Just a Day That Ends in "Y" in the City of Los Lunatics

LA riots again. So many disingenuous, reactionary takes, so little time. Welcome to another For Funk's Sake Friday.

This Thursday morning, as I’m working to finish up Friday’s post, I come across two stories that just jar when put side by side.

In India, we have this . . .

Twitter can be a cesspool, it’s true. But Twitter can also be . . . enlightening.

Another post suggests something was going on with the plane.

The same poster goes on to show his boarding pass to disprove the naysayers.

So it’s looking like Air India refused to take one plane out of service, even though it had a lot of problems, because they were cheapskates, and for some reason the Indian government couldn’t make them.

Meanwhile, here in America . . .

If Air India and the Indian government cared half as much about passengers on planes as we do about our soda-pop-loving diabetics, these two would still be alive . . .

I give the US a lot of crap, but there are worse countries by far for your average citizen, even democratic countries. So while I criticize, mostly because I don’t want the US to end up being like those countries, I feel grateful to be here.

With that, let’s get to it . . .

Or . . .

Truer words, truer words.

With that we’re off . . .

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The facility holds more than 13 miles—200 football field lengths—of tubes of ice collected from Antarctica, Greenland, and other parts of North America. Their contents can date back hundreds of thousands of years, allowing researchers to engage in scientific time travel. Crucially, the ice provides clues as to what’s in store for our climate down the road.

Because the predictions so far have been so accurate.

Here’s an idea: go to a bunch of wealthy people who are really worried about climate change and have them buy some freezers. Problem solved.

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There is nothing new under the sun, “fast food” edition.

The condition of the songbirds’ broken bones suggest that they were flattened and cooked whole with oil in the amphorae. In addition to the thrushes, archeologists also documented remains from domesticated chickens and European rabbits. These point to a wider menu tailored to everyday customers. Taken altogether, it appears that thrushes were served up similar to today’s sports bar chicken wings.

The food shop in Mallorca isn’t the only example of deep-fried songbirds across Rome. As Arkeonews notes, additional finds in Pompeii and Britain indicates a widespread culture of ancient Roman fast food.

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Let’s file this under “well, she’s a humble one” . . .

When Lesley Lokko was a young student in 1990s London, architecture was a place of openness and experimentation. And yet, she felt the discipline was incapable of thinking beyond European concepts of space.

Fast forward three decades and Lokko is now the educator leading the classroom. Her initiative, the African Futures Institute (AFI), is an effort to radically re-imagine what a design education should look like for younger generations.

You want to see Ms. Lokko’s house?

Yeah, absolutely nothing like that exists in Western architecture.

Is it wrong to use a gif of a drama queen rolling her eyes in a story about a drama queen? You can let me know in the comments.

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Speaking of drama queens, we have a story that it’s impossible not to enjoy.

So what did David Hogg do that was so bad, other than continually exploiting the deaths of his Parkland schoolmates for the last seven years?

In the recording, an emotional Martin describes being deeply frustrated by the fallout over Hogg, who has ignited a firestorm in the party by vowing to spend $20 million in safe-blue primaries to oust incumbent Democrats he believes are ineffective. Martin paused twice while appearing to choke up.

Let me see if I understand: these are “safe-blue” primaries. Whoever wins the primary will win the general (Nancy Pelosi’s glass of water with a “D” behind it). So I’m not really seeing a problem. Unless the problem is that Ken “Good Billionaires” Martin doesn’t want to trade out loyal little soldiers for people who might potentially believe in liberalism? (Or make the party look crazier than it already does.)

“I’ll be very honest with you, for the first time in my 100 days on this job … the other night I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore,” he said in a May 15 Zoom meeting of DNC officers, according to a recording obtained by POLITICO.

Yeah, I feel you, Ken. Real democracy is not for the faint of heart.

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Speaking of primary-ing useless legislators, will Oklahoma not do something about this jackass already?

Sen. James Lankford and other senators are pushing to reduce a proposed tax hike on university endowment earnings included in the Republican megabill. . . .

Lankford, a tax writer, also wants to shrink a planned tax hike on private foundations while beefing up a tax benefit for people who give to charity but don’t itemize their deductions.

You see, we wouldn’t want wealthy foundations and universities to have to pay too many taxes, and we wouldn’t want Gates to get enough of a tax credit for donating to the coincidentally named Gates Foundation. That’s just crazy talk.

With Republicans like these, you don’t need Democrats.¹

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I came across this little gem on TwiX, through Kevin Sorbo’s feed.

Americans searching for the cause behind Thursday’s explosive clash between President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk got some clarity from a news report published Friday.

In an in-depth article, the New York Post offered a behind-the-scenes look at the White House, pointing to a senior Trump staffer who had been “fanning the flames” of tension between the two.

We have *checks notes* the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world. And a feud can be stirred up between them by a mere staffer?

I think that look is actually worse. You might to want to never mention that again.

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In other Musk-Trump news, the Democrat Party thinks this is a threat.

I think that says it all.

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The tale of the intrepid Greta Thunberg comes to a very predictable end.

The whole sordid tale summed up in 1:51.

I notice how Miss Greta did not fight to stay in Israel. She’d rather be shipped back to Europe, even if she did have to go economy and sit by the toilet.

No bulldozer going over her. She gets to go home, and the Israeli forces get to show how good they were to her, while the whole Palestinian cause seems childish and performative.

Israel thanks you for your service, Greta.

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And, finally, LA is LA-ing again.

That’s actually only a taste and it’s a few days old.

Or as summed up by Matt Taibbi . . .

Apparel manufacturers” and a Home Depot were raided by ICE Friday in what the New York Times called an “immigration raid.” Border Czar Tom Homan said they were executing warrants for money laundering and other offenses and it wasn’t a “routine” immigration raid. Either way, it triggered protests led in part by the SEIU, whose leader David Huerta was “assaulted and arrested” (he tried to block a law enforcement van and was pushed back), in turn leading to the ongoing “clashes.” Trump signed a memo greenlighting deployment of 2,000 National Guardsmen Saturday, protesters threw “rocks, glass bottles and fireworks” at local police and dropped “rocks and trash” on “unoccupied” police cars, while officers “took cover” under an overpass. Three people were reportedly “trampled and injured” by police on horseback, and the Times explained that three driverless Waymo taxis (magically?) “caught on fire.”

I was told in one of my various conversations that the LAPD had the whole thing totally under control and sending in the National Guard was a total overreaction.

Because I guess this counts as “under control” in LA . . .

So what are the protesters so “fired” up about? (Horrid pun intended.)

“Mass” deportation, of course. How “mass”? you ask, because I did.

So nearly a million “undocumented” immigrants. To garner a response this large, Trump must be gathering them up by the thousands, right?

I didn’t catch that subtitle until after I did the screenshot and uploaded the photo. But then I spit my coffee.

“The way they deported him wasn’t right,” his 42-year-old father, Javier, told the outlet. “He is a calm, working man. We are asking for justice because they violated his rights.” They said he had no criminal record and had been in the US for four years.

And in all those four years, he couldn’t learn enough English to tell the difference between signing up for a COVID test or agreeing to be sent back to Mexico. What does one even say? He was so desperate to stay in America that he . . . refused to learn enough English to get by.

As for the lack of “criminal records,” I know what Trump said, and I’m a little miffed about it too. I thought we were starting with criminals. But you try to illegally stay in another country and see what happens to you. The crime is that you are there, and they will ship your ass home. If you stay in a country without that country’s permission, you are on borrowed time. Full stop.

But back to the subject at hand. Nearly one million paperless souls, and ICE has taken in . . .

Immigrant advocacy groups say they have information that more than 200 people were detained and that many do not have criminal records. DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News on Monday that those detained were the “worst of the worst”.

So 201, or 199, but someone counted the third guy from the left three times because the “immigrant advocacy groups” wanted the number to be more impressive.

Two hundred out of a million.

And for that, people started doing stupid crap like this . . .

Yes, “democracy” in America looks like Mexican flags and burning cars, generally like something out of a dystopian film.

The biggest irony: I have sympathy for the immigrants, especially those who have been here for years and built lives. I don’t think we should be deporting them willy-nilly. But I see this and I shrug. Democrats refused to have a calm conversation about how to handle the issue the Biden administration let get out of control and refused to do anything about the border until it became completely untenable.

And this doesn’t make me feel any more sympathetic.

FA . . .

FO . . .

This is US Senator Alex Padilla, who decided to just walk into a press conference and throw his weight around.

Eh, don’t feel sorry for him. He has no real commitment to the immigrant community. If he did, he would have pushed back on the open borders under Biden so this all didn’t get so out of hand and he’d be going down and having a set to with the rioters, I mean “protesters,” about how burning cars doesn’t exactly help.

No, this was all grandstanding. His street cred just went up a notch or two with the cos-playing revolutionary vote. And that’s all he cares about.

And none of this seems to be hurting Trump.

From the Washington Examiner . . .

There’s no question whose side the public is on. A pre-riot CBS poll showed 54% approving of Trump’s deportation program, and two polls taken this week showed approval, Insider Advantage by 59% to 39%, and the Napolitan News poll by 58% to 36%.

Why would this be? you ask.

Well, because this is the other option.

So many lies and so much hysteria, it would take a post or three to dissect it all.

Or this . . .

What the hell? Not everything goes back to Israel. I think it rather cheapens what the Gazans are going through to try to tie that to people cos-playing revolution in LA. And it’s not as if our own police can’t figure out how to shoot journalists in the leg with rubber bullets. We don’t need Israel for that.

You can kind of see the trick being pulled here, even in the “independent”/independent media. Why don’t you support these protests? This is just like being against the US funding of Israel’s killing of the Palestinians.

To which I say . . .

But the problem for journalists like Ryan Grim (who I do count as a journalist, though he’s edging into propaganda here) is that I understand context and nuance.

You see, really serious issues, like what Israel is doing in Gaza, don’t need hysterical takes to convince me there’s something to “see” there. They only need the videos of dead and bloodied corpses of toddlers or a story about how the IDF buried the bodies and vehicles of a bunch of first responders or videos of starving children. That stuff sort of stands on its own.

But this?

From Ken Klippenstein, who lives in Encinitas, California . . .

decided he would, rather tellingly I think, watch a bunch of social media videos and come up with his own spin on the protests rather than actually go to the protests.

“They’re Hispanic,” a young woman said of the people being deported. “They’re all hispanic.”

In Los Angeles, California, all two hundred illegal immigrants rounded up were hispanic.

And I bet next you’ll tell me that if Trump goes in and deports people in Springfield, Ohio, they’ll all be black . . . and Haitian. Wonders never cease.

In the same article, Klippenstein points out that it’s not illegal immigrants waving the Mexican flags, well, at least according to his Taylor Lorenz style of deep diving research.

One of the Mexican flag wavers was interviewed by The New York Times and said that she was both an American and happy to be one.

“I am a very proud American,” said 36 year old Elizabeth Torres, who explained that her grandparents immigrated to the United States. “But I have to show support also for our Mexican brothers and sisters.”

I’ll just let this guy point out the problem with that.

And finally, Mr. Klippenstein informs us, this isn’t really about deportation or safeguarding beloved paperless members of the community.

The more interviews I watched, the more I began to realize that people are just as upset by the imposition of the national security state into daily life as they are about people being deported.

“Upset by the imposition of the national security state into daily life”?!?!

“Upset by the imposition of the national security state into daily life”?!?!

Are you f—ing kidding me?

Okay. Deep breath.

Nope, it’s not working. Zen calm be hanged. Here we go.

This is f—king California during COVID.

Yes, they were putting sand in a skateboarding park during COVID so young people would be “discouraged” from congregating . . . outside.

This is Malibu, in Los Angeles County. A loan paddle boarder is such a health hazard that the Coast Guard goes all Cops on him.

And this is the governor of California . . .

. . . equating the “unvaccinated” with drunk drivers. You cannot make this s—t up.

But just now . . . just at this moment . . . we’re worried about “the imposition of the national security state into daily life”?

Where was this rage during COVID, when people were dying alone, being arrested for paddling in the ocean alone, being kicked off planes because their toddler wouldn’t wear a mask, being denied organ transplants and losing their jobs because they wouldn’t get the jab? That affected a hell of a lot more people than 200.

And we won’t even get started on the censorship and how someone literally went to jail for a political meme or we were putting people in solitary confinement for trespassing and arresting people for attending a rally when they didn’t even trespass (but for some reason letting Ray Epps go free because he was sufficiently contrite or something).

And before that we had Edward Snowden, who revealed that the US government was spying on literally everybody. Where is he these days? Oh, that’s right. Exiled to Russia because no administration (from Obama forward) will pardon him and let him come back, simply because he told Americans the truth about “the imposition of the national security state into daily life.”

But this is what we protest and riot over?

Let’s be painfully honest, you and I. That’s not what these riots are about. There’s nothing lofty going on here, no higher ideals, no awakening about the “national security state.”

There’s just this . . .

You see, it’s fun to destroy stuff and steal stuff and get away with it.

Even the media admitted it.

Yeah, law enforcement, what’s wrong with just letting people have fun watching cars burn?

It’s not like arson is illegal or anything, or this isn’t the American state that’s most like a kindling box.

It’s not like this happened in January . . .

Nothing like that.

This person sums everything up perfectly . . .

And then you have utterly bat-nuts crazy takes like this . . .

“People are looking to attack symbols of power,” said Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at UC Berkeley. . . .

While Waymo cars are far removed from the immigration debate, they can serve as a kind of proxy for the world’s most influential corporations: Waymo’s parent company, Alphabet, owns Google. Anti-tech sentiment can easily translate into “anti-Waymo sentiment,” Wasow said.

Of course, even the SF Chronicle has to admit the real reason . . .

However, the messaging might not be that deep. Since they roam downtown streets without drivers and obediently stop whenever an object blocks their path, Waymos are fairly easy to set ablaze, Wasow noted. And the lithium batteries in the vehicles make them burn hotter and longer for maximum spectacle.

We’re back to people just want to destroy s—t.

And are being financially supported to pull it off.

Footage of the scene showed boxes of solid, full-face masks—almost akin to helmets—being handed out from the back of a pickup truck by two women while a masked driver waited for them to unload the goods.

The footage has sparked concerns among some that external agitators are facilitating riots by equipping crowds for potential clashes with the police or National Guard. However, others say the masks are safety gear, worn as a precaution after protesters were injured by rubber bullets that the authorities fired.

Yes, but that’s some expensive safety gear.

The masks, which retail for up to $60 each, appeared to be brand-new as they were still in plastic wrap inside the cardboard boxes.

But why would the police and the National Guard react so badly?

Professional grade fireworks. That would do it. I’d be a little pissed if people were firing rockets at me.

Why does the cop have to call the ambulance? They all have cell phones.

And, yeah, the cop might have been an ass, but seriously? What did they expect?

I find it very difficult to drum up much sympathy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I have a feeling she’ll be fine. I’d love to say she’s learned a valuable lesson, but I strongly suspect that is an unrealistic hope.

Just a normal day for LA, huh?

On the other hand, Bri-Bri might be for once in his shallow, bloviating existence be telling the God’s honest truth.

This is a “normal” day for LA.

And so it goes.

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I know I didn’t touch the biggest news of the week, though Israel has bombed so many countries around it, is the fact that they were bombing and claim they will continue to bomb Iran really news at this point? The real news will come if Iran decides to fight back.

So we are off as of Monday to the first vacation we’re been on in a few years. We’re going to Colorado for a week, to ride the Silverton-Durango, go see Mesa Verde, and do some ghost-towning in the mountains (the last as a favor to my father-in-law). My father in law, in his early eighties, is amazing. We just translate “make good use of every second” differently. To me, an extra cup of coffee whilst on vacation is a good use of a second. To him, seconds are only well used if you’re moving. I may need a vacation after my vacation, which fortunately, I’ve already planned on, as we’re going to Cooke City over the Fourth and for the week after.

However, in honor of our trip, a little Wolf Creek Pass to see us out.

We’ll see you when we see you. Until then, just remember, it’s nothing serious, only life.

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Programming note: There will be a post tomorrow and then like as not I won’t post anything major until the week of July 13th. It’s just how things worked out.

1. Hint: that’s sort of the point.