That’s a Hootenanny I can get behind!
We visited Samaria on holiday and they were lovely people.
Just because Jesus is voicing limited and qualified agreement with a bigoted stereotype there’s no reason for those wokies to attack Him!
I love it when the streams threads cross!
That is better; thanks for that.
As for what the guy n the left is playing, if I had to guess, I’d suggest that it is some sort of Appalachian dulcimer. His left hand is playing it as it it was, but the problem is, it’s not as big as such a dulcimer should be. Then his right hand is knocking a couple of objects (rhythm bones, looks like) against the body of the instrument. Not how to play an Appalachian dulcimer, but it works in the overall tune.
Regardless, it was fun, and I hope it goes viral. Thanks again!
Trump administration to vet all 55 million foreigners with U.S. visas
The State Department plans to scour legal visa holders for “overstays, criminal activity, threats to public safety … or providing support to a terrorist organization.”
The Trump administration is planning to vet all 55 million foreigners who currently hold visas for travel to the United States, a significant expansion of ongoing efforts to clamp down on alleged abuses of the legal immigration system.
…
David J. Bier, the director of immigration policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in D.C., said it sounded like the administration wanted to “proactively conduct reviews of social media posts and revoke visas based not on conduct but speech.”
“I doubt that’s feasible for everyone, but I suspect that these reviews will be done in a discriminatory manner targeting immigrants with certain backgrounds and in certain visa categories or specific people they want an excuse to revoke,” Bier added.
…
My bold.
Ya think?
At least there is a simple vetting test they can use!
'Course that should be a white paper bag.
He’s also wearing finger picks on his left hand. I think the guy behind him is playing some sort of dulcimer, though it looks a bit small too. There are really nich and interesting instruments.
The woman singing the verses is pretty good.
Today, Trump renewed his demand to Colorado to let Tina Peters out of prison; need I remind you, she was convicted by a jury of her peers in a GOP-majority county and prosecuted by a Republican district attorney.
But that doesn’t matter to Trump. His supporters, in his mind, get to play by a different set of rules, which is why he pardoned Jan. 6 rioters and prosecuted someone who threw a sandwich at an ICE agent.
Now he’s saying he will take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless they release her.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5463191-donald-trump-tina-peters-freedom/
I’ll do my best to not have typos in this post.
The military occupation of the capital city is off to a crashing start.
A National Guard member whose military transport vehicle collided with a car this week was given a traffic ticket for running a red light in Washington, D.C. — as Guard forces deploy to the streets of the capital amid President Trump’s contentious anti-crime push.
The collision took place early Wednesday morning, as a convoy of five National Guard vehicles drove through D.C.'s Capitol Hill neighborhood. One of the trucks — a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle — struck a civilian car, the D.C. Guard said in a statement.
The five Guard vehicles and a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department cruiser stopped to help the driver, who was transported via emergency medical services, according to the Guard.
The driver sustained minor injuries, but the D.C. Fire Department used extrication tools to remove the driver from the car, department spokesperson Vito Maggiolo told CBS News.
The driver of the Guard vehicle was later ticketed for running a red light during the incident, the military’s D.C. Joint Task Force said Thursday.
Red light tickets cost $150 in D.C.
I believe our taxes will be paying for the civilian car’s repairs, too, as this was an on-duty incident.
OMG, Alina Habba is an illegal!
Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Alina Habba has been unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, according to a federal judge.
Habba, whose appointment to the role sparked a legal showdown between the Trump administration and the state’s federal judges, has been serving as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey “without lawful authority” for more than a month, according to District Judge Matthew Brann.
“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” he wrote on Thursday.
“Because she is not currently qualified to exercise the functions and duties of the office in an acting capacity, she must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases,” he added.
My reaction: Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh…Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
California to hold special election for redistricting.
SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats next year, after Texas Republicans advanced their own redrawn map to pad their House majority by the same number of seats at President Donald Trump’s urging.
California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has led the campaign in favor of the map, then quickly signed it — the latest step in a tit-for-tat gerrymandering battle.
“This is not something six weeks ago that I ever imagined that I’d be doing,” Newsom said at a press conference, pledging a campaign for the measure that would reach out to Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. “This is a reaction to an assault on our democracy in Texas.”
Republicans, who have filed a lawsuit and called for a federal investigation into the plan, promised to fight the measure at the ballot box as well.
The felon is afraid of leaving his safe space.
President Donald Trump met with police and military in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to oversee the surge in federal law enforcement and National Guard, who are responding to what he says is a crime emergency in the district.
Trump visited the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility in Southeast D.C., which is serving as the gathering point for all the agencies involved in the operation, thanking officers and members of the military and delivering hamburgers from the White House and pizza.
Trump left the White House in the presidential limousine – nicknamed “the Beast” – with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller Thursday afternoon to visit the facility.
“I just want to thank everybody very much for being here,” Trump said. “I wanted to do this. We’ve had some incredible results that have come out, and it’s like a different place. It’s like a different city. It’s the capital. It’s going to be the best in the world.”
Why does that gushing comment from him sound exactly like how Pyongyang is described by their government?
And let’s not forget why he’s doing this. It can’t be because of the crime statistics.
Violent crime levels have decreased compared to years prior, down 26% since 2024, a 30-year low, according to crime stats released by the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
As always, the felon cannot STFU.
Trump told radio host Todd Starnes on Thursday that the D.C. deployment was “sort of a test” and indicated that they would copy the model in other cities around America.
By the way, who has been arrested during this Battle of the Bulge? I posted upthread what they were, ranging from, I think, jaywalking to homicide. Of course the felon used the total number of arrests and pretended they are all murderers.
And where will he franchise this next?
The president said that he would put Memphis “early” on the list of next cities to patrol.
Then he rambles on and forgets what party he’s in.
“And, you know, unfortunately, we have a lot of cities like that. But I love Tennessee. You know, I won Tennessee by many, many, many points. So it was a landslide, far greater than even, you know, the Republican. Republicans do good in Tennessee, but, I mean, my number was like 35 points, and I’m glad you tell me that I can put that early on a list, and I’m sure that people would love it,” he added.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration can slash hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to cut federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the Supreme Court decided Thursday.
The split court lifted a judge’s order blocking $783 million worth of cuts made by the National Institutes of Health to align with Republican President Donald Trump’s priorities.
The court split 5-4 on the decision. Chief Justice John Roberts was among those who wouldn’t have allowed the cuts, along with the court’s three liberals. The high court did keep the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directive blocked for future funding with a key vote from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, however.
The decision marks the latest Supreme Court win for Trump and allows the administration to forge ahead with canceling hundreds of grants while the lawsuit continues to unfold. The plaintiffs say the decision is a “significant setback for public health,” but keeping the directive blocked means the administration can’t use it to cut more studies.
These particular cuts, in case you didn’t notice, relate to health.
Perhaps this will cut down on the grifting.
WASHINGTON — The White House is suspending public tours because of the construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom initiated by President Donald Trump, a White House official said.
The official did not provide a timeline for when tours would resume, saying only that the suspension is temporary.
Constituents can typically request White House tours through their members of Congress, and several members stated on their websites that White House tours were paused.
The pause, first reported by Fox News, marks the largest public impact so far from the construction project, which the White House announced last month. The suspension comes just months after tours resumed during the Trump administration in late February. Thousands of people visit the White House each year, according to the White House Historical Association.
The office of Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said on his website that it could not submit tour requests starting in September “due to ongoing construction at the White House.”
Similarly, the office of Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., said on its site that starting in September, “the White House will be undergoing extensive renovations. As a result, all tours of the White House are postponed indefinitely.”
Other offices, including those of Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.; and Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., say on their websites that the White House is pausing tours starting in September but do not provide a reason.
Who am i kidding? There will, no doubt soon, be special waivers for select people to see the ongoing tackyization of the Orange White House.
Have I mentioned the courts are no longer keeping the felon in check?
A panel of justices on a New York appellate court threw out the half-billion-dollar penalty in the civil fraud case against President Trump and others on Thursday, ruling that the fine was “excessive” while saying they were divided on the merits of the case.
One of the justices on the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department wrote that the penalty, known as a disgorgement, against Mr. Trump, two of his sons and other executives and their company was “an excessive fine barred by the Eighth Amendment.”
In February 2024, a New York judge ordered Mr. Trump and his codefendants to pay the state nearly $364 million in “ill-gotten gains” and millions more in interest dating back years, a total that has since ballooned to about $527 million. Judge Arthur Engoron’s judgment left Mr. Trump on the hook for nearly 98% of the total.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Thursday that her office will appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. Her statement lauded one aspect of the ruling, which left in place sanctions barring Mr. Trump from serving as an officer or director of any corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years. His sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were banned for two years.
Mind you, this is a state case. And maybe I’m just being Chicken Little-ish.
The felon’s purge of history got a Bible and a hymnbook removed from the Smithsonian.
On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”
Having anticipated the administration would begin reviewing its museums, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is a Smithsonian Institution, appeared to begin changing its displays.
In April, the National Museum of African American History and Culture sparked controversy after it announced it would return several artifacts to their donors, including a Bible carried during a civil rights protest and Harriet Tubman’s book of hymns, NBC News reported.
Perjury Traitor Greene seems to think Killer Kennedy will inherit the evil orange tribble.
Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene has leapt headfirst into a go-to MAGA conspiracy as she works to rebuild bridges with the Trump administration.
The GOP congresswoman is groveling to MAGA elites with a new outburst on Health and Human Service Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s beloved raw milk.
Greene is bending the knee as part of her bid to mend relations with the White House after going rogue over the Jeffrey Epstein files and the U.S. role in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
She posted on X in support of the controversial raw milk movement. She backed a claim by outspoken farmers that food standards agencies were unfairly treating them.
“So you’re telling us that Walmart is allowed to import and sell RADIOACTIVE shrimp from Indonesia but American farmers could be thrown in jail for selling raw milk at their local farmer’s market…” Meriwether Farms wrote, adding, “Got it,” along with a clown face emoji.
Greene reposted it, saying: “Correct, because bad food makes you sick and dependent on Big Pharma and good natural food like raw milk makes you well and healthy and you won’t need Big Pharma.”
The felon wants to punish people for burning his sex toy.
President Donald Trump is no longer expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that would direct the Justice Department to try to bring charges against people who burn the American flag, White House officials told CNN.
A White House official had told CNN earlier Thursday that Trump was expected to sign the order, which was not expected to outright criminalize the act of burning the American flag. Instead, it was expected to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to review cases where the flag had been set on fire and determine whether charges could be brought under existing laws.
That official and another later said Trump was no longer expected to sign it Thursday; it was unclear if the order would be signed at a later date.
The circus felonius gets sued yet again.
Two Louisiana mothers who were deported to Honduras along with their citizen children in April have now sued the Trump administration, arguing that their removals lacked due process in violation of federal law.
In a lawsuit filed at the end of July in federal court in Baton Rouge, attorneys for the families allege that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement illegally deported the two mothers – who are identified only as Julia and Rosario, without last names, in court documents – and their children, three of whom are U.S. citizens. The deported children range in age from 2 to 11 years old, and one — a 4-year-old — has stage-four kidney cancer, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that ICE officers, contrary to their own policies, denied the families due process when agents took the two mothers and their U.S. citizen children into custody during routine check-ins, keeping them at undisclosed locations and repeatedly denying them access to legal counsel and other U.S.-based family members. Those actions effectively kept the mothers from securing childcare for their children, plaintiffs argue.
“ICE has a policy for what they’re supposed to do in these instances, and they most certainly did not follow that policy,” said Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, in an interview.
The war the felon promised to end on January 20th just claimed an American factory.
Russia struck an American business with cruise missiles overnight in one of the largest aerial attacks of the war so far, Ukraine has said.
The Ukrainian air force said some 574 drones and 40 missiles were fired overnight, primarily targeting western regions of the country – far from the battlefield’s front line in the east and south of the country.
The strikes killed one person and injured 15 more and struck a “major American electronics manufacturer” in the city of Mukachevo in Zakarpattia, according to Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister.
Video footage showed a large fire at the premises of Flex Ltd, a multinational firm that has its headquarters in Texas.
Can’t wait for someone to tell him that he got 35 percent of the vote in Memphis. It’s not going to be the warm welcome he thinks.
I’m still laughing over him saying he won over the republican candidate for president in 2024. How the fuck is this clown (and, yes, I know circus felonius is fake Latin because I made it up) allowed anywhere without adult supervision, let alone running a country?
On closer inspection, it looks like he’s wearing thimbles on his left hand
fingers so almost certainly some sort of washboard percussion type
thing. And I can’t see anyone else playing any percussion instruments..
Anyway, enough about that; back to the clusterfuckery !
Catchy tune. Reminds me a bit of some of the old Woody Guthrie protest songs you don’t hear unless you go looking for them.
That’s not a dulcimer. It’s some sort of rhythm set up.
The collision took place early Wednesday morning, as a convoy of five National Guard vehicles drove through D.C.'s Capitol Hill neighborhood. One of the trucks — a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle — struck a civilian car, the D.C. Guard said in a statement.
Right. Because there are so many mines in the streets of DC.
Rules for thee but not for me! Really, the MAGAs have no shame, and no sense of hypocrisy, either.
It’s a weird world where Roberts is deciding along with the liberals.
Good. It will spare them from the up-coming book burnings.
I’m sure he is completely unaware that (respectful) burning is the go-to method for disposing of worn-out and damaged flags.
I don’t think he wants a warm welcome. He wants something to happen that leads to the National Guard shooting protestors because that’s how he gets his rocks off.
The whole decision is an ungodly mess, with multiple opinions and partial concurrences and inconsistent reasoning all over the place.
It’s clear the right-wing activists were trying to split the difference between plausible justification and outcome-driven reasoning and couldn’t come to an agreement between themselves on what that should look like, so they all just barfed up their own explanations. Thomas and Alito didn’t even bother to explain themselves. It’s just naked partisan gibberish.
The State Department, which is the organization doing this, has about 27,000 employees in Foreign Service and Civil Service positions. Let’s say it takes one day to properly vet a person. Even with all of these employees doing this work, that’s over 2000 days, or over five years, do finish this job.
Now, that’s obviously ridiculous. But, even if they only put 10% of the workforce on it, and can vet 10 people per day (more than one per hour, every hour), it still works out to over five years.
Hey, everywhere Donald Trump goes it all “mine, mine, mine”.
Let’s face it, he doesn’t really have to follow through on anything. All he has to do is get the headlines. 
What do you think Grok was supposed to be for? They can knock this out in a week.
How many National Guard vehicles have been ambushed by mines in DC? See? The mine resistant vehicles are working!