kallend

Don't seem to be too many of those in the House GOP right now.

Back to the other end of the scale: A stroll through any US research lab, government or industry, shows a disproportionately high number of immigrants with higher degrees from US universities in STEM disciplines. Apparently foreign universities in Europe, and even Hong Kong(!)** are making attractive offers to top overseas students to study there instead of in the US, on account of the hostility coming from the Trump administration. Reverse brain drain. ** Hong Kong has 4 universities ranking in the top 100 in the world according to USNWR rankings

Those damn leopards!

Didn't think the leopard would eat their faces. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2025/small-farms-trump-government-cuts/

Nah! Trump's overhaul of the education system, support of universities and scientists, and efforts to attract the brightest foreign students to the US will ensure that we'll enter a new golden age of innovation and wealth creation.

Explains Trump's campaign against higher education.

What I find depressing is that authoritarian rulers can always find a large cadre of people to do their nasty bidding. Gestapo, SS, Stasi, KGB, NKVD, COINTELPRO, BOSS come to mind. EDIT - oh, and ICE

Lies like an oriental rug: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/africa/trump-image-dead-white-farmers-congo-not-south-africa-rcna208699 The "dead white farmers'" graves were apparently graves of blacks in the Congo.

And the bullying continues: Homeland Security Secretary Noem said DHS has revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification. This means Harvard may no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or risk losing their legal status. DHS said that Harvard had created an "unsafe campus” by allowing anti-American agitators, many of them foreign students.

The Big Ugly Bill contains the following provision, hidden in the thousand+ pages: “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….” Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation. Obviously, courts need appropriated funds to do anything because Congress appropriates money to enable the courts to function. To require a security or bond to be given in civil proceedings seeking to stop alleged abuses by the federal government would effectively immunize such conduct from judicial review because those seeking such court orders generally don’t have the resources to post a bond. Hence, with a stroke, the provision removes the judiciary’s capacity to hold officials in contempt. As U.C. Berkeley School of Law Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law Erwin Chemerinsky notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump. “Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law. …"

Exceptionalism isn't easy.

I was a C.E. (let it lapse) and then I taught a P.E. review course for many years.

The one commodity never in short supply is stupidity.

So Trump support goes up the less information you have about what he's doing: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/18/polls/trump-job-approval-news-attention.html "I love the poorly educated".

At least 21 people have died after severe storms swept through the central United States, with possible tornadoes touching down in Missouri and Kentucky, according to authorities. Fourteen people were killed in Kentucky, according to Gov. Andy Beshear. The National Weather Service office in Jackson, Kentucky was among those forced to stop staffing overnight shifts following the U.S. DOGE efforts to shrink the federal government. Thanks, Elon.

Trump on stealth: “I’m not a huge believer in stealth because stealth is, basically, a lot of it’s the design and the shape. I’m sure you maybe think, but also, if that’s the case, they’re gonna figure it out pretty fast, I think. So you’re gonna design an ugly plane for stealth reasons, and then six months later, they’re gonna figure out this and then you’re stuck with a plane.”

I'd prefer a pantomime horse over the current incumbent.

Stories like that make me glad I'm based at an uncontrolled field where ADS-B out is required. At least other pilots seem to have situational awareness.

No need to read The Onion any more.

I don't think he is the Antichrist. He just aspires to it.

So that Rolls Royce will only be taxed at 10%, good news for billionaires.

I just returned from Europe and came through the Global Entry line at O'Hare. It has those new machines that instantly recognize the face as you walk through (no more kiosks that took 5 seconds) and pass you through. Fortunately it didn't look at the back of my neck so it admitted me. As an immigrant I was concerned that Big Bro had been reading my posts on here and would ship me off to El Salvador.

Turns out Da Pope's father was head of the school district my kids attended. Da Pope is a "south sider" at at one point taught physics at a local high school.