A very good explanation of why it’s stupid and consumerist to expect Muslim countries to fight American wars.

Tea is becoming really huge in this country. And I still can’t find a decent brewing pot.

Trump is plenty nasty but still not a fascist.

U of Tennessee valiantly battles the Secret Santa tradition. I wonder how many adjuncts have to be exploited to afford the idiotic diversity office that comes up with this crap.

In the non-news of the day, JK Rowling is an idiot.

Beautiful photos of Iranians before the stupid revolution of 1978. (Scroll down the insignificant little blurb in Russian.)

Iceland still can’t figure out separation between church and state.

Coca-Cola’s tone – deaf ad.

An earnest dumbass discovers the concept of “minority” and worries it to death. Stupid people tend to have a lot of free time on their hands.

I can’t even summarize this article in any other way but to say that it’s scary that such vapid, self-involved, smugly stupid people exist.

Obama is privatizing the cosmos. No, seriously.

Jews lived in medieval Spain longer than they had in any other place, including Israel.

More Jews lived in medieval Spain than in all the rest of European countries combined.

Most of the medieval Spanish Jews were rural rather than urban which was unheard of in the rest of Europe and was only possible because of the friendliness of medieval Spanish Christians and Muslims towards them.

To me, it’s definitely Carson. He’s a religious fanatic while Trump is not the least bit religious. You can argue with and appeal to a cynic but there’s no discussing anything with a fanatic. If it becomes more useful to say he adores Muslims and Mexicans, Trump will do that in a flash.

Fanatics terrify me more than any cynic could.

When people at the union meeting heard my name, they looked at me with a glimmer of recognition.

“Ah, you are the person who writes subversive messages at the discussion board!” they said.

This was gratifying because I was afraid I was getting known as “the lady with the hair” on campus. I’d much rather be “the lady with subversive messages” instead.

On the really hilarious side, a hopeful young (as in really, really young) man at the library asked me if I wanted to study for the exams together. When I was at the age when this proposal would have made sense, no young men asked me to study for the exams together. Instead, I was hugely popular among old (as in the age I am today) men. So I almost jumped at today’s young suitor with, “Now? After all this time you are asking me??? Where were you 20 years ago, then?” I didn’t do that because 20 years ago he was probably not even in existence.

I just joined a labor union (IEA-NEA). Yay!

And what did you do for the preservation of the nation-state today?

Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act which will be a modification on No Child Left Behind.

Color me unoptimistic.

Does this mean they are still trying to convert everybody else?? Because that history has been just as sucky. If anybody should forget the word “convert” and pretend it never existed it’s Catholics.

Trump’s visit to Israel fell through because welcoming him into any self-respecting country at this point would be a disgrace. It’s very sad that the US is making a laughing stock out of itself on the world arena because of this buffoon. There are many pressing issues to discuss, yet everybody is fixating on strange antics of a reality TV star with lousy hair.

I keep thinking about the poor child of the San Bernardino terrorists. In his book, Bill Ayers tells the story of his adoptive son whose dumb parents dropped him off at grandma’s as a toddler because they wanted to go commit some acts of terror.

Ayers and his wife adopted the kid but, obviously, he began to unravel psychologically. The boy was well on the way to becoming a sociopath, a criminal, or a drug addict (or all three) but, thankfully, his adoptive parents and his grandparents were not only very educated but also extremely wealthy people. They hired a team of ultra-expensive psychoanalysts to work with the boy. It took a couple of decades and a fortune but the boy was finally rehabilitated and integrated into society. 

The likelihood that anybody in the San Bernardino baby’s life has the intelligence and the resources to invest into her long-term psychological care is nil. And if the baby is allowed to remain with the horrible grandma, a.k.a. terrorist factory, there will be no hope left for her.