF.