Not the worst desperate mid-term election tactic President Trump has improvised this year, and definitely not the last, Trump suddenly announced during a Republican National Committee (RNC) campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas this week that he would be awarding former pitcher Roger Clemens the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clemens was stunned. It is likely that Trump dreamed up the stunt on the spot. Trump may have been rewarding “The Rocket” for his effusive introduction, when he said,
“What a privilege it is for me to intro our great President. A man that loves our country, that puts all of us first, and puts America first. This is what I love. He’s made us better, he’s made us stronger, and more important, because of the border and everything here, he’s made us safer. And don’t forget, this is really important, this man put his life on the line for us. Don’t ever forget that.”
I’m checking: is Clemens, who evolved into a bigger and bigger asshole as his impressive career went on and who is current deemed unworthy of the Hall of Fame because of substantial evidence that his late career resurgence was fueled by banned PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs) the worst Medal of Freedom recipient ever? Looking over the list…
Since Oct 7 2023, every human on the planet has had a choice. To stand with Israel, the Jewish people, and Western Civilization, or with Hamas, Terrorism, and the evil actors who would tear it down. That Time for Choosing is ever-present. Who do you choose? #WeAreNotOkpic.twitter.com/FIW8ChBx2T
“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”
New York’s anti-Semitic, Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his official statement on the anniversary of the unprovoked and ambush Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel that included the murder of unarmed civilians, rapes, infanticide, and the taking of over 200 hostages, mist of whom died.
I could have had a much longer headline, and had to restrain myself to avoid posting one. Anyone who agrees with this vile man is an Ethics Dunce, as is anyone who voted for him or would argue that such votes can be justified. Mandani qualifies for an EA “Incompetent Elected Official” designation, because condemning the victims of terrorism while supposedly memorializing those victims is incompetent and irresponsible, unless one is an Ethics Villain, which Mayor Mamdani certainly is.
There are so many reasons for Michiganders regardless of party and ideological bent not to vote for Abdul El-Sayed that the revelation that he likes to fart in public seems trivial in comparison. He’s a Communist who lies about his beliefs; he has called for defunding the police and he is anti-Semitic, though to today’s Democrats that’s a good thing. He refused to disavow his pal Hasan Piker, who is a vocal America-hater. Naturally Bernie Sanders, AOC and Obama are supporting El-Sayed.
Now a longtime aid to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan has quit and gone rogue, calling his former boss for whom he worked as a bodyguard and a staff assistant a “manufactured man” who has maturity more appropriate to a high school locker room. Jordan Domingue told the media that during El-Sayed’s gubernatorial and Senate campaigns, he realized that the candidate was a “30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections.”
“Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality,” Domingue added. “When he acted like an entitled mobster to elected officials in 2017-2018, I excused it as a justified outsider earning their place. When he would say one thing to one group and another thing to a different group hours later, I considered it just the norm or ‘strategic ambiguity’ as he calls it.”
What Domingue really found intolerable, however, was El-Sayed’s affection for openly passing gas in front of staffers. “He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,” Dominguewrote. “To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.”
Is that a good reason to vote against him, along with, you know, the fact that El-Sayed is an anti-American lunatic, which doesn’t bother the Mad Left these days? Le Pétomane was the stage name of Joseph Pujol (1857 –1945) who was a professional “fartist.” Not only could he fart at will, he could fart tunes. The Governor in “Blazing Saddles,” played by Mel Brooks, is named in honor of Le Pétomane.
There are lots of reasons to be dubious about this story. For one thing, it has “disgruntled employee” written all over it. For another, it was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, which is on the EA blacklist. I will also point out that supporters of Donald Trump are ethically estopped from assailing a candidate for having a sophomoric sense of humor and running for an office “he was inexperienced for.”
I also note that the levels of dignity and decorum, not to mention maturity, that the public has a right to expect from its elected officials has already been reduced to high school and even elementary school level by such class acts as GOP Rep. Lauren Boberg, Senator Fetterman dressing like gym rat and this…
Nonetheless, thinking that farting intentionally at the workplace is acceptable conduct does raise serious questions about judgment and socialization, if not sanity. And wouldn’t you agree that a superior intentionally farting among staffers in the workplace constitutes creating a “hostile work environment”?
What would have been a go-ahead 2-run homer by the San Diego Padres’ Ty France in the top of the 9th inning in last night’s Padres-Brewers NLDS series opener was foiled by a cable in the retractable roof stadium at America Field Park. The huge fly ball (49 degree launch angle, the steepest ever recorded there) on the way over the fence in fair territory struck a cable and fell straight down into the waiting outfielder’s glove. By the ground rules in force, the ball was in play and it was an out. One batter later, the Brewers had won 3-2.
Batted balls used to hit parts of the roof a lot in the Ray’s awful park in St. Petersburg before its roof was repaired, but that’s because the beams, cables, catwalks and rails were too low (and too many). This had never happened in Milwaukee’s American Family Field to cost a team a home run before, and the former “Miller Park” opened 26 years ago.
Yet the only time a ball about to be a home run hit the roof happened in the 9th inning of a play-off game, saving the home team from a crushing loss! It could have happened in a mid-May game. It could have happened in the third inning of an 8-2 loss. It could have happened when the Brewers were playing an inter-league game against the Angels. The odds were that if the fluke were going to happen at all to any team, it would have happened TO the Brewers, since its their home field. And heck, the retractable roof could have been open, meaning that there wouldn’t have been anything for France’s ball to hit.
But no. The first and only time, this particular stroke of bad luck (well, good luck for the Brewers) happened on national TV, in a critical game. Meanwhile the Brewers, who had the best record in baseball, are trying to finally get back to the World Series for the first time since 1982.
Let’s see: what happened in the World of Jew Hate in the past 24 hours? Admittedly, this will only cover stories that leftist mainstream media hasn’t successfully embargoed: it is fine for the Democratic Party to be anti-Semitic, see, it’s just a bad look if the positions and conduct are expressly anti-Semitic right before an election, except to Muslim voters, of course.
Die Linke, Germany’s rising populist-left party, won 26% in elections to Berlin’s House of Representatives, its best performance ever. Meanwhile, a branch of Die Linke in Berlin recently welcomed Macklemore, the anti-Semitic rapper, and on election night a Die Linke MP was photographed with a representative of a pro-Palestinian group with terrorist connections.
Canada is experiencing a surge of Jew hate. The Jerusalem Post reports “a significant rise in antisemitism, threats, and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions…In 2025, 788 hate crimes targeting Jews were reported to police across Canada. Jews accounted for approximately 71 percent of all police reported hate crimes motivated by religion. .. During the most recent Rosh Hashanah, mezuzahs were torn from the doors of Jewish students’ rooms at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Days later, an armed man arrived at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville while worshippers were inside on Yom Kippur. A police officer protecting the synagogue was seriously wounded.
In the U.S.—remember, we’re just talking about today’s news—
The University of Californiapetitioned a court to kick out the Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing UCLA of tolerating antisemitic harassment while seeking repayment of $2 billion in research grants. UC calls the case “political coercion” (how dare the government restrict a university’s right to allow the persecution of Jewish students on campus?) and argues that UCLA has made substantial changes since August of 2024, when a court ruled that “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith” and ordered the university to guarantee equal access to campus. A battle between anti-Israel students and counter-protesters was allowed to proceed without significant action by campus police.
Close to me in Alexandria, a group of rabbis accused Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland of normalizing anti-Semitism. In a letter this week to the district’s [completely Democrat] leadership, they wrote in part, “Over the last three years, we have been on the front lines of the current crisis of skyrocketing school-based antisemitism. We meet regularly with students who are hurt and confused and parents who are angry that their children are experiencing harassment, isolation, and threats to their fundamental physical and emotional safety. We are alarmed that the lack of a meaningful response by MCPS has led to an increase in the normalization of antisemitic attitudes, language and behaviors in our schools.” Montgomery County is the most progressive and Democrat-dominated district in one of the most Democrat-dominated states in the nation.
At Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, 49-year-old condemned inmate Christa Pike got two full doses of pentobarbital when one was supposed be sufficient to kill her. The second was administered into her bloodstream after the first didn’t work, following state protocols. But she still maintained a distinct heartbeat, and began snoring.
There were no rules in Tennessee for what should happen when a prisoner survives both lethal injections, because it’s not supposed to happen and had never happened before.
The microphones were shut off and viewing curtains were drawn. Attending medical staff then entered the execution chamber to evaluate vital signals, confirm the presence of a heartbeat, and determine whether there as acute respiratory distress. Defense attorneys recorded the information to file an emergency motion with a federal court citing evidence that their client survived and suffered unconstitutional pain, citing the 8th Amendment against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Pike was disconnected from the IV lines, her condition stabilized, and she was transferred by secure transport to an off-site civilian medical facility.
I must confess, because I have watched way too much TV, a Western I must have seen when I was about 10 had me believing that when a condemned prisoner survives an execution, such as a hanging, the prisoner is deemed to have completed his sentence and goes free. My father had confirmed this, saying that the real punishment in capital cases was the waiting and anticipation. The dying part was a breeze, or was supposed to be. (Last words of British acting legend, 19th-century actor Edmund Kean: “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”)
Well, that legend is not true; that has never been the case in the U.S., and it has rarely been the practice anywhere. Wikipedia has a just-updated list of botched executions going back to 1540. It’s a long (and probably incomplete) list, but there are only two examples where the condemned was set free, and only three where the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, none since 1885.
That last lucky guy was John Henry George “Babbacombe” Lee (1864 –1945), an Englishman famous for surviving three attempts to hang him in 1885. He had been convicted of murder. Lee was eventually released and supported himself by touring and speaking about his strange life. There have been several books about Lee including “The Man They Could Not Hang” (Holgate and Waugh, 2005) and a silent film. He’s buried at Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee.
So that’s what happens when you survive an execution. You end up in Milwaukee….
But I digress. The issue at hand is what is the ethical, fair and responsible way to handle such situations.
Funny, when Democrats ran in 2024 on the assertion that electing Donald Trump would turn the U.S. into Nazi Germany, I didn’t realize that the Left’s response to Trump’s election would be to embrace the most universally acknowledged evil of Hitler’s regime.
In case you haven’t noticed (and why haven’t you, if not?), the evidence of metastasizing anti-Semitism world-wide and in the U.S. as we approach the mid-terms it is alarming, or should be. Yesterday we learned that there was a nearly successful 9-11 style attack on Tel Aviv, foilded by the passengers. Anti-white racist director Spike Lee (everybody loves Spike Lee!) got in a confrontation at Yankee Stadium with a fan who told him “Fuck Palestine!” The acclaimed director of “Do the Right Thing” has revealed himself as a big booster of Hamas, along with a lot of prominent Hollywood progressives like Mark Ruffalo, Susan Saranden, Emma Stone and Tilda Swinton. In a sane America, such anti-Semites would fear that expressing vile views would kill their careers, but, NPR tells us, the nation is “divided.” You know: let Israel be wiped off the map vs. let Jews live.
Huh. Tough choice; let me think.
The international community is substantially anti-Semitic as the United Nations has been demonstrating for a long time, but that condition has worsened substantially since Europe allowed its nations to be overrun with Muslims. And, of course, progressives perpetually argue that the U.S. needs to be more like the rest of the world. The U.N. has consistently condemned Israel as it has fought for its existence in Gaza and Iran. Here is the list of nations whose delegates walked out on Netanyahu’s speech to the General Assembly
Egypt
Jordan
Lebanon
Syria
Iraq
Saudi Arabia
Palestine
Qatar
Kuwait
Oman
Yemen
Sudan
Tunisia
Algeria
Libya
Mauritania
Somalia
Comoros
Turkiye (Turkey)
Iran
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Indonesia
Malaysia
Brunei Darussalam
Maldives
Myanmar
North Korea
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
South Africa
Senegal
Djibouti
Nigeria
Angola
Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo
Two thoughts on the first day of the MLB play-offs:
1. I am officially 12-years-old. (Most of my friends and associates know that, but it continues to amaze me.) Today I have critical client work to do involving huge amounts of money (for them, not me). I have several medical issues I need to attend to ASAP. I’m late getting my invoices out and I’m in cash-flow hell. But all I can think about is the Red Sox-Yankee game tonight. (8 PM, EST. on NBC)
This is the juvenile state of mind that led me to risk my job in 1978, when I walked out of a critical, high-level capital fundraising meeting at Georgetown, with all the brass present, saying, “I’m sorry, but the Red Sox and Yankees are playing a game in Fenway Park in an hour to decide the American League East, and I have to see it. Let me know what you all decide.” (That was the Bucky %$#@ Dent Game.) My wife-to-be Grace was at the meeting and was the only one smiling; everyone else looked like the audience in “The Producers” after “Springtime for Hitler.”
“Hi there, everyone! It’s time to play the exciting ethics game that’s sweeping America: “Wait, Was That Ethical or Unethical?”! As you know, contestants are asked to decide whether an ambiguous statement or action was racist or not!
“Are you ready, contestants? Then let’s play, “Wait, Was That Racist or Wasn’t It?”! Introduce our subject for Round I, Johnny!”
“Sure thing, Jack! Meet Dixie Walker! Dixie was a star baseball player who died in 1982. He won a batting championship and a runs-batted-in title, and he played in two World Series and four All-Star Games. He is most remembered, however, not for his impressive exploits on the baseball field but as the player who led the campaign to keep Jackie Robinson from joining the Brooklyn Dodgers and integrating the game.
I wonder if and when enough people will wake up to the fact that when they vote for progressives, this is the kind of culture they are voting to live in. You know: hysterical, power-mad, and insane.
The footwear and apparel company Converse was attacked this week by the woke social media mob for an ad in a new sneaker campaign. It featured the bottom half of a person wearing a white garment and holding a pair of black sneakers.
The shadows that suggest the outline of a long, tapering triangle was obviously reminiscent of the pointed hood of a Klan robe, see. And the lighting makes the black sneakers look like someone is being hanged. The sneakers are black, get it? And have a single leg in two shoes, or something. The alleged lyncher was K-pop singer Karina wearing a skirt and holding a pair of Chuck 70 X sneakers, but never mind: some genius figured out this was another opportunity to hold 21st century America guilty of racism.
Naturally, Converse groveled an apology, thus ensuring more of this crap from the race-baiters and political correctness thugs. “We’re sorry,” Converse said in an emailed statement. “We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared,” the statement added. “This should not have happened and we will do better.”
I wish I bought Converse merchandise so I could boycott the brand. Their craven behavior harms every American, the culture, society, commerce, kids, brains, everything. Just listen to these idiots:
“As a Black man and someone who loves Converse shoes, I find this very insensitive and distasteful,” Kendall Peacock, who runs the Education Firm, a tutoring and mentorship program in Atlanta, said on social media. “Deliberate racist intent hasn’t been established yet, but that doesn’t erase the impact,” he added.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney based in Texas, posted on Instagram that Converse’s apology “doesn’t undo what got past legal, marketing and leadership at every step.”
Stephanie Schwartz, a social justice photographer, wrote on social media, “Every photographer can tell you, whoever did this ad knew EXACTLY what they were doing.”
I discovered the racist sneaker ad because Holly Mathnerd wrote about it on her exotic and eccentric substack. I can’t do better than Holly’s evisceration of the latest woke obsession, and besides, she’s sharp, she’s funny, she writes well, and she deserves attention. She wrote in part,
