Political advisers and news outlets have scrambled to pinpoint Trump’s battle tactics for presidential debates since he first appeared as a legitimate candidate in 2016. The Atlantic argued that Trump relies heavily on a rhetorical approach called the Gish gallop, which they describe as a “torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments” in which one can bury their opponent. One political insider told Politico Magazine that Trump has “no strategy, just kill and eat.” And Vox created a seven-part taxonomy of Trump’s approach, observing that he “turns tough policy questions into simple stories,” filibusters until the clock runs out to avoid giving details, and leans on his poll numbers and meaningless, three-word slogans.

The brave women of Iran keep at it, subverting the vile clerics and the even viler morality police through sheer force of numbers. Even some presidential candidates there are condemning the vicious, degrading treatment of women who hate the hijab and don’t want it anywhere near them or their daughters.

I mean, they really hate it. They are willing to be beaten and go to jail in order not to wear modesty caps and blankets. (‘On a recent afternoon in northern Tehran, women sat in cafes and other public places, as a police officer in his 50s told those passing by: “Please cover yourselves, ladies,” and then muttered audibly: “My God, I am fed up repeating this without getting any attention.”‘) A whole nasty regime with police and an army calls them whores and hunts them down and in response they say fuck you. All glory to these badasses.

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And why do they hate them, UD? It’s just a tight bit of head cloth – plus a loose evil/sexy body blanket cover. What’s the big deal? You’re willing to go to jail for refusing it? To get humiliated and beaten in public? To be fined huge sums? To lose your car? Your job? REALLY?

Well, ok. Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. Historically, the women of Iran have had serious exposure to you’ll forgive the term freedom. They actually know – they have muscle memory of – what a non-theocratic, non-authoritarian world looks like, and that world is so attractive that nothing a bunch of withered old dicks wrapped in turbans throws at them is going to stick. In respectable countries, you can be a Muslim, an atheist, a Christian, or a warlock; your government doesn’t threaten you with incarceration if you don’t take mandated Intro Islamic Chastity and Virtue courses.

In respectable countries, you might prefer energetic erotic activity to C+V; in Iran, your frisky clit might find itself subject to FGM. Frisky Islamic Republic dicks have no trouble releasing themselves from thin jeans and going at it, and here you’ve been introduced to the concept of equality and all and you know it just seems pretty graphically unfair.

To go a bit deeper: Your self-image has nothing at all to do with hiding your beauty, your character, your individuality. You want to greet the world with as much self-assertion as men are able to, because that is who you are, not the hidden nothing the withered dicks dream about. They, to be sure, are dead. You are not.

The number of times I have heard Saudi women here, who are conditioned to believe that covering is an unquestionable issue, sigh as they watch uncovered women on TV and say لهم الدنبا ولنا الأخرة (they get the world and we get the afterlife).

… NY’s Little Italy tonight.

My very own Rothko.

#everybodydies

Just two days after Olin Johnson shot his wife and then himself to death, his neighbors invite you to this afternoon’s celebration of his life:

PLEASE BRING GOODIES TO SHARE!

Bloodsoaked bodies are still warm, but this will be a wholesome Mormon hoedown, promising “warm memories!” A maniac with a million guns in his house just up and slaughtered his wife with one of them. Let’s celebrate!

Wealthy, well-connected Olin had a big ol’ church to help him, plus a psychiatrist or two out in American Fork, Utah. Did he consult any of that as he descended into madness? Did anybody around him (he had six grown kids and tons of neighbors/business associates) wonder whether they should at least be a mite disturbed by the fact that Olin had turned his house into an armory? “Hey, Olin’s acting real weird. Shouldn’t we try taking his guns away?”

Ah fuck. As if anyone could imagine anyone in Utah – aka Suicide Central – saying something like that.

Sig Sauer: Chose this for his FB photo. Guess it was his favorite out of all of his guns.

No basking on the black volcanic sand

Imported here by antiquarians —

Sun Protection Factor:  Vesuvian.

That is, a skeletal and scorching strand

Ghost coast of ancient Roman carrion

Dead viticulture under dense black vine.

Visitors must be made to understand:

The parching here is post-millennian.

Dead dash to the Mediterranean.

Ah, but the “Mrs” Macron one was a body double!

… the little boy Mr UD’s mother saved – by hiding him in her Warsaw apartment from 1942 to the end of the war – visits a display about her.

UD thanks Sandy.

… shopping.

There once was a Rep. name of Friske
Who liked to live life at high risk
He slipped on his gripper
And shot at a stripper
To which all I can say is tsk tsk

Comment les choses changent.

What more can we do, its legislature asked, to make sure that for all time and in all categories we rank at the very bottom?

Oh. Right!

Certainly we’ve learned, after many years, that med schools, engineering departments, and above all bigtime sports programs, are fraud central; but, more recently, IT managers are, fraudwise, really sitting pretty.

Yale thought it was being clever when it imposed a $10,000 upper limit on med school computer-related purchases signed off by only one person, but Finance Director Jamie Petrone-Codrington was all over that one. With patient stealth, for more than ten years, she racked up charges, gave the equipment to someone who fenced it, and stole 30 million dollars.

Where the fuck were Yale’s auditors? Damned if I know.

Same deal, more or less, at today’s hapless ripped off institution. “After receiving approval to purchase hundreds of items of IT equipment by falsely claiming the equipment would be used or installed at university locations,” Webster University’s IT director “sold that equipment to a third-party.”

… UD‘s coverage of illegal drug distribution featured a crusty old pill mill proprietor named Buster, and his best bud/pharmacy owner Lloyd, way down in Russellville Alabam. Out front of Buster’s place (What a Wonderful World Pain Clinic) long lines of pale pierced men hid their faces in oversize sweatshirts and funny thing is all the cars in the parking lot had Ohio license plates. Local Doc Ching-Ting Peng, just over from Taiwan, spoke no English, and had the sorest wrist in Russellville from signing a million empty prescription slips a day.

It was a rickety kind of bidness, sure, but didn’t nobody bother nobody and it was full of real interesting characters and everybody all over Akron got their very own fatal overdose. In the unlikely event the shit hit the fan and the boys got shut down, they moved to Phenixville and renamed the place Praise the Lord Pain Emporium.

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Course now it’s all slick city folk who figured out how to put it all online and advertise all over social media and make – I mean, let’s say Buster and Lloyd and Ching-Ting divided like 300 thou a year among themselves – the folks at Done digital health pulled in hundreds of millions before the Justice Department finally noticed. You buy a membership in the thing and they’ll sell you all the Adderall you want forever, no questions asked. ‘According to the complaint, one Done member described the company as a “straight up pill mill.”’