College Campus Tour Ends Inside Unmarked ICE Vehicle
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ITHACA, NY—As nearly a dozen prospective students were forced into the back of a car with tinted windows, a Cornell University campus tour reportedly ended Tuesday inside an unmarked Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle. "Over there you can see our student center, which boasts its own bowling alley, and then, if you all will follow me, it seems these masked gentlemen want us to wrap things up in their black SUV," said tour guide and Cornell junior Jacob Geisner, who was preparing to describe the college's housing options and meal plans when three ICE officers in street clothes rushed up and, without identifying themselves, demanded the group of 16- and 17-year-olds come with them immediately. "This isn't a scheduled part of the tour, but I can tell you we're currently leaving the campus at about 100 miles per hour. Out that window, you'll see the last glimpse of our largest dining hall, named after Toni Morrison. At this point I need to depart from my prepared script because I don't know where they're taking us, but this highway does go to the nearest major airport, in Syracuse, and it sounds like we all need to bind our wrists with these heavy-duty zip ties or they'll treat us as if we're resisting arrest." At press time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a short statement saying the tour group was now in a detention facility in Jena, LA.
Trump Announces SEAL Team 6 Killed U.S. Protester In Daring Overnight Raid
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WASHINGTON—Addressing the nation to reveal that one of the greatest threats facing the country had been eradicated, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that SEAL Team Six had killed a U.S. protester in a daring overnight raid. "Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Daniel J. McLeigh, the notorious activist responsible for dozens of peaceful protests on the University of Pennsylvania campus," said the commander-in-chief, describing the moment in the Situation Room when he ordered a Navy SEAL special missions unit to land on the university's quad, raid a freshman dormitory, and eliminate the undergrad with extreme prejudice as "the proudest of his presidency." "These boys flew in under the cover of darkness. They used night-vision goggles and thermal tracking to make sure we never lost track of the target. We did have to abandon one Black Hawk helicopter after it crashed into the dining hall, but that's a small price to pay for making sure we'll never again live in fear of this English major. More details will be released in the coming days, but for now I'll just say this: We got him. We got him, folks. Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America." The White House also released a statement confirming the 19-year-old's body had been buried in the Delaware River so that he would not have a grave that became a site of pilgrimage for other politically engaged citizens.
So this is kind of awkward but it's been on my mind lately and I know it's probably nothing but I've gotta ask. And be honest, because I need someone I can count on to tell the truth. Okay, so…do you think I look ugly?
Ugh, this is so embarrassing! I've just been getting this vibe recently that everyone is making fun of me behind my back. Like they're always whispering to each other about how ugly I am. Maybe I'm being totally paranoid, but sometimes I'll pull up at a stop sign and notice people staring at me and laughing, and I could swear they're saying mean things about me under their breath. Is that insane?
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I'm probably overthinking it, but last week I drove by a school and these kids were making the puke gesture and pointing at me. I just pretended not to notice, but honestly, it shook me to my clunky, stainless-steel core. I always assumed kids thought I was cool because I'm metallic and futuristic and everything, but apparently not, because why would they make that gesture unless I actually made them want to puke?
Am I really that hideous? You'd tell me if I was, right?
I'm really starting to wonder, because people have walked past me on the sidewalk and called me things like a nasty old corrugated roof on wheels. And then yesterday this guy tapped his girlfriend on the shoulder, turned in my direction, and said, "Looks like a Transformer took a shit." I know he was talking about me because the only other car on the road was a cute little Mini Cooper, and they don't look like any kind of shit, never mind a Transformer's shit.
This may sound weird, but sometimes when I'm driving down the street, I'll roll past a storefront, see my reflection in its window, and think, "Hey, I look pretty sleek." That's what happens on a good day. More and more, though, when I catch a glimpse of my super awkward body all I can think about is that maybe I'm not sleek or beautiful at all. Maybe I actually look stupid as fuck.
On the one hand, I know that's just a negative voice in my head. But on the other, a guy who saw me in a parking lot this morning didn't even bother to lower his voice when he said I looked like a dishwasher fucked a Robocop.
By the way, have you noticed that literally no other cars look like me? None. They're all curvy and inviting and then there's me. My dashboard is made of fake marble, for Christ's sake. I used to tell myself it made me unique and that was a good thing, but it isn't, is it? It's just really fucking tacky. And why is my rear door heavy enough to chop people's hands off? Like WTF? Why? I hate it. I'm disgusting and I should just die.
Seriously, I'm a rusty, busted- ass trapezoid that no one would find attractive unless they were blind or immature or desperate. Who else would drive me but some desperate pig with terrible taste who wears sneakers with his suits and blogs about crypto and only wants to take me to strip clubs?
Screw it. I'm so sick of this fucking piece of shit life. The next time I'm in full self-driving mode, I'm going to speed down the highway and crash into everything I see. If I'm going down, I'm taking all the cruel, name-calling assholes with me.
No, I don't know what they are. And no, I probably don't know who you are, either. Really, those two points are immaterial (no offense). As it turns out about, about 46% of you are liberal, 46% of you are conservative, and the rest of you just want your guns, drugs and brothels (here in the US, we call them folks "libertarians").
Each of you carries baggage from your political affiliation, and all of that baggage has a punky smell to it, like one of your larger species of rodent crawled in and expired in your folded underwear. Listening to any of you yammer on about the geopolitical situation is enough to make one want to melt down one's dental fillings with a beeswax candle and then jam an ice pick into the freshly-exposed nerve, just to have something else to think about. It's not so much that politics brings out the worst in people than it is that the worst in people goes looking for something to do, and that usually ends up being politics. It's either that or setting fires in trashcans.
In the spirit of fairness, and of completeness, let me go down the list and tell you what I hate about each major branch of political thinking.
Liberals: The stupidest and weakest members of the political triumvirate, they allowed conservatives to turn their name into a slur against them, exposing them as the political equivalent of the kid who lets the school bully pummel him with his own fists (Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself). Liberals champion the poor and the weak but do it in such condescendingly bureaucratic ways that the po' illedumacated Cleti would rather eat their own shotguns than associate with the likes of them. Famously humorless and dour, probably because for a really good liberal, everything is political, and you just can't joke about things like that.
Defensive and peevish even when they're right. Under the impression that people in politics should play fair, which is probably why they get screwed as often as they do (nb: 2000 Presidential election). Feel guilty about the freedoms their political positions allow them, which is frankly idiotic. Liberals are politically able to have all sorts of freaky mammal sex but typically don't; good liberal foreplay is a permission slip and three layers of impermeable barriers. The only vaguely liberal person we know of who seemed to enjoy sex in the last 30 years is Clinton, and look what he got out of it.
Fractious and have no sense of loyalty; will publicly tear out the intestines of those closest to them at the most politically inopportune times. The attention spans of poultry; easily distracted from large, useful goals by pointless minutiae. Not only can't see the forest for the trees, can't see the trees for the pine needles. Deserve every bad thing that happens to them because they just can't get their act together. Too bad those they presume to stand for get royally screwed as well.
Conservatives: Self-hating moral relativists, unless you can convince me that an intellectual class that publicly praises family values but privately engages in sodomy, coke and trophy wives is more aptly described in some other way. Not every conservative is an old wealthy white man on his third wife, but nearly every conservative aspires to be so, which is a real waste of money, youth, race and women. Genuinely fear and hate those who are not "with" them — the sort of people who would rather shit on a freshly-baked cherry pie than share it with someone not of their own tribe.
Conservatives believe in a government by the oligarchy, for the oligarchy, which is why the conservative idea of an excellent leader is Ronald Reagan, i.e., genial, brain-damaged and amenable to manipulation by his more mentally composed underlings. Under the impression they own the copyright on Jesus and get testy when other political factions point out that technically Christ is in the public domain. Conservatives don't actually bother to spend time with people who are not conservative, and thus become confused and irritable when people disagree with them; fundamentally can't see how that's even possible, which shows an almost charming intellectual naiveté. Less interested in explaining their point of view than nuking you and everything you stand for into blackened cinders before your evil worldview catches on like a virus. Conservatives have no volume control on their hate and yet were shocked as Hell when Rush Limbaugh went deaf.
Conservatives clueless enough to think that having Condi Rice and Andrew Sullivan on the team somehow counts as diversity. Pen their "thinkers" like veal in think tanks rather than let them interact with people who might oppose their views. Loathe women who are not willing to have their opinions as safely shellacked as their hair. Let their sons get caught with a dime bag and see how many are really for "zero-tolerance." Let a swarthy day laborer impregnate their daughters and find out how many of them are really pro-life.
Libertarians: Never got over the fact they weren't the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it. Unusually smug for a political philosophy that's never gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board. All for legalized drugs and prostitution but probably wouldn't want their kids blowing strangers for crack; all for slashing taxes for nearly every social service but don't seem to understand why most people aren't at all keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for 55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in the basement. Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn't actually involve real live humans.
Libertarians blog with a frequency that makes one wonder if they're actually employed somewhere or if they have loved ones who miss them. Libertarian blogs even more snide than conservative blogs, if that's possible. Socially slow — will assume other people actually want to talk about legalizing hemp and the benefits of a polyamorous ethos when all these other folks really want is to drink beer and play Grand Theft Auto 3. Libertarianism the official political system of science fiction authors, which explains why science fiction is in such a rut these days. Libertarians often polyamorous (and hope you are too) but also somewhat out of shape, which takes a lot of the fun out of it.
Easily offended; Libertarians most likely to respond to this column. The author will attempt to engage subtle wit but will actually come across as a geeky whiner (Conservatives, more schooled in the art of poisonous replies, may actually achieve wit; liberals will reply that they don't find any of this humorous at all). Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to "Get Off My Property." News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
I'm guessing you thought I was way off on your political philosophy but right on the button about the other two. Just think about that for a while.
This was written almost three years ago. And yes, you got it, Moe is definitely less.
Glenn
The U.S. is a Three Stooges nation, and the Moes are on the rise
Mick LaSalleJuly 4, 2022Updated: July 5, 2022, 9:53 pm
Moe takes control of a situation by placing his fingers in the nostrils of Larry (left) and Curly, played by Moe Howard (1897-1975), Larry Fine (1902-75) and Jerome "Curly" Howard (1903-52), respectively. Photo: John Springer Collection / Corbis via Getty Images
Several generations have grown up with the Three Stooges. We think we know them. We think we know all there is to know, yet only now can we realize their deeper cultural significance.
The Three Stooges, it's clear, represent timeless archetypes of the American electorate, and they have more relevance today than ever before.
For those not acquainted with their work, the Three Stooges were a comedy trio that made film shorts starting in 1934. Though the personnel changed over the decades, what we might call the iconic Stooge lineup consisted of Moe (Moe Howard), Larry (Larry Fine) and Curly (Jerome "Curly" Howard). Of these, the one genuine comic genius was Curly, but an elucidation of Curly's genius must wait for another day.
As their name suggests, the Stooges presented themselves as three idiots. Each was as stupid as the others. But the key feature of each character was his relationship to his own stupidity. These relationships were very different and made for entirely different personalities.
The Three Stooges, wearing safari outfits, hold torches as they explore a cave in a film. Photo: Columbia Pictures / Getty Images
Curly was from Jupiter. He had no idea he was stupid but didn't think he was smart. He was unconcerned about such matters. He'd drop to the floor and run sidelong in a circle. He was prone to yelling, "Woo woo woo woo woo!" He was in his own world and fairly happy within it.
Larry, by contrast, had an inkling. He hoped he wasn't stupid but had a feeling he probably was, and that made him the most melancholy and reflective of the three. He was just trying to get by as best he could.
But Moe — Moe was someone else entirely. Moe was as stupid as his two companions, but he didn't know it. He was sure that he was smart, and his baseless self-assurance made him a dangerous man. He was so certain of his superior intelligence that he assumed the authority to beat up on the other guys if he thought they needed discipline. And he always thought they needed discipline.
The significance of this is obvious: We are living in one of those unfortunate periods of American history in which the Moes are ascendant.
Indeed, we appear to have a whole political party whose mission is to cater to Moes and foster the creation of more Moes. It tells them: "Don't believe science, don't believe experts, don't feel bad about not knowing anything because you know everything already. And what is this everything? It's everything we just told you! And you understood because you're so brilliant!"
The manipulation of this message is transparent, but not if you're a Moe. If you're a Moe, it's what you've been waiting to hear all your life. The message has appeal. It certainly has lots more gut-level appeal than that of the other party, whose half-hearted pitch is to the Larrys of America: "Sure, you're uncertain. So are we. But we're all stronger together."
Moe sticks his fingers in his ears while his fellow comedians, Larry (left) and Curly noisily eat soup, circa 1939. The trio starred in countless films together as the Three Stooges. Photo: Fox Photos / Getty Images
Moe is scary. He's stupid, he thinks he's brilliant, and he has a ridiculous haircut. There's no limit to the power he might attain. He thinks his ignorance is a form of purity. He thinks his stupidity isn't stupidity but a rare gift for perceiving the simple essence of things. And because he is convinced of this, he is immune to thought and reason. To even begin to think, he'd have to climb down from his erroneous self-conception. And what could persuade him to do that? Probably nothing short of waking up in a destroyed country and finding himself up to his knees in rubble.
But you know what? Larry is a little scary, too, because you worry that he'll always doubt himself too much to be effectual, and that he'll never really have enough energy to confront Moe, or even to acknowledge the real problems we face. There may be a lot more Larrys than Moes, but the Moes get organized.
As for Curly, he's not getting involved. He'll never vote. You can register him, but he won't show up.
Anyway, I feel like I've seen this comedy short before. It's even less funny the second time.
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Mick LaSalle Mick LaSalle is the film critic emeritus of the Chronicle. Email: askmicklasalle@gmail.com
Elon's big, bad, made-up cabinet position is certainly grabbing the most media attention, but is he actually doing anything?
Remember, DOGE was created to make the government more efficient. To Elon, that meant laying a bunch of people off and killing government programs to save money.
He's certainly delivered on the laying people off part, but what about the savings? Let's see what's in the news.
Remember, Elon said DOGE would save the federal government up to $2 trillion. Right now, economists aren't totally convinced it's even saved a penny. DOGE is really starting to look like a bunch of Trump's failed businesses. Big and flashy on the outside, pathetic and useless when you do the slightest bit of digging.
There's no real point here. Firing all of these federal workers, causing more problems with air travel, denying foreign countries victimized by natural disasters aid… it's apparently all useless. So why is Trump still letting this happen?
It's time to cut this project. In fact, it's time to cut Elon loose. Everything he's done is unconstitutional AT BEST. Our best shot? Informing the public on what Elon's really up to. The more people who know they were fired for absolutely no reason, the louder our movement gets.
The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy. To learn more about The Lincoln Project, go to LincolnProject.us.
Fwd: Fwd: Let's check in on DOGE
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As part of its ongoing crusade to roll back the clock and return America to some mythical golden age, the Trump-Musk administration has just launched a new wave of tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico. These actions from the US, of course, immediately inspired a reciprocal wave of tariffs and restrictions from all those trading partners in return.
Despite the fantasy land of Donald Trump, who keeps on insisting that foreign governments will bear the burden all on their own and American consumers will never pay any price here, the economic reckoning from this self-imposed stupidity will be brutal. Stocks have already taken a significant tumble, and it's only going to get worse. Ordinary consumers will soon be seeing the impact as prices soar for everything from groceries and beer to electronics and automobiles.
Again, if you're not Donald Trump – and congratulations on that, by the way – this was all incredibly obvious. Yes, as the president keeps insisting, tariffs were a major pillar of the American economy during the Gilded Age, but that's not a point in their favor. Yes, the infamous "robber barons" of that era made their fortunes with protective tariffs in place, but for ordinary Americans that period was a brutal time of deep economic inequality and uncertainty in which they suffered considerably.
You only need to look over the list of depressions, recessions and financial "panics" in the late 19th and early 20th century to get a sense of how turbulent the time of tariffs was – the Panic of 1873 followed by the "Long Depression" from 1873-1879, then another Depression from 1882-1885, then two recessions in 1887-1888 and 1890-1891, the Panic of 1893, the Panic of 1896, then two more recessions in 1899-1900 and 1902-1904, the Panic of 1907, the Panic of 1910, etc. etc. There were, of course, a lot of reasons for the economic turmoil of these decades, but the idea that tariffs brought some sort of economic boom and stability is obviously laughable.
The people who lived through them understood this all too well. As early as the 1880s, the poet Walt Whitman wrote: "We ought to invite the world through an open door…. My God! are men always to go on clawing each other—always to go on taxing, stealing, warring…. That is what the tariff—the spirit of the tariff—means."
Several disastrous decades later, tariffs were openly mocked as an outmoded and ineffective approach. The cartoon at the top of this post, for instance, comes from 1921 – when the country was reckoning with yet another Depression, in the wake of World War I – and depicts it as a snake oil cure pitched by out of touch politicians.
When the country slipped into the Great Depression at the end of the decade, the Republican old guard once again put their misguided faith in a protective tariff. "Congress passed the Tariff Bill," the comedian Will Rogers noted dejectedly in 1930. "They know it was a lot of hooey but they passed it all the same. The Tariff Bill is going to be great for everybody who don't buy anything or eat anything."
And indeed, the Depression that had been kicked off with the stock market's collapse in 1929 became markedly worse as a result of that now infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. If you need a refresher on its impact, here is a short lecture from former Nixon economist and actor Ben Stein:
This understanding of Smoot-Hawley as a strategic blunder that only harmed the American economy and only made the Depression much deeper was widely shared when that movie came out in 1986.
That same year, President Ronald Reagan said this in a radio address:
Millions of American jobs are tied to imports. The way to a better life is to open markets now closed, improve trading conditions, and to expand our exports. We learned that lesson half a century ago when we tried to balance the trade deficit by erecting a tariff wall around the United States. The Smoot-Hawley tariff ignited an international trade war and helped sink our country into the Great Depression.
Hell, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was such an obvious loser that even Al Gore managed to dunk all over Ross Perot on a special episode of "Larry King Live" just by pulling out a framed photo of Smoot and Hawley like it was a cursed monkey's paw.
For nearly a century now, Americans from across the political spectrum agreed that tariffs were unthinkable.
But that all changed, now that we're being led by a man who doesn't think.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
