Tom Faranda's Folly

Parents v. school board in Loudoun County, Virginia

The wealthiest county in Virginia. This is some of the video from these school board meetings with parents up in arms.

 

Here's another -

 

Here's the CDC announcement that vaccinated people don't need masks, indoors or out.

There are a couple of exceptions (medical, prison, etc) but otherwise no need. This will stimulate people to get vaccinated (as it has in our house - the one person not fully vaccinated made an appointment).

 

40th Anniversary of assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II

This was posted by the Knights of Columbus. Brigid and I were still living on Grand Cayman at the time.

On May 13, 1981, St. John Paul II greeted nearly 15,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his weekly audience. After circling the square, the Holy Father headed toward his pontifical chair in an open popemobile. That’s when an assailant fired multiple gunshots at the pope.

Then Supreme Knight Virgil Dechant was present that day as part of an international conference on vocations. He later recalled the crowd’s reaction — saying pilgrims dropped to their knees in prayer, and “many of the prayers were addressed to the Blessed Virgin.” It was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, marking 64 years since the first apparition of Mary to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal.

Later that day, Dechant, along with Enrico Galeazzi (the Order’s representative in Rome) and Father John V. McGuire (chairman of the Knights of Columbus Vocations Committee) met with Archbishop Andrzej M. Deskur, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and prayed with him in his private chapel for the pope’s recovery.

“It was a tragic moment, a tragic hour, a tragic day,” Dechant said in the days that followed. “But the people here are optimistic that he will recover from this attack.”

Pope John Paul II did recover, and he learned the identity of his would-be assassin: a man by the name of Mehmet Ali Ağca, who had escaped from a Turkish prison. After his arrest, Ağca initially claimed that he acted alone, but he later testified that the assassination attempt was part of a conspiracy. Whatever Ağca’s motivations, the Holy Father forgave his attacker and later met with him at the Rebibbia Prison in Rome.

There's a bit more if you hit the link above.

See the picture: Is this a cult?

Yes, makes you wonder... I thought this was photoshopped, but see below

"MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — No good deed, or symbolic gesture, goes unpunished, according to the New York Public Library, who said that vandals have repeatedly stolen a pair of giant masks from the faces of the two iconic lions outside the NYPL's Midtown branch."

 

NY City mayoral candidates: Clueless about the cost of housing in the city! An under 2 minute video

Amazing - how can this be? What are the concerns of these men?

 

April numbers: Inflation is not on the way, it's here

The Labor Department reported its consumer-price index jumped 4.2% in April from a year earlier, up from 2.6% for the year ended in March. That is the highest 12-month level since the summer of 2008. Consumer prices increased a seasonally adjusted 0.8% in April from March. The index measures what consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles.

Higher prices for used autos surged 10% in April compared with the prior month—the largest monthly increase on record. That accounted for more than a third of the increase, the Labor Department said.

The so-called core price index, which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy, climbed 3% in April from a year before.

Consumers are seeing many prices jump for a variety of reasons as the U.S. economic recovery gains momentum. Used-car prices have surged, thanks to a global chip shortage that has damped production of new cars. The average price paid for a used car exceeded $25,000 in April for the first time in the history of research firm J.D. Power’s tracking. Many companies are passing on to consumers the higher costs they are facing for crops, oil and truckers’ wages. Airfares and hotel-room rates are climbing as consumers start traveling again after a year of restraint during the pandemic.

Another "Peasants with pitchforks" moment. Wallstreetbets founder launches further investment initiative.

Haha. Good for him. I like the interviewer, Joe Kernan.

 

Paragon of virtue OJ Simpson has an opinion on Liz Cheney (not satire or parody)

Proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction -

 

Tim Tebow returning to the NFL?

Signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars - tight end!? The former Heisman trophy winner - as a QB. Thanks to Joe for sending me this.

the Jacksonville Jaguars plan to sign Tebow to a one-year contract, per sources informed of the situation. The deal is expected to be official in the next week or so. Tebow recently worked out as a tight end with the Jags in days leading up to the NFL draft. It's a position switch scouts implored the former Denver Broncos first-round quarterback to make more than a decade ago.

With his former Florida coach, Urban Meyer, taking over in Jacksonville, the Jags will give Tebow a shot to get back into the NFL as a tight end.

The 33-year-old hasn't played in the regular season in nine years and hasn't been in a football training camp since his Philly stint in 2015. To say it's a long shot for Tebow to make the roster is an understatement.

Still, to paraphrase Lloyd Christmas, we're saying there's a chance.

The Jaguars tight end's room is woefully thin. Blocking TE Chris Manhertz sits atop the depth chart, and rookie fifth-rounder Luke Farrell could be in line for a sizable role. James O'Shaughnessy, Tyler Davis, and Ben Ellefson fill out the TE room. Into that void, Tebow will attempt to reconjure his NFL career.

Elon Musk on SNL - Part 2 - he explains the cryptocurrency dogecoin.

Well not quite explains. Much more amusing then his monologue I posted yesterday.

 

Check it out - COVID vaccines available ... at Count Dracula's castle!

Thanks to Jessica for sending me this - some amusing photos if you hit the link.

Willing victims are flocking to get puncture wounds at Romania's Bran Castle as the site - widely believed to be the inspiration for Count Dracula's lair - opens as a vaccination centre. A poster showed vampire fangs replaced with syringes during a coronavirus vaccination drive at the castle this weekend. Health workers with blood-soaked vampire fangs on their scrubs gave out Pfizer jabs to visitors, who can turn up without an appointment every weekend in May.

Elon Musk on SNL - Part 1 - the monologue

We don't watch Saturday Night Live but I get excerpts on my youtube feed and Elon Musk is a fascinating entreprenuer (think tesla and spacex). Draw your own conclusion on his monologue.

 

Roger Daltrey - Woke generation is creating a miserable world

Ya think? Daltrey of course, co-founder and lead singer of the Who

The Who star Roger Daltrey has taken aim at the “woke generation", saying a “miserable world” is going to be created. Talking about today’s society in an interview on Zane Lowe's Apple Music 1, Daltrey said he feels privileged to have lived in the “golden era”. The 77-year-old shared his thoughts as he was discussing all the “spin” in the world.

 

The Who star Roger Daltrey has taken aim at the “woke generation", saying a “miserable world” is going to be created.

Talking about today’s society in an interview on Zane Lowe's Apple Music 1, Daltrey said he feels privileged to have lived in the “golden era”.

The 77-year-old shared his thoughts as he was discussing all the “spin” in the world.

 

“It's just getting harder to disseminate the truth,” he said. “It's almost like, now we should turn the whole thing off. Go back to newsprint, go back to word of mouth and start to read books again.”

Daltrey went on: “It’s becoming so absurd now with AI, all the tricks it can do, and the woke generation.

"It's terrifying, the miserable world they're going to create for themselves.

"I mean, anyone who's lived a life and you see what they are doing, you just know that it's a route to nowhere.

Will he be cancelled by wokeness!?!?

Short, fun interview with Yankee slugger Giancarlo Stanton

UPDATE: Won today's game with a walk off single.

Nice guy, very bright. Says lots of nice things about New York and the Yankees in this interview. Of course he makes $29 million a year so he should think highly of New York and the Yankees.

Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton has been red-hot at the plate, and he took a swing at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.

Friday's bad employment report - probably not as bad as it sounds

Here are two videos - a very short one as Steve Liesman on CNBC can't believe the employment # coming across his computer, and then Larry Kudlowe - former economic advisor to Trump,  who if he wanted to play politics would be denouncing the bad report - gives a good explanation.

Here's Liesman -

 

And Kudlowe -

"Amazing Grace: The Story Behind the Song"

lovely presentation. 14 minutes long.

 

Facebook v. Trump - good column

In NR online. "The Ridiculous Facebook Affair"

Every single part of this story is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that Facebook not only has an “oversight board,” but that it expects its users to consider it a meaningful source of due process, rather than as yet another way for the company to make up the rules as it goes along. It is ridiculous that, having concluded that Facebook’s initial decision lacked justification, that “oversight board” decided to uphold it anyway, and then invited Facebook to come up with a way of making it permanent. It is ridiculous that, in response to this decision, President Trump suggested that the core takeaway is that “Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth,” rather than acknowledging that he has been constantly lying since he narrowly lost his re-election campaign last year, and that his lies risked material damage to our system of government.

Final paragraph -

Ultimately, we are dealing with a cultural problem, of which Facebook is a symptom not a cause. America is often illiberal and reflexive at the moment, so Facebook and its users are, too. Our politics is often facile and tribalistic at the moment, so our debates about politics are, too. Facebook is a mirror that reflects the culture that sustains it. We should not like what we see.

Great work by Croton fire department Wednesday evening @ Croton Auto Park

Thanks to Maria for sending me this. The link takes you to the Croton FD facebook page with a video from a passerby, pictures and some text. Firemen were there within two minutes of the alarm.  What could have been a huge fire starting from a car....

Croton-on-Hudson Fire Department

Baseball: Guy steals home... Ooops!

Well, the catcher almost blew it.

(Not BB) - Coming to theaters - "Woke" James Bond

Not Babylon Bee but pretty amusing.

Yankees - nice win over the Astros last night

The Astros were booed through the game because of their cheating scandal. The Yankees are over .500 for first time this year. Big game by Stanton.

 

Baby falcon hatching atop the formerly named Tappan Zee bridge

Here you go. The Thruway authority installed a camera -

3d Baby Falcon Hatches Atop Cuomo Bridge

Experts said that the endangered peregrine falcons are wild bird and their behaviors reflect what happens in nature.

"Some of their actions may be unpleasant to watch and it is possible that some of the fledglings may not survive into adulthood," the Thruway Authority said on its website.

Peregrine falcon chicks are called "eyases." Typically, three to five eggs are laid in the early spring, with the eyases hatching one month later.

Here's a good short video from news 12 - you have to endure a commercial - falcon hatchlings

 

 

WSJ - Biden's "Cradle-to-Grave Government"

Good response to his speech last week. Not mentioned - the stupidity of raising the corporate tax rate to 28% making us uncompetitive with other countries. And companies will simply pass the increased tax cost onto consumers. 

We’d call the price tag breathtaking, but by now what’s another $2 trillion? Add $2 trillion or so each for the Covid and green energy (“infrastructure”) bills, and that’s $6 trillion of new spending in 100 days. That doesn’t include the regular federal budget of more than $4 trillion a year. No worries, mate, the Federal Reserve will monetize the debt.

But the cost, while staggering, isn’t the only or even the biggest problem. The destructive part is the way the plan seeks to insinuate government cash and the rules that go with it into all of the major decisions of family life. The goal is to expand the entitlement state to make Americans rely on government and the political class for everything they don’t already provide.

The White House talking points pitch this in the smothering love of the welfare state: “making care affordable”; free medical and family leave; “free education”; two years of “universal pre-school”; “invest in the care workforce.” Subsidies and millions of new care givers, all licensed and unionized, will nurture you through the challenge of earning a living and raising a family.

One question to ask is: Haven’t we tried this before? What is Head Start if not government pre-school education and child care? Weren’t school lunches and the Women, Infants and Children program supposed to prevent child hunger? Food stamps, welfare checks, child-care subsidies and a supplement to earned-income, plus public housing. Weren’t all of these programs and more from previous decades supposed to end poverty?

*************

For the candid answer, listen to Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Democrat who explained the political calculation this week to the Washington Post: “Once everyone’s in, all the parents want in. Then it’s not a poor person’s program or a poverty program. It’s an education program. . . . That to me, that is essential. It changes the center of gravity once it’s for everybody.”

So much for the “safety net” to prevent poverty. This is now about mainlining benefits to middle-class families so they become addicted to government—and to the Democratic Party that has become the promoting agent of government.

***************

The new pre-school entitlement will go to all families, as would free community college. The tax-credit expansion to $3,600 per child in the Covid bill, which Mr. Biden wants to make permanent, is on top of the other welfare subsidies. The Biden plan also makes permanent an expansion of ObamaCare subsidies for more affluent adults, eliminating the subsidy cap that was 400% of poverty. A new paid family leave entitlement will be an incentive for companies to drop leave benefits that already cover most workers.

****************

The White House is also less than honest about how it will pay for all this. Its short answer is that more taxes on the wealthy and more IRS audits are enough. But that doesn’t come close.

The permanent child-tax credit expansion would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, according to our friends at Cornerstone Macro. The White House says it only costs $420 billion, but that’s because it only includes four years through 2025. The new entitlements ramp up slowly but explode in the later years, while the tax increases are immediate and won’t raise the revenue they expect.

That’s especially true of the increase in the top tax rate on capital gains to 43.4%, which would lose money by all historical experience. The White House tries to get around this by eliminating the step-up basis for paying capital gains at death, meaning an heir would pay the tax based on accrued value over a lifetime. This is a back door addition to the current death tax rate of 40%.

The White House also predicts that unleashing thousands of new IRS agents will find $700 billion in unpaid tax bills. But this prediction is based in part on old IRS data, before the 2017 tax reform that removed many tax loopholes, especially in the corporate tax code. ...

The new taxes are destructive, but their impact will take time to be felt as the post-pandemic economy soars. The GOP shouldn’t ignore the taxes and spending. But a more potent political target may be the bill’s tripling down on a welfare state that disdains the dignity of work and seeks to make Americans the wards of government.

 

 

Vile: "You'll always be a Mexican, you'll never be white. You know that, right?"

A simple stop because she's talking on her cell while driving. Glad she didn't have a gun. And she's a teacher!

 

NBC: Bill and Melinda Gates ending their marriage

A surprise

 

Croton Man - Pleads Guilty - $9.5 Million Elder Fraud Scam

In the Yonkers Times - maximum sentence 20 years.

Norman Newman, 73, of Croton on Hudson, pled guilty on April 23 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Newman admitted to knowingly providing lists of potential victims to fraudulent mass-mailing schemes that tricked consumers into paying fees for falsely promised cash prizes and purportedly personalized “psychic” services. Newman was indicted on in March of 2020 for providing list brokerage services for more than 11 years to scammers running fraud schemes. Newman pled guilty to furnishing consumers’ names and addresses to fraudster clients, knowing that the clients were mailing hundreds of thousands of deceptive prize notifications that misled victims into believing that they would receive a cash prize or personalized services upon payment of a fee. Many of the victims were elderly and vulnerable.

According to the indictment, Newman worked in the offices of a list-brokerage company from 2005 until September 2016. Newman worked as a list broker and senior vice president at Macromark Inc., a Connecticut direct mail services firm. Macromark pleaded guilty to facilitating elder fraud schemes in September 2020. The conspiracy resulted in at least $9.5 million in losses to consumers.

In pleading guilty, Newman admitted to assisting clients in obtaining victim lists for deceptive mailing campaigns. These fraudulent mass mailer clients sent out deceptive letters that appeared to be personalized, when, in actuality, the same letters were sent to thousands of consumers on the mailing lists that Newman provided. Each letter was intended to mislead the consumer into believing that he or she would receive a large amount of money, a valuable prize, or personalized psychic services upon payment of a fee to the mass mailers, who often operated under false names. Fraudsters paid commissions to Newman’s employer, Macromark, for brokering the sale of lists of potential victims. Newman then received a percentage of the commissions. Newman knew the content and fraudulent character of the mass-mailings, that they were intended to defraud thousands of consumers, and that some of the consumers were vulnerable to the scams.

Saturday at Yuka's drinking Margarita's

Yuka's Latin Fusion. It's surprising how rarely Brigid and I go out to eat - just the two of us. Brigid had a "classic" margarita while I decided to live large and had a "strawberry and ginger" margarita. Sounded like an odd combination but I decided to try it - delicious! As you can see, we ate outdoors.

3 of Tim's Stepinac football teammates make the NFL

They were all a year behind Tim - so in class of 2016. Malcolm Koonce drafted in the 3rd round by the Oakland Las Vegas Raiders. 79th pick overall. Played defensive end at the University of Buffalo. Not only Stepinac, but he comes from up the road - Peekskill.

T.J. Morrison, undrafted but also signed with the Raiders. Went to Stony Brook. 

Then, Trill Williams, undrafted but signed with New Orleans Saints. Played for Syracuse.

I believe Trill and T.J. are both from Yonkers.

 

 

Baseball: Here's a unique double play

the pitcher has a foot in it...

"College Student Aces Final; Answering 'Racism!' To Every Question"

Upstate New York -

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY—According to sources, local English major Charlie Miller was able to ace her final exam by simply writing in the word "racism!" for every answer.

"Yeah, I completely forgot to study last night so I figured I would try it," she said. "90% of my lectures this year were just hour-long sessions of my professor saying 'racism' over and over again in different inflections, so I figured my chances were pretty good if I made that the answer to all the test questions."

The Skidmore College English professor who delivered the passing grade explained her rationale. "Charlie's test answers weren't technically correct, but they spoke to a deeper truth: everything is racist. At Skidmore College, creating leftist radicals who can find racism everywhere and help us burn down Western Civilization is much more important than educating people. For that reason, we decided to give her a passing grade!"

Local sources say Skidmore College is facing an influx of racist behavior, such as students being openly conservative and voting for Republicans or Libertarians.

"The rise in white supremacist activity at our school is really frightening," said the professor. "One girl named Hannah Davis actually tried to start a conservative student organization on campus. I'm literally shaking right now just thinking about it."

In addition to accepting "racist!" as the answer to every question on every test, the professor said she will offer extra credit for sending threatening letters or doxxing conservatives.

"We have to do this so our students will feel safe," she said.

CDC issues seat belt recommendations: Wear even when outside the car

A logical follow-up to some of their other recommendations. Who can argue with science?

ATLANTA, GA—The CDC has issued brand new recommendations regarding the wearing of seat belts. Health experts there are now recommending people wear a seat belt, even when outside the car.

"This guidance is especially important if you're in a large group of people at the park or an outdoor event," said Dr. Stiku Pumybum. "Risk of collisions leading to bone breaks or concussions dramatically increase in large groups of people. Billions could die!" 

When pressed regarding what gives the CDC authority to comment on seat belt usage, they clarified that these were simply recommendations based on the latest scientific research, for the sake of public health. When further asked how exactly a seat belt that's not anchored to anything can protect anyone, they replied with a statement saying "SHUT UP IT'S SCIENCE!"

The Federal Government has responded with a nationwide seat belt order for all public parks, buildings, and sidewalks. 

"I don't know what's so hard about this," said Biden as his aides handed him a juice box and tightened his 5-point harness. "Just wear the dang seatbelt folks!"