Apropos of nothin' in particular ...

/

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great New Mexican philosopher, Fr. Anthony!

Speaking of the Olympics, some politically incorrect trivia: 

1) although Hitler was not happy that a non-Aryan was so victorious, and thought that black athletes had an unfair physiological advantage, it is not true that he refused to shake Jesse's hand. By the second day of competition, when Owens won the 100 meter race, it had been decided that Hitler would not publicly greet any competitors. But Owens remembered that Hitler waved to him and he returned the wave as a courtesy to his host. He was very popular among the German sports fans. Although he then received a ticker tape parade in New York, Franklin Roosevelt refused to receive him at the White House so as not to offend Southern Democrats in that election year. Owens said in a speech, "Hitler did not snub me but the president snubbed me.... The president did not even send me a telegram." Owens was an ardent member of the party of Lincoln, and as a Republican he publicly endorsed Alf Landon for the November election.

2) the carrying of a flaming torch to open the Olympics was the invention of Albrecht Speer, based on Wagner's Siegfried raising a sword. As a Nazi ritual, it had no Olympic precedent.

3) as the world's fastest man, Jesse Owens smoked a pack of cigarettes each day is. That was common amongst athletes. He died at the age of 66 of lung cancer.

 And from the shores of Ole’s Creek, this:


Just another Times reader/Dem voter, but fun all the same

/

“chiroptophobia” :n an irrational fear of bats. No, I didn’t know that word, either

Hayward: “When I saw this headline in the New York Times, I first assumed that the Times had been taken over by the Babylon Bee:

A Bat Flew Into My Bedroom and Reminded Me of All We Take for Granted

By Belle Boggs

[Ms. Boggs is the author of “The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood” and other books.]

One night a few weeks ago I went to bed early, bothered by the oppressive heat and dismayed by that week’s political news. . . and very early the next morning a bat flew into our bedroom, through a screen door left open by accident. What happened over the next few days restored my faith in the systems in our country that keep us safe. . .

Hayward:

“And you’ll never believe what happened next! Actually of course you would. The article turns into a homily about how we have to stop Donald Trump from destroying the administrative state. Yes, it really is that stupid.”

“This tweet offers a better summary than I can do:

I had hoped that reader Burning Madoff was jokingly substituting one Jared Bernstein with another, but to my horror, he wasn't

/

Burning Madoff wrote, “As long as Jared Bernstein is still head of the Council of Econ Advisers we should be good.”

From Wiki:

Bernstein graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied double bass with Orin O'Brien. Throughout the '80s, Bernstein was a mainstay on the jazz scene in New York City.

He also earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College as well as a Doctor of Social Work in social welfare from Columbia University's school of social work in 1994.

Bernstein has taught at Howard University, Columbia University, and New York University. His areas of interest include "federal, state and international economic policies, specifically the middle class squeeze, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets, poverty, and international comparisons."

In 1992, Bernstein started working as a senior official at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank with a focus on issues affecting low- and middle-income working people.[4] From 1995 to 1996, he served in the United States Department of Labor as deputy chief economist. He then returned to the EPI, as senior economist and director of the Living Standards Program, until he was selected by Biden. His designated job on the vice presidential staff is a new position, created because of "the critical nature of the economic challenges facing America." Upon his appointment, some journalists claimed that it "contrasts sharply with the more centrist views of many of president-elect Barack Obama's economic advisers."

Bernstein sits on the Congressional Budget Office's advisory committee. He is a contributor at the financial news network CNBC. He also was appointed executive director of the Middle Class Working Families Task Force and is responsible for direct management of the project.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics and a noted progressive columnist, argued in November 2008 that the centrist makeup of President Barack Obama's economic inner circle, the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, could be used to "give progressive economists a voice," and he mentioned Bernstein and fellow EPI economist president Lawrence Mishel among others as progressive economists who might be suitable for the board.

Biden administration

On September 5, 2020, Bernstein was announced to be a member of the advisory council of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, which was planning the presidential transition of Joe Biden. Subsequently, President Joe Biden selected Bernstein to serve on the Council of Economic Advisors in January 2021.

In February 2023, Bernstein was nominated as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers by President Biden, replacing Cecilia Rouse.

On May 11, 2023, the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs advanced Bernstein's nomination by a 12–11 vote. On June 13, 2023, the United States Senate invoked cloture on Bernstein's nomination by a 50–49 vote. He was confirmed later that day by a 50–49 vote

"Fork you", declares this cone-licking, pudding-spoon-using nonagenarian

/

our replacement ice cream czar

A pending nuclear war got you worried? Economic collapse making you sleepless? Illegal aliens swamping tghe country and overloading the welfare system? Not to worry, Team Biden’s got your six.

Biden administration will ban federal government using plastic cutlery to combat climate change

"[T]he Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a new goal to phase out federal procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035," the White House said. "Meeting the new goal… will further agencies’ obligations under the [previous] Executive Order." 

Biden's prior executive order aimed to reduce the sale of single-use plastic products on public lands. 

We'll have to wait a bit to see how things settle, but as of this morning, this May 24th Tweet isn't looking so good

/

UPDATE:

The White House released this statement about Gene Sperling's departure:

When I took office, our economy was reeling, a pandemic was raging, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country were at risk of shutting their doors. Having run Recovery Act implementation for President Obama, I knew I needed an American Rescue Plan Coordinator with the expertise and experience to hit the ground running. I'm glad I picked Gene Sperling.

Gene joined my administration as the only person to have ever directed the National Economic Council under two presidents, and has helped me execute a rescue plan that has led to one of the most equitable and resilient economic recoveries ever. His work helped nearly 40 million working families get unprecedented child tax cut relief and over 8 million renters get emergency assistance to help keep their families housed. Under Gene's leadership, the American Rescue Plan has delivered economic relief to cities and counties across the country, protected millions of union pensions, made the largest-ever federal investment in public safety, and kept thousands of small businesses afloat.

I also looked to Gene as a trusted advisor on the economy and gave him some of the toughest assignments, including serving as my liaison to the Big 3 automakers and UAW as autoworkers fought for - and secured - record contracts.

You must remember this, a kiss-off is just a kiss ....

/

(See below*)

Multiply this story 1,000,000 X (or 10 million, or 100 million — your pick), and you have a good sense of how the guardians of our wallets spend what they find there:

NYC’s DOE accepts offer for nearly $5.6M worth of apples — leaving most to rot

The NYC’s Department of Education food-service managers ordered three times as many apples as needed — forcing them to throw away thousands of cases of rotting fruit in the last four months, The Post has learned.

In March, the city DOE’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services got an offer they couldn’t refuse and ordered 279,000 cases of apples worth a whopping $5,585,580 paid for by the federal government. The deal was part of an effort between the feds and the state Office of General Services to give schools fresh produce from the US Department of Agriculture. As a result, the city received a massive “bonus” of free Empire, Fuji, Gala, Red Delicious and Granny Smith apples.

But the nation’s largest school system bit off more than it could chew: The humongous order is overwhelming the DOE with more apples than schools can use in three years, kitchen insiders said. 

“They have apples every day — nothing but apples,” said the parent coordinator at a Bronx elementary school, wondering what happened to the peaches and mandarins the schools used to serve. 

Some students are served two apples at breakfast and another two at lunch, a food worker said. 

Kids are being deprived of other fruit, the worker said. “Students are looking for a piece of watermelon, or a tangerine, but now it’s ‘Nope, we have to give you apples,’ and if students don’t want them, they go in the garbage.”

A supervisor griped: “You order one case of oranges, you get two cases of apples. You want bananas, you get two more cases of apples. We’re getting apples up the nose.”

Out of 5,299 cases of apples already delivered, up to 45% have already been tossed, the source estimated. 

Stomach-churning photos show cases marred with moldy, rotten apples — some shriveled beyond recognition — and rancid juices soaking through the cardboard crates. 

Food distributors had 28,012 cases on hand this week with 15,544 more to come in September, according to emails viewed by The Post.

“Despite warnings from distributors, managers and cooks that schools cannot handle such a large quantity of fresh apples, the OFNS decided to proceed,” said a DOE source, adding that officials saw it as “free money.”

Schools have been forced to take a glut of apples — some already spoiled and bruised — from distributors hit with nonstop supplies from the USDA. The agency offers periodic “bonuses” of free food products to schools across the country.

“We have rotting apples, and before we can take more we need to know what your plan is for discarding them as they all begin to rot,” one food distributor pleaded to an OFNS director in emails obtained by The Post. 

“The apples will need to be accepted,” inventory management specialist Cristina Perez told the buyer.

“Please make arrangements for delivery,” director Lisa D’Amato confirmed. 

Buyers are also complaining to the farms, begging them to do quality-control checks before shipping. 

“We can’t tie up our warehouse everyday with thousands of cases of apples that are being shipped to us in very poor quality,” a distributor representative said in an email.

One of the city’s three grocery distributors said this week that the company will have to discard approximately 3,000 cases of apples. On Thursday, another tossed 86 cases, sources said.

In June, shortly before the school year ended, one of the distributors was slated to receive two shipments of 924 cases each. The fruit lasts 15 to 25 days.

*2013:

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley and called Republicans ‘anti-government ideologues’ looking to shut down the government before declaring there is simply nothing left to cut in the $4-trillion-a-year federal budget.

CROWLEY:  President Clinton, President Bush, President Reagan and this president have all negotiated the debt ceiling and given up something for that.  So why now, we can't do this?

PELOSI:  The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.

Brainwashing the electorate

/

David Strom, HotAir:

I am deeply worried that the compressed election cycle will allow the mainstream media and the brainwashing complex which includes Big Tech and social media to carry Kamala Harris to victory on their backs.

Kamala herself is a mental midget with no political skills to speak of, but she has behind her a brainwashing machine with decades of experience and trillions of dollars of infrastructure behind it. 

But Kamala's political skills or her electoral prospects are not my focus here: there is one advantage to the compressed timeline, and that is the need for the brainwashing machine to drop all subtlety and use all its tricks in one massive push. We can see the machine work in a way that has been more difficult before. 

Trump’s a coward

(I noticed this trope appearing in at least one reader’s comment even on this bitty blog — it’s all pervasiveL FWIW)

Yesterday (and presumably today) the new brainwashing line is that Trump is "afraid" to debate Kamala. The claim is everywhere, and you might think that it is so absurd as to not be worth considering. 

But that isn't the point at all. Both of these lines of attack and their constant repetition are designed to undermine the advantages Republicans have--Democrats are undeniably weird, and Trump is undeniably courageous. The goal is to program these facts out of the brains of people who pay attention casually and don't think deeply about the issues. 

Trump is afraid of nothing. He walks into the most hostile environments in the world with a smile on his face and a determination to win. 

The last time Trump debated a Democrat, the victim had to leave the field utterly defeated. Biden was mortally wounded. Then Trump got shot and stood up in defiance. Then he went to the Black Journalists Association to get ripped, when Kamala demurred because she won't take a single question from anybody, even friendly journalists. 

But by repeating "afraid"--and the word is everywhere right now from the Establishment--the idea is planted in people's minds in a way that precludes analysis. Nobody is thinking about these issues deeply. It's just in the air. 

For most people, politics are about vibes, not reasoned analysis. We outsource the analysis to others and choose based on a general feeling. 

Brainwashing is all about shaping those vibes and framing how people think about issues. The frame determines so much. 

Not too long ago, Kamala's bizarre inability to speak intelligently or not cackle in an irritating manner was universally seen as a political weakness; today, we are told that her idiocy is charming, her cackling is joyful, and that she is the new Jack Kennedy in Kamalot.