Althouse: At the Wednesday Night Café...

October 15, 2025

At the Wednesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Photo by Meade.)

129 comments:

William50 said...: For those of you who grow tired of the constant political conversations I offer you a couple of blasts from the past.

Small Faces - Itchykoo Park from Beat-cluB
(1967)

Faces Live - Stay With Me

I notice that Ron Wood is playing a '71 Ampeg Armstrong Lucite in the Faces video. I think the guy in Brownsville Station played one too. They were popular for a couple of years and then faded away.; 10/15/25, 7:43 PM
rehajm said...: Louisiana v Callais went well today…and in other news Lettie was harboring a fugitive on her ill gotten property? Quite the rancid onion she is…; 10/15/25, 7:52 PM
Derve said...: ann is travelling or sick?; 10/15/25, 7:55 PM
Derve said...: I hope meade and ann are both out enjoying some sunshine in LA, ready to take in the next two Brewers games. (See, I didn't say losses! ;-); 10/15/25, 7:58 PM
Beasts of England said...: ’Ron Wood is playing a '71 Ampeg Armstrong Lucite’

Those are interesting guitars. There was something unusual about the pickups, but it’s been a few decades since I’ve played one and don’t remember what it was…; 10/15/25, 8:00 PM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: Beasts of England said...

There was something unusual about the pickups, but it’s been a few decades since I’ve played one and don’t remember what it was…

Weren't they set up so you could slide the pickups in and out of the rout and swap them easily?; 10/15/25, 8:04 PM
Dave Begley said...: Cited Ann Althouse in my talk to about 100 people in Madison, NE.; 10/15/25, 8:12 PM
Iman said...: Here’s a treat… a great tune, a tight band and guest Charlie Daniels on fiddle:

https://youtu.be/tbjBudsfH3g; 10/15/25, 8:15 PM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: https://youtu.be/PMXg_KAe5yc?si=EiEgEkNd6oK7uVL-; 10/15/25, 8:16 PM
Iman said...: That was cool, Michael Fitzgerald… never saw them play live… pretty rockin’ and the singer looks like Eugene Levy’s twin, lol!; 10/15/25, 8:21 PM
Iman said...: I personally am quite pleased they put just about if not all the Midnight Specials up on YouTube. Great memories!; 10/15/25, 8:24 PM
Beasts of England said...: ’Weren't they set up so you could slide the pickups in and out of the rout and swap them easily?’

I believe that’s it - thanks!; 10/15/25, 8:25 PM
bagoh20 said...: For those of us who postpone pain as long as possible, today was tax day. One word: Heartbreaking. I can hardly wait till next year.; 10/15/25, 8:38 PM
n.n said...: Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?; 10/15/25, 8:41 PM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: Right on, Iman. Midnight Special was great. Today's musicians could really use something like that again. Did you have Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, or was that just east coast?
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxNR-orOcV9d2AE09DIFJtMGhCi7J3MZL&si=dvhu3-TgIKe70bzD; 10/15/25, 8:42 PM
Jaq said...: Will WW3 be sparked by fight for control of Odessa? Not out of the question. We are in a time when we don't know if Trump is bluffing, and we can only wait and see, but the hard liners on both sides are done with negotiations, and both sides would welcome the new phase of the war that the Tomahawks would represent.

I guess the real question, should Trump provide them, is whether Russia will stick to its knitting, and finish up the war in Ukraine, or allow themselves to be drawn into a war with Europe. It's not obvious which path they will choose.

I am just trying to bring the Russian perspective into the discussion. Anybody who doesn't want you to know what the other side is thinking is just trying to leave you down some kind of primrose path into a war.

:"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it, we neocons who have led America into war after war after war have the situation well in hand."; 10/15/25, 8:42 PM
Paddy O said...: Bagoh, it could be worse. You could still be living in California.; 10/15/25, 8:45 PM
buwaya said...: Odessa - highly unlikely at the moment. The Russians would have to make a successful river crossing and bridging, under fire, of the Dneiper, which is going to be a tremendous military-engineering feat for anyone. The Russians do not have the naval craft to do even an initial river crossing. Given Russian performance lately its hard to see it.; 10/15/25, 8:51 PM
bagoh20 said...: I almost forgot, Paddy, and that makes me feel better.
These wonderful musicians always make me smile. I saw them live at the Brooklyn Bowl in Vegas a couple years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFycqnOpifQ; 10/15/25, 9:01 PM
Gospace said...: Was true a few years ago, and I believe it's still true.

Black Republican congressmen have been elected in majority white districts.

No black Democrat congressmen have been elected in majority white districts.

I wonder why...; 10/15/25, 9:05 PM
Caroline said...: “ Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?”— my guess is an invasive vine…in my experience, these little suckers are always deceptively beautiful.; 10/15/25, 9:07 PM
MadTownGuy said...: John Fetterman, quoted on X

"I know and I love people who voted for President Trump. They are NOT fascists, they’re NOT Nazis, they’re NOT trying to destroy the Constitution.”

“I REFUSE to call people Nazis or fascists. I would never compare anybody — anybody to Hitler.”

“Like Charlie Kirk, all I could say is let people grieve — give people the space. I’m not going to use that terrible thing and that assassination to make my argument and try to put out my views.”

“It’s like, my God, he’s a father that had his neck blown out by a bullet. And now people have forgotten: President Trump was in my state — was shot in the head. Could you imagine where our nation would be if he were hit in the same way as Kirk? We really got to turn the temperature down.”; 10/15/25, 9:14 PM
bagoh20 said...: I suspect that Fetterman has some rare genetic mutation that has left him immune to TDS, or Satan just hasn't gotten around to him yet.; 10/15/25, 9:40 PM
Iman said...: Yes, Michael, we had Kirschner's programs, as well. Our gaggle of friends were always prioritizing viewing both, made for good party backdrops. That was the Golden Age of our kind of music and so many outstanding musicians and bands were always appearing.; 10/15/25, 9:49 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Remarkable that the most sane sounding Democrat in D.C. might have gotten that way because he had a stroke.; 10/15/25, 9:51 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Via Facebook: National Geographic won the photo of the year award with this picture

Zoom in to see something that could be easily missed.; 10/15/25, 9:56 PM
TeaBagHag said...: lol, yes, good old fetterman, the senator you started loving when his brain was damaged to the point where he now endores the party of pedo protecting fascists.; 10/15/25, 9:57 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I was a regular watcher Midnight Special from mid 1978 until it was ended at the end of my freshman year in high school.; 10/15/25, 10:00 PM
Yancey Ward said...: TBH, maybe you can have a stroke and start making sense, too.; 10/15/25, 10:02 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Yes, if I had a stroke and my IQ dropped 50 points and I nurtured my resentment to the point of it becoming a religion, I would be quite popular in here.; 10/15/25, 10:14 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “my IQ dropped 50 points”

Aspirational in adversity?

I still got it!; 10/15/25, 10:22 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Cracker, you should get some penicillin.; 10/15/25, 10:26 PM
Peachy said...: After the first 50 point drop - she's below zero now.; 10/15/25, 10:32 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Reachy, isn’t there some group chat praising Hitler, that you’re supposed to be in?; 10/15/25, 10:34 PM
Peachy said...: Pedo - like this guy!
NC DEMOCRAT Rep. Cecil Brockman who voted against the NC parental rights bill to keep pornography out of schools and inform parents about children who wanted to change their sex, has just been arrested for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a minor.

You can’t make this stuff up."; 10/15/25, 10:34 PM
Peachy said...: Thank you Fetterman - . Now prove yourself as a actual good guy by leaving the corrupt democratic party. Certainly stop voting with the corrupt a=holes.; 10/15/25, 10:36 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Pornography in this case most likely means a paperback copy of Are You There God It’s Me Margaret.
You know there was a famous political party in history that banned l/ burned books by calling them obscene?; 10/15/25, 10:39 PM
Peachy said...: Hitler was a leftist. He's all yours.; 10/15/25, 10:43 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Hitler was a leftist…….
I’m gonna let the stupidly of that comment just hang out.; 10/15/25, 10:44 PM
Peachy said...: Please do - terrorist leftist asshole.; 10/15/25, 10:46 PM
Aggie said...: Any comments on Ketanji Brown Jackson's pearls of wisdom today?

"However, Jackson did say that not having race-based districts is like disabled people not being able to access anything before the ADA: "I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. The idea in section two is that we are responding to current day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right? They’re disabled."....

Umm. Somebody should break the news I guess. When a group makes up 13% of the population, in a system with one-person, one-vote, there's this whole mathematical proportional, probability thingie....; 10/15/25, 10:46 PM
Eva Marie said...: You know there was a famous political party in history who had as their Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader and President Pro Tem of the Senate (that’s 40 years) a leading officer of the KKK? That’s the Democrat Party and that’s Exalted Cyclops and Kleagle Robert Byrd.; 10/15/25, 10:52 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Dumbest trope to argue in US political history.
Which party did all the racists in the Dixiecrats end up joining?; 10/15/25, 10:58 PM
TeaBagHag said...: Maybe crack a history book that isn’t written by Bill O'Reilly.; 10/15/25, 10:59 PM
Eva Marie said...: It’s shocking Democrats consider themselves as any kind of moral arbitrators. 40 years a former KKK - not just a member - but an official of the KKK - was the leader of the Democrats, the guy who in 2001 was still saying the n word on national tv. Until the Democrats repudiate that guy and pay repartions to the people they’ve wronged they should stop pointing fingers and judging others.; 10/15/25, 10:59 PM
Eva Marie said...: All the racists stayed glued to the Democrats.; 10/15/25, 11:01 PM
Dr Weevil said...: A Russian assault on Odesa (note spelling) is in fact out of the question. They would have to cross two substantial rivers, the Dnipro and the Bug, or make an amphibious landing after losing half the landing ships in the Black Sea Fleet (two have been sunk, two disabled, one damaged). Not going to happen. And their troops in Transnistria won’t be able to help: the place is currently without heat or fuel, and may have to reunite with Moldova to keep from freezing.; 10/15/25, 11:03 PM
Eva Marie said...: Why are Democrats such zealots when it comes to abortion? 40% of all abortions are performed on American blacks. 40% and it doesn’t bother white Democrats one bit.; 10/15/25, 11:04 PM
Iman said...: KKK, Jim Crow and even tea-baggin’ were inventions of the Democrat Party. That’s historical fact.; 10/15/25, 11:06 PM
Iman said...: “Hitler was a leftist…….
I’m gonna stupidly let that comment just hang out.”

I’m feeling generous and corrected your grammar, Sultan of Suck.; 10/15/25, 11:09 PM
gadfly said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/15/25, 11:13 PM
Eva Marie said...: Blacks make up about 15% of US population but account for 40% of all abortions. That’s genocide sanctioned and promoted by Democrats.; 10/15/25, 11:14 PM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: Made a delicious turkey soup today. In a wok, I Fried a leg and a wing in bacon fat until the skin was crispy and brown, then removed them to the cutting board. Added a can of diced roasted tomatoes to the hot fat. Boned out the turkey meat and chopped it up then returned it to the sauce and added the juice from a jar of artichoke hearts. Next, a can of creamed corn and a carton of chicken broth. Let that simmer for an hour or so, before adding a cup or so of hand-crushed egg noodles. Let that go for another half hour or so and voila...Delicious with a grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough!; 10/15/25, 11:17 PM
Eva Marie said...: As far as Ketanji Brown Jackson is concerned: this is exactly the attitude the Democrat party has encouraged within the Black population. It’s shocking that Jackson thinks in those terms but that attitude is fostered and nurtured and encouraged by white Democrats; 10/15/25, 11:25 PM
Eva Marie said...: And if you’re a young Black woman and you’ve internalized exactly those attitudes that Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed, then you are more likely to submit to an abortion than a young woman who doesn’t have those sad beliefs about herself.; 10/15/25, 11:30 PM
BudBrown said...: The only thing I've gotten out of rooting for the Brewers is remembering why I hate the Dodgers.; 10/15/25, 11:33 PM
buwaya said...: I cant say I am smarter after my stroke, and subsequent treatment, but I am certainly not worse off mentally. Modern medicine is very effective in this area.
Senator Fetterman seems to be quite well at this time.; 10/15/25, 11:35 PM
buwaya said...: Russia can't even keep naval vessels in Sebastopol. Its had to withdraw the Black Sea fleet to the Caucasus. Amphibious landings near Odesa seem like a suicidal idea.
Moreover Russia doesnt have the shipping in the Black Sea to support a substantial amphibious force in any case.
Russia has one regiment in Transnistria. Thats a token force.
Russia should worry that the Ukrainians may take Transnistria, to make a point I suppose, as from the Ukrainian side it is indefensible. Russia should be grateful to Moldavia and Romania, the Ukrainians are probably holding off because of a reluctance to embarass them.; 10/15/25, 11:48 PM
buwaya said...: By a weird quirk of family history, an ancestor of ours (on my mothers side, theres all kinds of weird there) was killed in the siege of Bender, now in Transnistria, while in the Turkish service, holding Moldavia against Catherine the Greats Russians. I've always wanted to see the fortress of Bender, which is still intact. Just out of curiosity.; 10/15/25, 11:59 PM
Saint Croix said...: Gay marriage kind of rocked my liberal Episcopal church. We're one of the 10 biggest Episcopal churches in the country. And the fight over gay marriage shook us a little bit. Because, in Christianity, you're not supposed to have sex with anybody outside of marriage. So, if a church is performing gay marriages, it is sanctioning homosexuality.

The reason I'm bringing this up now, is that damn AI whale garbage truck discussion on the Alec Baldwin thread.

I'm a pro-lifer. I might have mentioned this before. And so to me, trying to wake people up to these infanticides and how bad it is, that's like a sperm whale. And gay marriage is more like a tiny minnow.

I was in a priest's office around this time, trying to talk about my big issue, abortion. And I asked her, "Have you ever thought about why fuck is a bad word?" And she said, "No, but you have." And I said, "Yes. Fuck is a bad word, because sex outside of love and marriage leads to rape and infanticide." And humanity knows this, which is why the word "fuck" still has power, even though we throw the word out there all the time.

What drives me crazy, and breaks my heart, are upper-class liberal types who never, ever, say that bad word "fuck." But when there's an unwanted pregnancy? They go to the doctor's office and pay a physician who has abandoned Hippocrates to stab and/or poison their child. And this is deemed legitimate because American authorities have said so. And they don't see, or think about, the violence of this act. Because our media hides the violence from everybody.

To many people, the word "fuck" is violence and awful and how-dare-you. But the action of fucking up an unborn child by grabbing his free-floating fetal head and ripping it off is normal medical practice.

So I'm trying to make this argument. And this discussion is in the middle of the gay marriage "crisis" that's rocking my church. And somewhere in our discussion, my priest brings up gay marriage. And I look at her and I say, "I'm not talking about gay marriage."

She was a little embarrassed. And she said, "Oh, right. But you have no idea how many people have been in my office talking about gay marriage lately."

To me, gay marriage is a damn minnow floating around. Gay marriage is not going to send our church into a tree. And it didn't. Although we did lose a bunch of people in our church, and brought in a bunch of new people. Numbers-wise, we did just fine.; 10/16/25, 12:01 AM
Saint Croix said...: To our authorities, Roe v. Wade is a minor thing. In three years of law school, I spent one hour out of one day talking about Roe v. Wade in my Con Law class. It was a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of my legal education. We spent as much time on sodomy as abortion. Like they are moral and legal equivalents.

To a good-sized chunk of the American people, Roe v. Wade was a huge deal. So I would just warn nice upper class liberals, who get their news from the news, and read liberal books, and trust doctors and lawyers and journalists, you are wrong. You are wrong to trust these authorities.

Many years later, when Roe v. Wade was over-ruled, one of my priests (different priest) wrote a very heartfelt thing on facebook about all the stress people were under because of Dobbs. And in the comments, I wrote, "God calls on us to love our children." That's all I said. And he deleted his post.

I appreciated his action. But I also felt it was kind of sad, that liberal reaction to a sin -- let's not talk about it or think about it. Let's think happy thoughts, and change the subject.; 10/16/25, 12:02 AM
Saint Croix said...: If you go back 50 years, it's kind of bizarre to realize that the statutes punishing birth control, and the statutes punishing abortion, had similar criminal punishments. So you can see why Ivy League types might carelessly conflate the two.

One of the quirky things about this, of course, is that the punishment for partial-birth abortion was very severe. In Texas, it was life in prison.

That's why Justice Blackmun and the Supremes excluded that part of the statute from their judicial opinion. Apparently, they felt like it was a bad idea to say it's a constitutional right to do something that is punishable by life in prison.

Of course, 27 years later, in the first Carhart case, they said exactly that. That's really the case that made a pro-lifer out of me.

To this day, pro-choice people want to talk about conception, where the line between birth control and abortion is a gray area. That first week of the pregnancy, nobody knows when it happens. Emergency contraception is like swallowing two birth control pills. (Justice Marshall made a similar comment during the oral argument in Roe).

Pro-lifers want to talk about the process of birth, when the baby goes from being unborn, sub-human, property, to a citizen of the United States. To the Carhart majority, they thought that was a gray area too, and they resolved it by killing babies in the middle of birth.

So I would urge all pro-lifers, maybe God made the first week of pregnancy unknowable for us, so rape victims might have access to emergency contraception. And for you pro-choice readers, I would beg you, please, let's take infanticide off the table. We do know when people die, there are laws on the books that define it. And it's still unanimous in all 50 states.

We need to be cognizant of rape and infanticide, and take those issues off the table, when we try to resolve abortion in our laws.; 10/16/25, 12:21 AM
buwaya said...: https://news.usni.org/2025/10/15/philippine-navy-stands-up-naval-air-warfare-force
Philippines forming dedicated ASW air units.
Guess why.; 10/16/25, 12:33 AM
Saint Croix said...: Hitler was a leftist. He's all yours.

You should say "socialist," it's more obvious that way.

Hitler took Communism and added a racial, "national" component. Thus, National Socialism, or a Nazi ideology.

Liberals who want to avoid Nazism, ought to avoid Communism, too. The mass murders are shockingly similar.

And conservatives who want to avoid Nazism, ought to avoid racial theories. That led to the slave trade. "Our tribe beat your tribe, so you are inferior to us."

Hitler rejected Christ. And in his insane, addled brain, I think he believed that if he wiped out the Jews, he would keep a messiah from ever being born. See also The Massacre of the Innocents.; 10/16/25, 12:39 AM
Saint Croix said...: I have just discovered that some "historians" are denying Herod's genocide ever happened. Fans of autocratic government and big state solutions, I'm guessing. You think a follower of Christ is inventing a genocide 70 years after it happened? Wouldn't his readers be astounded and put off by an obvious fraud like that?; 10/16/25, 12:48 AM
Ampersand said...: Saint Croix, I can't disprove Herod's slaughter of the innocents, or the arrival of the Magi at the birthplace of Jesus, or the census of Augustus, or a slew of other elements within the New Testament. The absence of historical corroboration of these extraordinary events strikes many reasonable people as evidence that the events never occurred. Anyway, these are not the kinds of issues that are dispositive of the truth value of your religion.
And pre-literacy, and thus also pre-newspaper and pre-internet, 70 years of oral traditions erroneously recounted was plenty of time for a made-up story to find adherents.; 10/16/25, 1:11 AM
Mr. Forward said...: They asked for "No Kings" what they got was "No Congress".; 10/16/25, 2:19 AM
rehajm said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/16/25, 2:32 AM
rehajm said...: October 15 is when I get my Tax Accountant back from the depths…; 10/16/25, 2:33 AM
rehajm said...: That Nat Geo photo is amazing. I’m a big Frans Lanting fan who has numerous awards for captivating Okavango images and somewhere deep in my storage unit is a National Geographic book with many of their award winning wildlife photos from around the world…but that image is most compelling…; 10/16/25, 2:38 AM
wendybar said...: Poor little Nasty Nancy Pelosi is losing it because she is caught up in the biggest lie of January 6th, and may be going DOWN for it. SHUT UP she yells at a journalist asking her why she didn't allow the National Guard to come like Capitol Police Chief requested them numerous times, and she lied about it. WAH WAH, poor little insider trading Nasty Nancy. Cry harder!!! Trying to blame Trump for YOUR actions is dumb. Almost as dumb as AOC and Ghetto Barbie!!!

Miranda Devine
@mirandadevine
Nancy lost it because she knows she's in trouble. Yes, she did ignore
@ChiefSund
's repeated and increasingly frantic requests to authorize the National Guard backup for his outnumbered troops on J6. Even after the Capitol was breached she refused to give the go-ahead. Her sergeant at arms told Sund he was waiting for the go-ahead from above. That was Nancy. By the time the guard were authorized it was too late and she had established the fake narrative to weaponize against Trump and his supporters during the Biden years. She also lied that Trump supporters defecated in the Capitol. She is sick.
Quote
Jack

@jackunheard
·
13h
🚨WHOA! Nancy Pelosi screams "SHUT UP!" at a reporter asking a simple question.

She then walks away while forcing her staffers to HOLD HER HANDS so she doesn't fall.

https://x.com/mirandadevine/status/1978559869566513448; 10/16/25, 3:16 AM
wendybar said...: Chief Steven Sund
@ChiefSund
@SpeakerPelosi
- Ma'am, let me help refresh your memory. It was your Sergeant at Arms (SAA) who repeatedly denied my multiple requests for National Guard assistance before and on January 6. Even on Jan 6, your Sergeant at Arms denied my urgent requests for over 70 minutes, while he was “running it up the chain” for your approval.

The Pentagon offered National Guard assistance, but I had to decline because your SAA would not grant me the legal authority as required under federal law (2 U.S.C. §1970).
@StephenM

@RepLoudermilk

@SpeakerJohnson

https://x.com/ChiefSund/status/1978577674588098635; 10/16/25, 3:18 AM
Clyde said...: @ Michael Fitzgerald at 8:16 PM
The singer's glasses! 1974 was the heyday of Elton John with all of the wild glasses, and the Brownsville Station singer's pair would fit right in. They also look like the same kind of oversized frames that are popular with some people right now.; 10/16/25, 3:47 AM
wendybar said...: Funny, that she can't tell you what a woman is because she isn't a Biologist, but she calls all black people too disabled to vote?? Can you say NUTCASE???

The Babylon Bee
@TheBabylonBee
·
Follow
Clarence Thomas Gently Explains To KBJ That Not All Black People Are Mentally Disabled, Just Her https://buff.ly/d4WmOvZ; 10/16/25, 3:48 AM
Olson Johnson is right! said...: Eva Marie-
"Why are Democrats such zealots when it comes to abortion?"
First thanks for being thoughtful about a horrible topic. I will be thoughtful in return- but I'll be TLDR.

The answer to your question (I believe) is the possibility of medical complications hangs Damoclese-like above women They wish to protect lives by having abortion available if needed. I've been strong Pro-Life forever and I will tell you that nearly all people (yes, even democrats) do love babies and want the best for pregnant women. Aside from a small psycho fringe, most people do not want abortion for birth control or to empower feminist theory or to control the population of "groups that we don't want to have too many of" or other cra-cra ideologies.

These well-meaning people feel that this need to access medical termination of pregnancy is so important that no politician or judge or priest should ever be able to hinder it. And they feel that allowing all other abortions for elective reasons are the price to pay for keeping that medical need secure. (think about the legal theory of letting 99 guilty people go free rather that one innocent person go to jail)

To get America to a place where elective abortion is unthinkable we on the Pro-Life side need to open the door with the medical exception. We need to be compassionate and tell women they will get the care they need. It is a tragedy and sad these women need more than abortion, they need love and care and support.

I used the word fringe above--that fringe controls the democratic party like other 80/20 issues. The fringe demands no restrictions (in the name of medical emergency) but they are the sickos who actually DO want to see black fetuses destroyed, and really DO think that abortion is a way to fight the patriarchy, and really DO have a screw loose.

They have the money and votes to put very radical politicians into office. Let Them. Let them piss away their money and influence. You and I will calmly and continuously every day convince more and more of our fellow Americans that the fetus is alive, is human, is an individual and is a person.; 10/16/25, 4:36 AM
Derve said...: “ Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?”
======
sumac; 10/16/25, 4:51 AM
Derve said...: “ Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?”
======
sumac; 10/16/25, 4:51 AM
n.n said...: "Why are Democrats such zealots when it comes to abortion?"

To keep women affordable, available, reusable, and taxable. And the "burden" of evidence aborted, sequestered in sanctuary states. #MeToo

Human rites are performed for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress.; 10/16/25, 5:17 AM
n.n said...: Without discrimination for sexual orientation, pedophilia is a social progression, but a baby would be a "burden". Highly political incongruent, even in liberal culture.; 10/16/25, 5:20 AM
n.n said...: The "burden" apology is used in conjunction with the technical term-of-art "fetus" by abortionists and like-minded to socially distance themselves from their wicked solution (e.g. one-child, selective-child). There are Diverse precedents for these transhumane ideologies and practices.; 10/16/25, 5:26 AM
hanuman_prodigious_leaper said...: Made a delicious turkey soup today
=================================
thanks for recipe
making today with chicken drumsticks on hand!; 10/16/25, 5:27 AM
Eva Marie said...: “These well-meaning people”
I don’t think so. If they were well meaning people their arguments with pro lifers wouldn’t be so vicious. If they were well meaning people they would attempt to understand the other side and compromise rather than push for late term abortions. If they were well meaning people they would look at the genocide their policies is inflicting on the Black community. If they were well meaning people they wouldn’t celebrate abortions.
By the way, I am for keeping abortions legal. But I understand that abortion does result in the death of a baby and everything should be done to make them, as President Clinton said, rare. And the idea that there can be no compromise, that there can be no cutoff for when abortions can be performed - that is not an idea of well meaning people.; 10/16/25, 6:09 AM
Eva Marie said...: BTW, abortion used to be a bi-partisan issue. But the Democrats pushed pro-life politicians out of their party. And pro abortion advocates pushed Republicans out of their ranks.; 10/16/25, 6:18 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “To our authorities, Roe v. Wade is a minor thing. In three years of law school, I spent one hour out of one day talking about Roe v. Wade in my Con Law class. It was a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of my legal education. We spent as much time on sodomy as abortion. Like they are moral and legal equivalents.”

Almost 40 years ago, as 2L, we covered Roe v Wade in Con Law. The otherwise very liberal prof asked that one of the feminists take the other side. When the smoke had settled, over half the class had walked out, and down to the Dean’s office to lodge a protest against the prof.

It was maybe the most ridiculous thing I saw in law school. They should have been learning that the best way of defending a point of view in the law, is to know and understand the other side’s arguments well enough to debate, defending by asserting those arguments. My thoughts were, when the case was reversed, that we had a generation and a half of LS grads who so took the case as gospel, that none of them knew the arguments on the other side well enough to adequately defend the ruling.; 10/16/25, 6:34 AM
Jaq said...: I am pretty sure that the genocide by the Israelites recounted in the book of Joshua is based on historical fact too.; 10/16/25, 6:45 AM
Eva Marie said...: @wendybar
“Funny, that she can't tell you what a woman is because she isn't a Biologist, but she calls all black people too disabled to vote?? Can you say NUTCASE???”
I don’t think she’s a nutcase (on this issue) Inadvertantly she spoke the “truth” that a lot of people have internalized because of the racist policies and attitudes Democrats have pushed. She may walk back what she said but that was a moment of truth.; 10/16/25, 6:54 AM
narciso said...: Is it a coincidence that cuomo who celebrated sacrifice to the the old gods would then kill 30,000 seniors and hence invoke another demon in mamdani no it is not; 10/16/25, 6:56 AM
narciso said...: This is something darker than a dispute over law; 10/16/25, 7:02 AM
Jaq said...: The Romans took tens of thousands of Jewish men as slaves and set them to work building the Colosseum, there’s a surviving plaque in it documenting this. The Arch of Titus shows the looted wealth of the Temple being paraded through Rome. This is how the Isrealites were expelled from the Levant, any historian defending Rome from the charge of genocide based on lack of corroboration of a contemporary account isn’t really a historian.

DNA studies show that European Jewry is descended of a male lineage based in the Middle East and a female lineage based in southern Europe, which fits very cleanly with the known historical record of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem by the Romans.; 10/16/25, 7:03 AM
Eva Marie said...: Also @wendybar: thank you for that Nancy Pelosi reference. I looked up the clip. Hilarious. She needs to be held accountable for her malicious decision that day.; 10/16/25, 7:05 AM
Fritz said...: “ Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?”
======
sumac

I was trying to count leaves, but I think it's Poison Ivy, but it might be Virginia Creeper.; 10/16/25, 7:11 AM
Breezy said...: “they don’t have equal access to the voting system…”

They have as much access to the voting system as the rest of us. Affirmative Action is not at all applicable when it comes to voting and districting. Plus, the whole idea has been sidelined for what it actually was intended for. She needs to try to keep up.; 10/16/25, 7:23 AM
Jersey Fled said...: “ 1. Gabe Amo (D) — Rhode Island’s 1st (RI-1) — ~63.9% White.
2. Janelle Bynum (D) — Oregon’s 5th (OR-5) — ~78.8% White.
3. Herb Conaway (D) — New Jersey’s 3rd (NJ-3) — ~63.3% White.
4. Valerie Foushee (D) — North Carolina’s 4th (NC-4) — ~53.1% White.
5. Summer Lee (D) — Pennsylvania’s 12th (PA-12) — ~72.9% White.
6. Emilia Sykes (D) — Ohio’s 13th (OH-13) — ~75.7% White.

Black congressmen currently serving in majority white districts.; 10/16/25, 7:51 AM
Peachy said...: David Duke voted for Biden and Kamala.; 10/16/25, 8:13 AM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: Good morning, Clyde. When I saw those frames I thought, Looks like Harry Potter traded in his magic stick for an electric guitar!
Good morning, hanuman_prodigious_leaper, Bon appetite! Let us know how it tasted!; 10/16/25, 8:22 AM
Peachy said...: Hitler was an Antifa thug. and a king. He was Hamas-like.; 10/16/25, 8:22 AM
Saint Croix said...: 70 years of oral traditions erroneously recounted was plenty of time for a made-up story to find adherents.

70 years ago is 1955, all right?

Now suppose you are following a rabbi in 2025, and you have witnessed miracles. And you want to spread the word to other Jews that this man is the messiah. And you are recounting everything you have seen and heard.

Does it make any sense, in 2025, that you would invent a genocide of Jewish babies in 1955? How would such an insane lie help you find converts among Jews? Don't you think Jews track the genocides of their people and remember such things?

It's the moral equivalent of being a Holocaust denier, and saying the Jews made up the Holocaust to help recruitment efforts. I would be throwing books into walls if somebody made an argument like this to me in a scholarly institution.

Our modern day Holocaust was 80 years ago. People remember. What the fuck, historians.; 10/16/25, 8:33 AM
Rusty said...: Son. You don't have the 50 points to lose.; 10/16/25, 8:33 AM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: https://youtu.be/sr-kXVKXBI0?si=YiPX-DS2KAoickVx
Uh, oh! Naughty naughty Brewers fans!
But is it damage control or consequences for bad behavior?; 10/16/25, 8:37 AM
Jamie said...: The absence of historical corroboration of these extraordinary events strikes many reasonable people as evidence that the events never occurred.
...
And pre-literacy, and thus also pre-newspaper and pre-internet, 70 years of oral traditions erroneously recounted was plenty of time for a made-up story to find adherents.

I'm not here to defend the historicity of the New Testament (maybe another day!) but these two arguments aren't very strong. Do you think Tiberius Caesar existed? Because there's only one original citation for him, apparently - Tacitus, more distant in time than the various epistle writers were from the death of Jesus. There are multiple independent reports of the historical existence of Jesus, some within 30-40 years of his death, and of what his followers believed about him.

And oral tradition societies tend to have excellent accuracy in their stories, generation to generation. Seventy years is a short time to maintain an accurate oral tradition.

Plus (and also confounding to the point I make just above, so there's that), Jews were literate - the girls too, I believe.; 10/16/25, 8:39 AM
DINKY DAU 45 said...: trump will have to "make a deal" on the ACA premiums situation soon. People are getting their mail now with the increased prices and even the red people ain't happy. TACO will have to do his thing.; 10/16/25, 9:06 AM
Mary Beth said...: On the front (web) page of the NYT, it says, "Trump has a superpower". If you click the link, the headline changes to "When Vanity is Your Superpower".

Frank [Bruni]: If I were JD Vance, I’d have little time to pray because I’d be so busy massaging President Trump’s ego 24/7.

Could Vance be more sycophantic?

Bet he never said that about Harris when she said there wasn't anything Biden has done that she would have done differently.

In some ways Trump is vain, but not too vain to put on a McDonald's apron. A lot of his vanity seems like salesman showmanship to me. Obama on the other hand is just vain.; 10/16/25, 9:06 AM
Mary Beth said...: I was trying to count leaves, but I think it's Poison Ivy, but it might be Virginia Creeper.

Picture This says Virginia Creeper. And that it looks healthy.; 10/16/25, 9:13 AM
Big Mike said...: Do you think Tiberius Caesar existed?

Tiberius Caesar was the emperor of Rome from AD 14 until his death in AD 37. I am inclined to believe he existed.; 10/16/25, 9:21 AM
Iman said...: Let’s get real: If Frank Bruni were Vance, he’d be too busy getting his prostate massaged to do any praying.; 10/16/25, 9:23 AM
Saint Croix said...: I know the Slaughter of the Innocents is a tiny genocide of Jews, and the Holocaust was an unbelievably large genocide of Jews. So they're not comparable in terms of impact to the Jewish people.

But denying a genocide is such a huge act of hubris and hostility. It's an irrational hatred of a religion.

Christians kept track of all our martyrs. The Romans killed many of us. Just today in my church service, we had a lesson on Christian martyrs killed by Bloody Mary. That's Christians killing Christians.

The blood shed is what makes our religions so powerful. People died to spread the truth. For some fat ass "scholar" to opine, it didn't happen on Wikipedia, is to play like you're omniscient.

The absence of historical corroboration of these extraordinary events strikes many reasonable people as evidence that the events never occurred.

Powerful people killing innocent people is not an "extraordinary event." It happens every day. It's not a miracle. To deny it, is to suggest that you don't give a damn about innocent people.

See also the Holodomor, and how scholars dispute it was a genocide. Nice! Very impressed with your socialist revisions. I'm sure the people of Ukraine love it, too.; 10/16/25, 9:27 AM
Iman said...: They scream “NO KINGS!” cuz they all QUEENS.; 10/16/25, 9:29 AM
Meade said...: n.n said...
Japanese maple? Or are the leaves turning red before the Fall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenocissus_quinquefolia; 10/16/25, 9:48 AM
Michael McNeil said...: The Arch of Titus shows the looted wealth of the Temple being paraded through Rome. This is how the Isrealites were expelled from the Levant, any historian defending Rome from the charge of genocide based on lack of corroboration of a contemporary account isn’t really a historian. {…} {Which} fits very cleanly with the known historical record of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Yet, six decades later (after the “1st Jewish-Roman War” of 66-73 A.D.) there were still enough Jews in Judea to launch another huge, multiyear revolt/war against Rome—that is, the 2nd Jewish-Roman War, a.k.a. Bar Kokhba Revolt, of 132-136 A.D., which the Jews also lost. Many Jews were expelled from “Palestine” then, too (not to speak of killed).

Yet, a quarter of a millennium following the latter genocide (around the turn of the 5th century)—as well as it being after, one might note, the establishment of the dominance of Christianity in the area, who also weren't particularly friendly with Jews—but even then, there were still enough Jews resident in “Canaan” (that is, in Galilee—primarily the cities of Caesarea and Tiberias in Roman Syria Palaestina), for them to compose there one of the two great Jewish Talmuds—the so-called “Jerusalem” or “Palestinian” Talmud (the other being the “Babylonian” Talmud originating in Mesopotamia). Guess the Jews weren't all expelled after all…; 10/16/25, 9:57 AM
Lazarus said...: Ketanji Brown Jackson made a stupid, condescending comment. If you're plugged into all the conservative media, though, the reaction is starting to feel a little like overkill. Her idea of blackness as a disability has been Democratic policy for years.

Mikie, Katie, Abigail: there was a lot of talk in the Biden era about "mediocre white men" needing to get out of the way to make room for dynamic, competent women and people of color. This could be the year when we realize that being a woman doesn't necessarily make one omnicompetent and the mediocre white women come a cropper.

Dixiecrats: an awful lot of them stayed registered Democrats until they died. They might not have been able to stomach McGovern or Mondale, but most of the country couldn't either.; 10/16/25, 10:04 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Ketanji Brown Jackson made a stupid, condescending comment. If you're plugged into all the conservative media, though, the reaction is starting to feel a little like overkill. Her idea of blackness as a disability has been Democratic policy for years."

Without even reading the transcript, I can tell what you are probably distorting: the case law about Congress's remedial power under Section 5 of the 14 amendment. There's an important case about the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Republicans need to back off on their notion that Ketanji Brown Jackson is stupid. It makes you look racist. Oh, you're actually not? Well, she's not too. Straighten up!; 10/16/25, 10:16 AM
john mosby said...: Roe had a lot of flaws even if you are pro-choice, so a pro-choice law student would benefit a lot from learning them. The Taney-like assertion that the unborn has no rights, for one thing. A pro-choicer might initially cheer it, but then remember how long Taney's assertion stood, and perhaps not want to rest the decision on such a wobbly pedestal.

The trimester structure, based on the state of ob/gyn science circa 1970, also an unstable basis for Roe.

And finally, the assertion of federal jurisdiction at all in what is at worst a garden-variety homicide - a clear state issue.

A prof could challenge a student to do better than the Roe court at preserving some kind of legality for abortion. Maybe recognizing the unborn child as a person. Then taking the case as an alleged denial of equal protection - after all, only unborn children are aborted. Then saying that, like with so many other things in the law, we have to balance one person's rights - even the right to life itself - against others'. There was still a draft when Roe started. If you can tell an 18-yo man who's done nothing wrong that he has to die, well, I guess you can tell an 18-week fetus he has to die. Etc.

Not saying I recommend that line of reasoning, but it's an idea. And could be a fun classroom exercise. But there is no such thing anymore. Maybe there will be again soon as Trump mucks out the academic augean stables. CC, JSM; 10/16/25, 10:20 AM
Breezy said...: “Republicans need to back off on their notion that Ketanji Brown Jackson is stupid. It makes you look racist. “

Clarify, please. Are people allowed to criticize a black justice without being called racist? Should we be able to expect her to better explain her position regarding the Disabilities Act wrt voting? It’s likely a good number of black people are offended by her statement.; 10/16/25, 10:35 AM
Lazarus said...: I said I thought the response was overkill. I said her comment was stupid because it touched off such a reaction. She gave the other side a talking point. Give them the dots and they'll connect them.; 10/16/25, 10:37 AM
Kakistocracy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/16/25, 11:05 AM
narciso said...: They loved atalin who killed twice as many civilians at least; 10/16/25, 11:55 AM
Jamie said...: Tiberius Caesar was the emperor of Rome from AD 14 until his death in AD 37. I am inclined to believe he existed.

Me too, and every historian too. That's my point! Contemporaneous accounts of his life do not exist - the earliest account is from decades after his death. But HE certainly existed.; 10/16/25, 1:06 PM
Eva Marie said...: “It’s likely a good number of black people are offended by her statement.” Yes, they are offended. So far Grok has not found any liberal Black voices defending her remarks but has a long list of conservative Black voices criticizing her remarks.; 10/16/25, 1:32 PM
Saint Croix said...: The Taney-like assertion that the unborn has no rights, for one thing. A pro-choicer might initially cheer it, but then remember how long Taney's assertion stood, and perhaps not want to rest the decision on such a wobbly pedestal.

Bingo. Many people don't realize that Blackmun actually cited the slavery parts of the Constitution in his "person" discussion. Like he was pretending he didn't know that a "person" is a "live human being." He was pretending that it was a legal term-of-art, and you had to go to the Ivy League and think really hard about what this tough two syllable word means. And the slave clauses help with that thought process, apparently.

(See also his footnote where he notes the unborn have never been counted in a census. If we don't count you, you don't count as a human being. The fascist and pro-slavery implications of that are astounding).; 10/16/25, 1:51 PM
Saint Croix said...: Illegal immigrants are also not counted in a census, Mr. Blackmun. Can we stab them?; 10/16/25, 1:52 PM
Saint Croix said...: The importance of "birth" to socialist thinking on abortion is that equal protection only applies if you are a citizen of the USA. Birth = citizenship. Unborn = non-citizen.

The vast majority of leftist commentary on abortion stands on the wobbly assertion that unborn babies are not babies. This is by far the weakest part of Roe, and why the opinion was doomed.; 10/16/25, 1:54 PM
Saint Croix said...: I've got several pro-life priests in my church, by the way. It's kind of an underground movement among Episcopalians. I think Christians will ultimately be pro-life.

Psalm 139.; 10/16/25, 2:08 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Jamie:
You are wrong. Contemporary accounts of Tiberius Caesar do exist, primarily the history of Velleius Paterculus, who wrote many pages on the life of Tiberius before and after he became emperor, and knew him personally.

You have mixed him up with Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea. His very existence is only attested in the New Testament and much later authors, so some non-Christians have imagined he was a Christian fiction. They were proven wrong a few years ago when an inscription with his name on it turned up.; 10/16/25, 3:07 PM
Rusty said...: Then it's a good thing stupid isn't a race.; 10/16/25, 4:38 PM
narciso said...: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7959/7959-h/7959-h.htm; 10/16/25, 4:39 PM
Leland said...: Read at AoS about Minneapolis Public Schools running segregated classes. You might think this is big news, but not really, because this has been in place since
2014. Actually, in 2014, they started by focusing on Black Males only, but by 2019, they entered the 20th Century and grew the curriculum to include women too.

You may wonder what the parents think of this? Well, they filed a lawsuit in 2015 that finally reached a decision in the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2023. The parents won. You might think that finally ended racial segregation in Tim Walz's Minnesota. You would be wrong.

I'm sure the normal bots will be around to defend Democrat segregated schools.; 10/16/25, 5:27 PM
Jersey Fled said...: “I am pretty sure that the genocide by the Israelites recounted in the book of Joshua is based on historical fact too.”

I’m not going to hold that against them 3000 years ago. Hell, I can’t hardly even remember that far back.; 10/16/25, 6:09 PM
n.n said...: Democrats are trapped in the La Brea tar pits of Diversity (i.e. class-disordered ideologies) doctrine. That's a shame. Abort.; 10/16/25, 6:27 PM
n.n said...: Didn’t Jesus say, ‘love your enemies’? Why is God declaring war?”

First of all, why the Canaanites? The main reasons given are that their culture had become morally corrupt, especially when it came to sex (Lev. 18), and because they widely practiced child sacrifice (Deut. 12:29-31). God didn’t want these practices to influence Israel, so these groups needed to be expelled.

But that only raises the second question, “Did God really command the destruction of all the Canaanites, like a genocide?” At first glance, we see the phrases “totally destroy” and “leave no survivor” or “anything that breathes.” However, when we look more closely, we discover that these phrases are used by the author as hyperbole and are not meant literally.

Planned parenthood, of course.

Progress has liberal precedents.; 10/16/25, 6:35 PM