The Frankish Reich

Somalis: there is a ton of fraud. I would guess that over half of Somali asylum seekers were already living in refugee camps (awaiting refugee processing from abroad, which is similar but different to asylum), or actually resettled in Kenya or elsewhere. Very often they were living in abysmal conditions, but they weren't immediately fleeing in fear for their lives. Vital recordkeeping is basically non-existent in Somalia, so in many places a date of birth is always given as January 1, with only the year changing. Those granted asylum can petition to bring over family members, so the pressure back home (and sometimes the monetary incentive for those here) is to claim cousins and other people as their children, or someone unrelated as a spouse. And yes, I do believe that Ilhan Omar probably "married" her brother, who was already living legally in the UK. In other words, in no danger.

This is why I was waiting for DOGE to take a close look at DOD. (Or is it now DOW? That's confusing.)

By the way, why does Hegseth have those weird extended thin sideburns? Both are true. He serves at the pleasure of the President; he serves to defend the constitution and the laws of the United States of America.

Do any of the services allow beards or long hair? I mean, other than, say, Sikhs for religious reasons? I don't get what he's talking about.

This is how you do it!

Ted Cruz, 2013, the Shutdown that propelled him into the White House. Remember?

I suspect the same. Ex-wife left him for a Mormon guy and converted. Mormon boss at work promoted another Mormon instead of him. There's a million possible perceived slights. He certainly didn't live a life of being a religious warrior as far as we know.

1. Woman works at a university (not a professor). Posts the following on her private Facebook: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” One of her followers screenshots it. It winds up on Libs of Tik-Tok. University gets wind of it. She's fired. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/us/charlie-kirk-free-speech.html 2. University of South Dakota art professor posts the following on his social media: “I don’t give a flying f*** about this Kirk person,” Mr, Hook wrote. “I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was.” He added: “I’m sorry for his family that he was a hate spreading Nazi and got killed. I’m sure they deserved better.” Three hours late he deletes it an apologizes. Too late. The Governor of South Dakota - the Governor - decides to get involved. Calls for his firing. And gets it. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/charlie-kirk-free-speech-and-the-right-2b60b73c?mod=WTRN_pos8 MAGA culture warriors now wield the cancel culture hatchet. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

/ / / / / / / / / / I'm really glad our leading poster added that (U) to the topic. I was kind of scared I was reading DR's top secret classified info.

Looks kind of gay of the heavy hairy type. Not that he has issues or anything like that.

It's almost as if the party in power doesn't like shutdowns. Imagine that.

Well, the Kirk shooting (err, mic explosion) was clearly an assassination of a public figure, so there is that.

By the way, who is getting this Mormon Church attack thing right, without idle speculation about What It All Means and Is It Trump or Anti-Trump? The mainstream media. NYT: Federal investigators are searching homes connected with the man who the police say killed at least four people over the weekend in an attack on a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meeting house in Michigan, and are seeking clues to the attacker’s motive, the White House press secretary said on Monday. WSJ goes even more bland: The suspect, who died, is Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40 years old, from the nearby city of Burton, Mich., police said. A Marine Corps spokesman said Sanford served from 2004 to 2008, deploying to Iraq in 2007 and 2008, and had the rank of sergeant. He had longstanding ties to the area, and according to public records was married to a woman named Tella. They had a young son. Bland can be good.

Well, I'm blessed with a basically full head of hair even at my advancing age, but it has always stubbornly refused to grow straight enough to do the ponytail thing. I'm sure I'd have tried it if I could. And I never learned how to tie a bowtie. But as for grandiose oration? Yeah, I got that down.

Good point. My main objection to the Coleman over Worthy draft was the idea that Worthy's slight frame made him a higher injury risk. I just don't know of any hard data supporting that. I spent way too much time in the early 2000s arguing about/analyzing baseball stats. The old "wisdom" was that power pitchers were a bigger serious injury risk than finesse pitchers. The data showed the opposite. Just because it seems to make sense doesn't mean that it's true.

I'm liking this new-style post-Brady era Pats fan thing. The swagger is gone! You mean this isn't one we should lose on purpose?

The Pats seem to have a ... process. And it seems to be showing some early results. I don't think they're much of a danger to us this season in general, but a lucky bounce or two and it can become a real game.

Is that the point? How do we know he wasn't an evangelical Christian who thought the Mormons were perverting Christ's message and destroying their members' path to salvation? In other words, a religious warrior? How do we know he didn't despise Mormons because Utah Gov Spencer Cox - a Mormon - gave a measured and mature response to the Charlie Kirk killing? Did Dylan Roof murder members of a black church because he hated religion? Or because he hated black people? Or because he was a highly disturbed young man clearly on the autism spectrum? Did the Minnesota would-be serial assassin kill because he was extremely religious and thought he victims were not sufficiently religious, i.e. heathens? Since @Joe Ferguson forever is on a little logical fallacy kick, I'll point out that this one is called the Narrative Fallacy. We want random and particularly evil events to be explained by something, well, explainable. Me too. I blame a sick culture in general, and not limited to one side of the political spectrum or the other.

Agreed. A "reasoned decision" means one that doesn't rely on such biases, and that's what a trained judge will do well. It is why I liked doing appeals work - no juries in an appellate court. Juries can convict people based on things like "he wouldn't look me straight in the eye." That kind of "reasoning" is a slam-dunk appeal win if a judge relies on it. We have much to learn from the Swedens of the world.

Good ol' Bill. Now that man knew how to lie, because the lies were arguably not even lies. It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Trump can only dream of such hair-splitting eloquence.

Imagine that. Schedule a golf tournament in Jets territory and it will be invaded by Jets fans.

Not gonna lie, I kind of love this conspiracy theory. Come for the surface ridiculousness, stay for the bizarro explanations.

Because in all other respects Kennesaw GA (population 37,740) is exactly the same as Chicago IL (pop 2.721 million). Maybe compare Sydney, AUS? (pop 5.56 million?) Sydney's murder rate for the most recent reported year: 28 last year.

So two mass shootings today, both former Marines. Michigan guy looks like the central casting Rural Trump Supporter and they say Google maps captured a Trump sign on his fence this summer. So what's his beef with the Mormons? Carolina guy just seems batshit crazy. Wounded in Iraq, which I'm sure has something to do with it. Again: Charlie Kirk was a rarity; it is foolish to characterize these shooters as Democratic or Republican when the Crazy overwhelms any possible political motivation. Crazy + Guns + Social Media. That's all there is to say.